Kisses from Katie

       I was reading the Forward by Beth Clark in the book Kisses from Katie and the beginning couple paragraphs really stood out to me.

       People who really want to make a difference in the world usually do it, in one way or another. And I've noticed something about people who make a difference in the world: They hold the unshakable conviction that individuals are extremely important, that every life matters. They get excited over one smile. They are willing to feed one stomach, educate one mind, and treat one wound. They aren't determined to revolutionize the world all at once; they're satisfied with small changes. Over time, though, the small changes add up. Sometimes they even transform cities and nations, and yes, the world.
     People who want to make a difference get frustrated along the way. But if they have a particularly stressful day, they don't quite. They keep going. Given their accomplishments, most of them are shockingly normal and the way they spend each day can be quite mundane. They don't teach grand lessons that can bring incremental improvement to one man or woman, boy or girl. They don't do anything to call attention to themselves, they simply pay attention to the everyday needs of others, even if it's only one person. They bring change in ways these world-changers are wired, they wouldn't think of living their lives any other way.

~Daughter of the Light

Tithe

     2 Corinthians 9:6-8; Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. 7 Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.

     I like that he says not under compulsion. When I would bring my tithe to church, I would give a quarter to each of my friends so they could get that great feeling of sticking it in the offering plate. I don't remember it ever being under compulsion because I remember being so happy to make my friends happy like that. If I had been forced to do it, I would have grown up wanting to be rebellious and never put anything in the offering.

     The funny thing is that now I don't like people seeing me put money in the offering. I sneak it in the bags in between services or I give it to my parents to put it in themselves. Funny how that all worked out, but I do love the idea of giving a little bit of money for a good cause when no one knows that I did anything. Something about that secretiveness makes be happy.

~Daughter of the Light

The Holy Spirit

     Matthew 10:8; Freely you have received; freely give.

     Matthew 10:19-20; But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, 20 for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.

     I love how Jesus says, when they arrest you. He is telling his disciples that they will endure difficulties. He is not sneaking it into his discussion, but he tells them straight out. He also comforts them and say not to worry, because in their time of need, the Holy Spirit will be with them.

~Daughter of the Light

Matthew 7:7-12

     I felt like these couple scriptures summed up everything we are suppose to do. It's all in one little bunch. Matthew was really good at doing that.

Matthew 7:7-12; “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

9 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! 12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

~Daughter of the Light

Psalm 31:10-15

10 My life is consumed by anguish
and my years by groaning;

my strength fails because of my affliction,

    and my bones grow weak.

11 Because of all my enemies,

    I am the utter contempt of my neighbors

and an object of dread to my closest friends—

    those who see me on the street flee from me.

12 I am forgotten as though I were dead;

    I have become like broken pottery.

13 For I hear many whispering,

    “Terror on every side!”

They conspire against me

    and plot to take my life.

14 But I trust in you, Lord;
I say, "You are my God."

15 My times are in your hands;

    deliver me from the hands of my enemies,

    from those who pursue me.

     I love how in this - and in fact all  through the Psalms - David cries out to the Lord and tell Him his problem, but then says, 'I trust in you Lord.' He speaks in hope, in wisdom, and in faith.

~Daughter of the Light

Matthew 6:25-34

     “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life[a]?

    28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Honor your father and mother

     Matthew 19:19; 'Honor your father and mother,' and 'love your neighbor as yourself.' 
     Just like I tried every week to practice doing one of the fruits of the spirit, I am going to challenge myself again and feel free to join in the challenge.
    This week I am just going to focus specifically on honoring my mother and father because recently I have been being very disrespectful to my mom particularly. My dad and I get along pretty well normally. The issue with my mom and I is: When we argue, I am normally right, but I'm a brat about it. So naturally, she doesn't want to admit that I'm right because I'm demanding that my idea is right and hers is wrong. I am a very black and white person, which is not necessarily a good thing. In my mind, everything is so obvious. This is obviously right and that is obviously wrong, so I have the tendency to get frustrated when other people don't agree with me. For some reason though, I don't argue as much with anyone else. It is just my mom.
     So, this week I am going to make an extra large effort to be kind and loving to my mom and honor her above me.

~Daughter of the Light

Jonathan Loved David as Himself

      1 Samuel 18:1-3; After David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself.2 From that day Saul kept David with him and did not let him return home to his family. 3 And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself.  I find it interesting that Jonathan loves David 'as himself'. There seem to be the majority of two kinds of people. Those who love only themselves and those who don't love themselves. Some are greedy and the others and not content or have been bullied so much that they begin to hate themselves.

