I was talking to Matt on our vacation – I know, CRAZY. And one night I just busted out a new revelation (brace yourselves) that I am satisfied with where God has me.

Have you ever had that revelation. not an I’m comfortable with my devotion level and therefore going to plateau. But just a joy and a satisfaction with exactly where God has you and is teaching you and is growing you. I hope you feel that every day.

It’s funny but it’s so easy to become over-booked and exhausted by “too much to do that won’t get done” or the hard parts of life that I don’t step back and enjoy the ride. It really is a joy. And I think that while it is challenging, God has blessed me beyond measure. My cup runneth over for sure.

Have you ever stopped to ponder your blessings? Not just the amount of stuff you have in your house, though a good wake-up call to just how blessed we are by what we have is a sobering experience. But also to the extent of enjoying the purpose God has placed before you. Do you feel like your cup is overflowing with goodness from the Lord?

Maybe you too need a refresher here and there. It’s so easy to look at the “too much” of life and find yourself overwhelmed or discouraged by those “am I ever going to learn this” lessons. Maybe you are too overbooked and over-extended that you have created a stress that hinders you from serving the Lord wholeheartedly and joyfully. I was in that mode for a while too. Declutter and get back to the basics. God doesn’t have us here to do 2,000 things, but to do things wholeheartedly and well. Accomplish Kingdom work with purpose and intentionality. I’ve found that as i have slimmed down to the core things God wants me to do (identified through prayer and God’s priority revealing) it’s like a weight has lifted off and I have become a better Mom and wife and Christian.

God is not here to serve me. He’s not alive to rescue me from my self-imposed stressors. He’s not a sugar-daddy God handing out blessings void of hard lessons. As Christians it’s important to continue to evaluate how much we are serving God verses expecting or desiring to be served by God. And in this evaluation expectations change.

I have found God growing me from a complainer (to be honest) to a thanker. As God has grown my heart of gratitude and opened my eyes (Thanks be to God!), I have been convicted and cleansed and begun to serve Him better right where I am. The situation has changed only in minor ways, but my heart is so less self-pleasing and self-seeking.

Therefore, I find myself satisfied and overwhelmed by the blessings God has already given me. My family, my friends, fellow real Christians to spur me on to God-worship and away from self-worship, my country, my freedoms, my status that I may help and encourage others… the list could go on for days.

A few weeks back – wow, I think it’s been over a month- Rachael and Abi (sort of) and I went around the house and put a post-it label on everything we were thankful for God giving us. In an effort to learn gratitude and that God is taking care of us, I was hoping to start planting more intentional seeds of God-honoring. The post-its littered our house for weeks until they lost their sticky and were one-by-one moved to the world of waste. =) But it opened my eyes to all the physical blessings that surround our family and that God has provided. There was something changing about walking into a room covered in “Thank you, God” post-it notes. Alters the way things are seen.

So how is your cup running over?

What are ways that God has blessed you?

And how are you using those blessings not to worship yourself, but to worship the Lord?

– humbled, blessed, taught and changed.

We’re all in danger of it… it lurks around every corner… and suddenly you are enrolled in it… when you least expect it:

U University.

My eyes are increasingly opened to the sad truth that while we all struggle with U University, there is an overwhelming amount of people that choose to be permanently enrolled. We can get our degree in drama, or the American dream, or even humanitarian acts and still be enrolled in U University.

I was saddened recently to have my eyes opened to the affects of U University. I often use that term with my toddler when she’s having a selfish moment. She doesn’t get it, but it helps me to identify it and try to eliminate it from my life as much as possible this side of the New Jerusalem.

It doesn’t surprise me when the lost act like the lost. But it does break my heart when the “saved” act like the U University of the lost.

We can call it teenage drama to help us pretend like our kid’s 4 year enrollment in U University is normal. We can call it “college age” to help us write off their disinterest in anyone but themselves. Or we can fess up and realize that U Universities serve U Universities and result in wasted time and space.

Please hear my correctly, I struggle with U University just as much as the next guy, but self-control shouldn’t be thrown out the window because we all struggle with it. It would be like making rape permissible because there are so many cases of it in our country.

It’s in times of U University that I find myself desiring to be the Holy Spirit. “Snap out of yourself!” I want to holler at a Christian, “Look outside of you! Are you here to serve yourself? What does that communicate about God?” And while guiding someone in love and compassion is much different than hollering, I am glad there have been Holy Spirit convictions in my life and not only “I am representing the Holy Spirit wrongly” volunteers.

