Grooves

"If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans, even there you hand guide me, and your strength support me." Psalm 139:9-10 NLT

(The following cartoon is based upon the Footprints poem. If you've never read it, click here to read it first.)

Ever felt this way? I certainly have. When I struggle, feel afraid, or just plain don't want to do what I know God wants me to do (like, apologize when I'm wrong...that stung a little just to admit it actually happens), I feel almost like God's dragging me kicking and screaming. Of course, I know I'm just fighting my own fleshly inclinations, but still, pushing on in faith is a good thing. It's a pretty "groovy" thing (in the cool 70s sense).

There are grooves that aren't so great though. Like the daily groove. The distractions that keep us from prayer, from church and fellowship with like believers, the patterns we let ourselves fall into, the "grooves" that make life "easier," "predictable," and "comfortable." We so easily let ourselves fall into those grooves, and they slowly take us more away from God, one day at a time.

The "trick" is to make prayer, reading our Bible, worship, and fellowship our "groove," the thing that we train ourselves to do, and we will find ourselves in a very "groovy" (cue 70s meaning again) place--a relationship with God. No sandy feet necessary.

Melissa McGinnis is the Children's Ministry Director for LHF. She does not like the feeling of sand between her toes.

Just Between You, Me, & God 3/19/2012

We just finished our annual inventory at work. It is time consuming and requires a lot of man hours but it is necessary for businesses to stop from time to time and look at what’s come in and what’s gone out and if it balances. It is a measure of our ability to maintain proper controls and to adjust what we are doing in order to do it better. Without these periodic checks our business vision would be clouded, we would spend much more time trying to figure out where we are what we are doing and which direction we need to be headed in. It’s like having a great car ready and waiting at your disposal but if you can’t find the keys it’s not doing you any good and you’re not going anywhere unless you walk. So what about our spiritual life? What would it look like if we took a little spiritual inventory of our own, a little check up from the neck up, a little heart tune up, some soul balancing? First, you would need to consult with someone reputable and honest to guide us on our inventory. How about, oh, let’s say, God. Psalm 139: 23- 24 says, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Who knows us better than our Creator, the one that knows our very thoughts before we speak them? Let’s take a look at the balance sheet. What are the pluses and the minuses? Let’s start with the minuses and make a list of all of our sins. WOAH!! My calculator doesn’t have that many digits. Do I have to count even the little stuff? Any good inventory auditor will tell you that everything counts. OK, that took some time, now let’s move into the pluses; let’s look at our good works. Hmm, something seems to be missing, this can’t be right, I know there was more than this. I must have been robbed. How can I balance this? How can I bring back some control in my life? How did I get so far off and not even know it? I don’t see how I can make this right. I can’t, no one can. We need a loss prevention expert. His name is Jesus. He’s not in the yellow pages. He’s actually been there by your side the whole time just waiting for you to ask Him into your business, to take control, to balance the debt we’ve incurred. Romans 10:13 tells us, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Don’t get me wrong here, the guide lines for maintaining our spiritual inventory demand change in our lives so pick up your manual, the Bible, and get together with your loss prevention expert on a more regular basis and start making some changes so that your final inventory will balance. God bless for all you do, Pastor Dean.

Pastor Dean Hanssen is the Outreach & Ministries Pastor for LHF.