     I'm certainly not saying that everyone falls into one of those two categories. I don't really think I go into either of those, but I don't think I could say that the people I love most in life I love as myself.

     I reason why it is so good to love yourself is because God made you, just like he made everyone else in the world. Yet everyone is special. We should love ourselves because God loves us, and we should love others because God loves them.
     1 Corinthians 3:16-17;  Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.

~Daughter of the Light

Totally

     This is not a very spiritual post, I just had to share something that made me laugh as I was reading my Bible today. 1 Samuel 15:15; Saul answered, “The soldiers brought them from the Amalekites; they spared the best of the sheep and cattle to sacrifice to the Lord your God, but we totally destroyed the rest.”   'But we totally destroyed the rest.' He sounds like a cocky high school boy. Of course at this point Saul was not humble at all, but it still made me laugh. I could totally picture him saying that. Moments like these when I am reminded that the Bible is about real people that actually lived are nice.

~Daughter of the Light

 

Boasting in Our Weakness

     2 Corinthians 12:9-10; But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.  

     When my mom was in Beauty Collage, she had some people in the salon that would tease her and mock her for being a Christian. Only one of them would do it to her face, but still, many others would be in the back of the room and say nasty things about how she needed to just go to bed with a guy already and have some fun instead of being a little Christian girl. One girl (I'll just call her Sally because I don't actually remember her name.) would come up to her and tease her. "Oh, you just need to get laid." She'd say, and my mom would tease her back. "Oh, you just need to get saved." Soon Sally actually started to like my mom and so she felt it was only right of her to tell my mom about all the nasty things the other people were saying about my mom. She was sure my mom would be in tears and really hurt, but instead, my mom said, "Praise the Lord!" Sally was confused and so my mom explained. "Isn't it a great thing when the only thing people can tease you for is that you love God? It's true. I do love God and I'm not going to sleep around, so all that they are saying is true. Why should I be offended?" Sally admitted she had never looked at it that way, and she began to really admire my mom. 

    Just like Paul was saying, my mom praised God when people were making fun of her and through that, Sally could see that my mom was special and she really did believe in God and maybe that meant that there was a God after all.  I hope that some time in my life I will get the chance to boast in my weakness so that Christ can be seen.

~Daughter of the Light

Our Provider

     Even when the people of Israel disobeyed God, God still provided for them. It is a good thing I am not God because by now I would be so fed up with those people constantly turning away from me after all I had done for them, but no. God still provided for them. Samuel tried to tell the people that they were wrong to ask for a king because God was there king, but the people would not listen to him. 1 Samuel 12:12-13; But when you saw that Nahash king of the Ammonites was moving against you, you said to me, ‘No, we want a king to rule over us’—even though the Lord your God was your king.13 Now here is the king you have chosen, the one you asked for; see, the Lord has set a king over you.  The Lord put the Holy Spirit inside of Paul so that he would rule wisely -at least as long as the Holy Spirit was in him. Our God is a great, big God. He is always with us and looking out for us even when we don't deserve it. What's not to be thankful for?

~Daughter of the Light

Humble Hannah

    So I have been reading in 1 Samuel. Hannah was a very humble woman who prayed to God for a child. She promised God that if he gave her a child she would give the child back to serve him, and she did. Samuel grew up in the temple and God would speak to him. Israel benefited greatly because of Samuel. In fact, there was one time (I read this today in 1 Samuel 7) when the Philistines were coming against the Israelites, and if Samuel had not made a sacrifice to God and pleaded with God to be with the Israelites, those Israelites would have died. I say this all  because I was really thinking this morning about Hannah, Samuel's birth-mother. She was humble and asked God for a child. If she had not been humble, Samuel never would have been born. Because she was humble before God, Israel was saved.
     That is difficult for me to understand because I always feel like I have to do something physical and huge that I can see affects everyone else for the better before I actually think I have done anything worth doing. But no, God asks us to do small things. The small things make a big difference. Hannah asked for a child. She wanted a child so badly, but what did she do? She promised that she would give the child back to God. She did too. She kept her promise.
     I know that when I was little I would ask God for something and then be like, "If you grant me this one request, I'll never ask for anything else ever again." That didn't really work, but here Hannah made a wise promise and kept it. She gave her child to God because she was so thankful that he had heard her prayer.
      I admire that. When she did that, I'm pretty sure that she was not thinking her son would make a big difference in the world; so much so that thousands of years later, people still read about him.

~Daughter of the Light