Thursday, June 2, 2011

Quotations: when I say I am a Christian....

This came in an email today....

'A woman's heart should be so hidden in Christ  that a man should have to seek Him first to find her.'

When I say that 'I am a Christian', I am not shouting that 'I am clean living. I'm whispering 'I was lost, but now I'm found and forgiven.'

When I say 'I am a Christian' I don't speak of this with pride. I'm confessing that I stumble and need Christ to be my guide.

When I say 'I am a Christian' I'm not trying to be strong. I'm professing that I'm weak and need His strength to carry on.

When I say 'I am a Christian' I'm not bragging of success. I'm admitting I have failed and need God to clean my mess.

When I say 'I am a Christian' I'm not claiming to be perfect. My flaws are far too visible,

but God believes I am worth it.

When I say 'I am a Christian' I still feel the sting of pain. I have my share of heartaches,

so I call upon His name.

When I say 'I am a Christian' I'm not holier than thou, I'm just a simple sinner who received God's good grace!

Encouragement to a person struggling with ADD related issues and feelings of failure.


My dear Beloved Treasure, who struggles with ADD

God made you and chose you for His honour and glory, just the way you are. He thinks you are a wonderful creation, and loves you just the way you are. Imagine if we were all the same 'perfect' robot like people?


Always try your best, and don't give up before you have tried your best. If you still feel you have failed, remember... (1) it was never a waste of time to try- you learnt something from the experience. Even in 'failure' you can still honour God. (2) God has got something special for you to do, sometimes a change of direction is not a failure...it is going where God wants you to go. Wherever God chooses for you to be, He can be honoured and glorified!

Trials bring us closer to God, give us more compassion for others and help strengthen us and mature us.

Don't work for people, always do your best for God, if people don't like you...always remember how much God loves you!

Write things down. Don't try to do too much at once. Don't panic. Don't give up when you panic, just keep trying! Figure out a routine and stick to it, get someone to help you stick to it.

Remind people that you have a disability only if appropriate. Sometimes some people will never understand, don't waste your time. Sometimes people will just treat you as dumb; don't waste your time explaining. Sometimes it is better to keep a distance, retain some privacy...maybe for professional reasons or even personal reasons. Remember once you have told someone you can't take it back. For others it is good for them to know and be reminded - An invisible disability is sometimes harder than an obvious one as everyone forgets how hard it is for you....remember that sometimes 'they' need to realise that what they are asking you to do is like asking someone in a wheel chair to go up a flight of stairs!

But saying that, don't let that be an excuse for not doing your best. Or for gently apologising when you have done wrong. If you have people on your side, they are much more likely to be empathetic/ kind to you. It takes courage to be gentle when you do not have fairness and understanding. You don't ever have to allow people to be abusive towards you - if they are verbally bullying you, mocking you - walk away, ask others for help - it is not acceptable behaviour.

Making mistakes is not the end of the world; it is just part of growing in the Lord. We all make mistakes and try and learn from them.

God bless, with much love :-)


Sunday, May 29, 2011

Ephesians 4


On Friday night I went to bed grumpy to find a bookmark had fallen out onto my bed......you know the type, "what to do when you are sad, happy etc":..."silly thing," I thought irritably and then scanned down to the bottom one; "what to  do when you are resentful" Well that suits me, I thought, feeling unwilling to forgive, and then I glanced at the suggested verse - "Oh no a whole chapter, Ephesians 4." I had decided by Saturday morning that I needed to learn it and what better way than to do something creative with it? As sewing takes too long, I decided to paint it and even then I am lazy so I printed the word on a Lazar printer and used PVA glue, front and back to glue words on and protect them on the canvas/ The kids all had a chance to 'help' too. And we now have a new poster on our wall! After sharing this passage with a friend today she sent me the Voddie sermon, See below.....
I had to chuckle at the providence of God as it was my husband that I did not feel like forgiving on Friday night. So I could say by the grace of God, we are starting on the road of Ephesians 4 this week!























Autism??????

Is it? What is it? Why is it?

http://www.nids.net/?page_id=2

Disorder of the day, in marriage:

We hear so often these days about this disorder and that, but in a marriage the greatest problem of our day and age is a WORSHIP DISORDER ...listen to this sermon by Voddie Baucham. http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=5409160500

Scroll down to find more of his sermons. I like his one on the permanence of marriage too http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=11309913170

Forgiveness, a quotation by CS Lewis

 I got his from the desiring God blog this past week:










C.S. Lewis on the Problem of Forgiveness

 
OriginalC. S. Lewis writes about the problem of forgiveness:
. . . you must make every effort to kill every taste of resentment in your own heart—every wish to humiliate or hurt him or to pay him out. The difference between this situation and the one in such you are asking God’s forgiveness is this. In our own case we accept excuses too easily; in other people’s we do not accept them easily enough.
As regards my own sin it is a safe bet (though not a certainty) that the excuses are not really so good as I think; as regards other men’s sins against me it is a safe bet (though not a certainty) that the excuses are better than I think. One must therefore begin by attending to everything which may show that the other man was not so much to blame as we thought.
But even if he is absolutely fully to blame we still have to forgive him; and even if ninety-nine percent of his apparent guilt can be explained away by really good excuses, the problem of forgiveness begins with the one percent guilt which is left over. To excuse what can really produce good excuses is not Christian character; it is only fairness. To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.
This is hard. It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single great injury. But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life—to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son—how can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night ‘forgive our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.’ We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it is to refuse God’s mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exceptions and God means what He says.
C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (New York: Harper Collins, 2001; Originally published 1949), 181-183 (paragraphing mine).