I’ve seen a good host of self-proclaiming Christian examples of U University: those angry at their friend’s efforts to celebrate their birthday, those constantly playing the drama card to remain in the spotlight, those playing the superior game to reside in others’ minds, those constantly seeking more for their families and always complaining about how little they have… sound like anyone you know?

Sadly, we all know them. And many times we are those people.

But God has so much more for us.

It continues to blow my mind at how true the Proverb is: “Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied, nor are the eyes of man ever satisfied.” [Proverbs 27:20]

Sheol is “the nether world” and Abaddon is “the place of destruction”. They are always seeking more to come and reside. And just as the broad path is so much easier and so much more comfortable and so much more appetizing, so are man’s eyes never satisfied.

That proverb is sobering when I start my U University thoughts. I will never be satisfied – my flesh will never be satisfied, therefore, I MUST self-discipline and deny self for Christ to be alive in me.

A challenge…. and a lifestyle emerge.

“And He [Christ] was saying to them all, ‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it. For what is man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself?” (Luke 9:23-25)

My heart is overwhelmed with the joys of our nap-time missions readings, following my dear friend, Theresa’s blog, and witnessing the small pieces coming together in terms of our adoption. “How beautiful are the feet of those that bring good news…”

Read something interesting in terms of worldviews and the shaping of them. An excerpt from the “Christian Home School” book I’ve been reading by Gregg Harris reaffirmed what Matt and I have witnessed in textbooks; “These studies make it abundantly clear that public school textbooks commonly exclude the history, heritage, beliefs, and values of millions of Americans. Those who believe in the traditional family are not represented. Those who believe in free enterprise are not represented. Those whose politics are conservative are almost unrepresented. Above all, those who are committed to their religious tradition-at the very least of as an important part of the historical record-are not represented.

Even those who uphold the classic or republican virtues of discipline, public duty, hard work, patriotism, and concern for others are scarcely represented. Indeed, the world of those virtues long advocated by believers, as well as deists and skeptics such as Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson, is not found here. Even what one might call the “noble pagan” has ample reason to reject these inadequate and sentimentalized books which seem to be about an equal mixture of pop and propaganda.

Over and over, we have seen that liberal and secular bias is primarily accomplished by exclusion, by leaving out the opposing position. Such a bias is much harder to observe than a positive verification or direct criticism, but it is the essence of censorship. It is effective not only because ti is hard to observe-it isn’t there-and therefore hard to counteract, but also because ti makes only the liberal, secular positions familiar and plausible. As a result the millions of Americans who hold conservative, traditional, and religious positions are made to appear irrelevant, strange, on the fringe, old-fashioned, reactionary.” (quote by Professor Vitz in a study of textbooks in the American public classroom).

If you are still with me after that in-places-a-bit-heady quote (sorry I didn’t warn you), please allow me to sum it up. Many textbooks portray one side of events in a persuasive manner to sway their readers to agree with particular sides of historical platforms or particular thought-processes about historical events. Therefore, while in a history class the topics of teaching are indeed historical, the biases are not being taught in fair playing fields. So when liberal agendas are the norm, the student concludes that traditional or conservative agendas are “out-dated” and that there is no value in entertaining such ideas.

This is an interesting argument that is running rampant in our culture and many other cultures. In many societies elders are considered to be wise and useful and full of experience. But in “new-age” thinking remaining young is an ideal – college students marking many backings of political change – – look at who the targeted voting age is? Age is considered “past your prime”, I mean take the hair-dye industry as an example. If it was honorable to grow in age and maturity and wisdom I wonder if so many would try so desperately to look young?

Beyond that there comes the Christian scope of thinking in which we just need to be aware of the biases coming through teaching. I’m not arguing that all students are corrupted and warped by the public school system – seriously, I would be a victim. But I am arguing that in family conversation around the dinner table we need to know what we are up against in terms of the past 8 hours of our child’s education.

Worldviews slip in from anywhere and everywhere. We, Christians, must apply ourselves to willingly accept and reject those things that make our seeking for obedience to Truth successful. This is no doom and gloom post, just has been another eye-opener when it comes to accepting Truth and rejecting lies.

God, Your Word is Truth.
-To God be the glory.