Blog #1012

If you want to know someone's value system all you have to do is look at how he or she spends their time. A person can say he's a committed follower of Jesus Christ but if he spends most of his time parked on the couch in front of the television, he can't be all that committed to Christ. If he were truly committed he would be using at least some of his time in a better way.

The Lord wants us to lead productive lives and especially so for His kingdom. We may tell the Lord we have time for Him but does our time management skills make us out to be liars? In order for our time to be best spent we need to align and focus our thoughts and hearts on God. And there's good news ... no matter where we stand on this issue, we can take steps to ensure that we use our time wisely and effectively for the Lord.

We must realize that without Christ we are incapable of anything because at John 15:5 Jesus says: "I am the vine; you are the branches ... apart from me you can do nothing." People can exist without Christ, they just can't really live without Him in their lives. We need to confess our sins and ask for forgiveness and then rest on His promises that the death of Jesus Christ completely paid the penalty we owed.

We must discover God's will for our lives and walk obediently in His guidance every day. We would do well to listen to the apostle Paul's advice at Ephesians 5:15-17, "Be very careful, then, how you live ... not as unwise but as wise ... understand what the Lord's will is." We must ask ourselves, What's my purpose? What am I living for? One of our purposes is to glorify God. Rick Warren says in his book, The Purpose Driven Life, "We are made for God's glory. What is the glory of God? It is who God is. It is the essence of His nature, the weight of His importance, the radiance of His splendor, the demonstration of His power, and the atmosphere of His presence. God's glory is the expression of His goodness and all His other intrinsic, eternal qualities, everything created by God reflects His glory in some way." We must ask the Lord to show us the ways He desires us to glorify Him. Everything we do either glorifies God or defames him. Our job is to discover in what way God wants us to glorify Him and then to take the necessary steps to carry out His desires.

We can also take pen and paper and actually write out a personal mission statement for our lives. It doesn't matter how old we are or how long we've been a believer, we can sit down and write out our purpose. We can prayerfully ask God to direct us as we write out our goals for the rest of our time here on planet earth. Life is not about how long we live; it's about how well we live our lives. It's never too late to make changes in our lives. We can break old habits and establish new ones. We can put our trust in God and let Him take care of our time. As long as we have our hearts set on glorifying God, and are sensitive to His leadings, He will direct our steps rightly.

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Another beautiful day here in the foothills of the Sierra mountains. The sun is shining brightly and the air is clear. Hogback mountain is bright green this morning rather than the dull gray it is some times. I love this time of year. All the beautiful Fall colors everywhere we look and our view that looks across the little valley, across town, is filled with bright splashes of reds, oranges, and bright yellows. It's getting later in the season, though, as the colors are not as predominant as they have been. But they are still beautiful; no doubt about it. I love living in the foothills and thank God every day for guiding me here.

No big plans for the day. I have my PraiseMoves exercise class tonight at 6:00 but other than that I don't have any plans. I don't even plan on going out to the Post Office since I went yesterday. We don't get enough mail these days to warrant a daily trip. It just doesn't make the best use of my gasoline to drive down every day. And with the cost of gas these days we have to be careful. I can remember we used to fill our car with gas a couple times a month. Then we started buying $20 worth of gas at a time. Now we are down to only $10 at a time. Pretty soon we're just not going to be able to buy gas at all. We get so little for what we pay so much for. It's discouraging. But the Lord knows our needs and He hasn't let us down yet. He is faithful. I wish I could work and bring in some extra cash but we have been called to a life of poverty and we relish in the fact that God directs our steps. It doesn't mean it isn't difficult, it just means we must rest in what the Lord does for us in our lives. He has always been faithful and we just have to trust Him each and every day.

There's a spider on the ceiling right over my head and I sure hope he doesn't lose his grip and fall because if he does he's going to drop right down my collar. Yikes! I wouldn't like that at all. Well I just checked and he's past my head now so maybe I'm in the clear. I have no idea where he's headed, where he plans to go up there. Do you ever wonder if spiders think? I do.

Looks like Moody got herself another bird yesterday. There are feathers everywhere in the garage. Poor bird. I wish Moody weren't such a good catcher. I feel bad for the birds. I mean, I feed Moody everyday. She doesn't need to catch birds to survive, she is well taken care of. Guess I should go open the garage door a crack and let the cats out. I always keep Moody and Mama inside at night. There are too many things that go bump in the night to leave them outside all night. Of course lately they've had a house guest, or would that be a garage guest? Little Mario has been hanging out in the garage. He's taken over Mama's winter bed. Guess I'll have to make Mama a new bed for this winter. Of course Little Mario's not so little anymore. He's really filling out with what food he's been mooching from us. He was so skinny and scruffy looking when he first appeared around the neighborhood. Oh, and he let me pet him for the first time night before last when I put out his food. I petted him last night too. Not a lot, he's still too leery. I don't want to give him a reason to act out and scratch me. Or whip his head around and bite me. He doesn't hiss at me much anymore so he's shaping up. It's just going to take time to tame him. He was really wild. Speaking of wild; I haven't seen our turkeys for some time now. I don't know if we've just missed seeing them or if they've moved on to another area. They are a lot of fun to watch. The biggest, most senior birds being the lookouts fore and aft. It's fun to watch them communicate with each other.

Well, I need to get my chores done. Michael slept in late again this morning so I couldn't make up the bed before I started on my blog and I haven't bothered to dress myself yet. It's been one of those long, slow mornings. But I do need to close off for today and get things done before it gets any later. Here, I've been getting up early every morning and I've, for the most part, just blown the time away. I need to get up, do my blog, and then read all my emails and the headlines for the day. Maybe, perish the thought, I need to set my alarm to go off earlier. Nah, 8:30's early enough. If I'd just get busy when I get up instead of sitting on the couch for an hour or so before doing anything. I've set my alarm every night this week but the Lord has awakened me about 15 minutes or so earlier than my alarm so I don't have that rude awakening when the bed shaker goes off. He's so good that way. I've been setting my alarm for 8:00 or 8:30 now for close to a month and I would say that the Lord wakes me up before it goes off at least 6 times a week and I am so grateful because I really don't like waking up to the shaker. It's just such a rude way to wake up. Anyway, I better get busy with things around the house. I still have to proofread and edit my blog so I need to stop writing here for today. Until tomorrow ... Oh, tomorrow's blog might be a little late as I have a haircut scheduled in the morning. I had thought about postponing it for a week but that would make it Thanksgiving Day and I'm afraid two weeks would be too long. My hair is so hard to work with. It's got to be the perfect length or it drives me absolutely crazy. Better to be a little too short than a little too long. Anyway ... until tomorrow ...