Obedience

Hello everyone....thank you for patiently waiting for me to blog again. I recently had a friend e-mail me and ask if I was ever going to blog again. "Yes," I said, "I want to blog, I desire to blog, I just lack the time." In part that was true. With our little school at home starting again, keeping up with the house and various church commitments I have been hard pressed to find time to write a grocery list much less a blog. But the other part is this....

I have recently gone through a trial for which the Lord, in His graciousness, forwarned me was coming. In my May 12th devotional the Lord gave me this scripture, Do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you. - I Peter 4:12. I'm not going to get into all the details of what happened or why but I am going to tell you what I learned.

1 - Obey the Lord and do it promptly. The Lord gave me clear direction on what I needed to do. However, it was a hard thing to do and I dragged my feet on it causing much more grief than was necessary.

2 - Our calling is not always easy and not always acceptable to all around us. I am by nature a person who wants to make everyone happy. However, the Lord hasn't called me to make everyone happy. He called me to be a wife, a mother and a teacher to my own children. Earlier in the Spring God emphasized to me the passage in Titus 2:3-5, ...the older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things - that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed. I am glad that I am taking that passage seriously and I know that in time it will produce fruit.

3 - ...to obey is better than sacrifice (I Samuel 15:22). In our culture today we sometimes honor and revere those who sacrifice everything for their "passion". My question is what are you sacrificing? Is your "passion" really that important? Also is your "passion" what God has called you to right now, at this season in your life? God did not call me at this time to sacrifice my family, He called me to be obedient to Him and listen to the admonishment for young women given in Titus.

So, you are asking, what does all this have to do with blogging? Well, just this...I'm a finicky writer. When I'm going through something hard I don't like to write it down. And when I'm going through something hard, frankly, it's all I can think about. Hence that makes it hard to write. (It's probably a good thing I don't write for a living.)

The good thing is that there is now some space between the trial and the present time. I've had some time to reflect and put things into perspective. Now it's time to get down to the business of living out the calling the Lord has given me.