Stuff That Matters in Life

Katy’s Weblog

Consistent prayer is a challenge for me. Here are more quotes from A Praying Life by Paul Miller.

You don’t create intimacy; you make room for it…In short, you can’t get to know God on the fly. (p. 47)

Time in prayer makes you even more dependent on God because you don’t have as much time to get things done. Every minute spent in prayer is one less minute where you can be doing something “productive.” So the act of praying means that you have to rely more on God. (p. 49)

If we think we can do life on our own, we will not take prayer seriously. Our failure to pray will always feel like something else – a lack of discipline or too many obligations. But when something is important to us, we make room for it. Prayer is simply not important to many Christians because Jesus is already an add-on. (p. 59)

Read another mystery, but after this I will go back to nonfiction.

The motivation for the murder was not very believable. Side stories were also a bit on the ridiculous side.

No more of Ruth Rendell for me, at least for now unless I get desperate.

I don’t watch TV (except HGTV on Netflix) and I don’t like movies (except Disney Pixar and other clean movies). The book is always better.

In this book by Patricia Wentworth, the build up and character development was pretty good, I was quite drawn in. But the mystery was solved in the last few pages by one person’s testimony who happened to overhear a conversation. That was too easy and definitely not creative. I think the author got tired of weaving the story and just want to end it quickly. For that reason, I give it 2.5 stars.

I needed to take a break from serious reading and do some mindless entertainment. An old-fashion whodunnit mystery novel is always my first choice of fun reading.

When I googled “authors like Agatha Christie”, Charlotte MacLeod came up. I checked out this Professor Peter Shandy murder mystery. The murder and resolution was somewhat satisfying, sort of a 2.5 stars. The characters were not developed deeply enough to make the murderer plausible. The motive for the murders was rather weak as well.

So again, no one is like Agatha Christie!

 

 

The Old Testament is full of rules and rituals that the Israelites are to follow. It seems like a religion of works but it really isn’t.

As finite beings, how can we know an infinite God? God makes himself known by giving us these means or “tools” to know him. The end goal of all that is to know God, and if we know Him, we will love Him. And when we love him, we will do what he wants and it turns out that what he wants is the best thing for us.

This clarifies it for me.

When all is said and done, our hope is not to be a skilled Bible-reader, practiced pray-er, faithful churchman, or visibly mature Christian, but to be the one who “understands and knows me, that I am the Lord” (Jeremiah 9:24).

I can be a very good “faithful churchman” and “visibly mature Christian” quite easily. But that’s not “spiritual growth.” That isn’t the abundant life nor salvation that God offers. Knowing and loving God is the end.

So even though the Christian life is often seen as a list of do’s and don’t’s but it really isn’t like that. Those are only ways through which a sinful, finite person can even hope to know a great and loving God, even just a little.

 

Pastor H said in his sermon on Sunday that people shouldn’t be surprised when they find out you go to church. It’s not a good thing if they say, “Oh, I couldn’t tell you’re a Christian!”

I like what Aaron says here about having a consistent lifestyle as a church leader. Actually all who call themselves Christians should live in a way that reflects Christ, in a manner worthy of the calling (Ephesians 4). My church life as a leader is not separate from my life at home, or when I’m on vacation, or when I’m at the market, or when I’m driving alone.

I am usually impatient in line, especially if the cashier is inefficient and particularly slow. My facial expressions reflect my disgust. One time at the market when I was in a big hurry and the cashier [it seemed to me] extremely slow, my daughter rebuked me and told me I shouldn’t be angry. She reminded me that it’s part of life and it’s not a big deal to wait. She was right of course! A 2 minute longer wait in line is not a life and death situation and it is not worthy of my life in Christ to be angry.

From Ephesians 4, I am to live with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love…

This little book is packed with important principles for the role of parents based on Scripture. It’s easy to read, it’s clear, it’s practical, it convicts, it’s inexpensive. It presents concisely what it means to disciple your own children at home.

Every parent should read this. And when you need to be reminded of why God gave you a family, read it again. Or when you lose sight of the big picture as a parent as you deal with the headaches of the day-to-day, read it again.