To Bring Him Joy

  This blog post is in response to both a blog and a sermon. Recently, Trent Hunter wrote and shared a blog about listening to a sermon. You can find it here http://www.desertspringschurch.org/blog/?p=3220 . It resonated with me, as years ago my pastor at the time, Ronnie Rogers made a comment from the pulpit about our worship on a Sunday not just happening during the music part of the service. In our listening to the sermon we should continue to interact with God. It has changed my worship on any given Sunday, how I sing, how I listen, how I participate in the service. I think that we feel that when we are singing we are worshipping or that we can worship when we pray if we are giving praise or thanks but that we don't feel like we are worshipping when we are listening to a sermon. It is though we have to talk to be worshipping. It is rather arrogant of us, really. Actually, we ought to be listening through out the service, through out the week, daily, moment by moment ...

Elmer Fudd has been a part of our family life for quite a while now. I don't really remember how long. I don't even remember for sure how we came to have him, I think possibly a kid's meal toy from somewhere. He actually wasn't even the original figure. I'm not sure who originally started the game. We've had a couple of the vultures that didn't know what to do but were part of a great barbershop  quartet. Also I believe we had a King Kong figurine at one time. But "The Fudd" as we lovingly call him, made the trip 4 years ago from Oklahoma to the Land of Enchantment. He rode in the housing of the speedometer of our black suburban, known as the Subbubble, but mostly just as the sub. He has been kept around because of a game that my husband started with the family so many years ago, when the KRHs were children.  We now would call it Find the Fudd. Anyway, Cary, started hiding these kid's meal figurines around the house, sometimes in such obvi...

“ James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” James 1:1a HCSB I 've been reading the book of James in the Bible almost daily for several days now. It is so cool to take a book of the Bible and do this. It helps you to see so many things that you probably didn't notice before. I try to read the whole book at one sitting, after all, it was written like a letter. I know that we don't write or receive letters much any more, especially not long ones but I think if you were to receive one you would sit down and read the whole thing. I have done this with some other books of the Bible as our teaching pastor suggested it last year ; plus , some reading plans that I had seen also suggested it. Anyway, this year as those posts about reading the Bible through came up, I thought I needed to pick this up again and felt led to James. I was about to do this one day when God stopped me very short on this first half of the first verse. I was quite surprised beca...

  “ But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.” (Matthew 1:20-21, 24-25 ESV) So the other morning when I was reading the story of the birth of Jesus, aka the Christmas story, and the warning in the dream to the wise men stood out to me, I decided I would go back and see just how many times this happened in this story. It happened quite often to Joseph. This passage caught my attention and caused me to not only thank God for Joseph but for my husband, who is much like Joseph. Maybe you have a Joseph that you need to give much ...

  "And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way." Matthew 2:12 ESV As I told you in my previous post, I've been trying to read the story of the birth of Jesus around Christmas time for over thirty years now, asking God to show me something new.  I'm hoping to share some of those things with you over the next few weeks.  I'm so excited as I have been reading and remembering different things that the Holy Spirit has spoken to me about through His word and this particular story over the years.  I want to say that just because I call it a story does not mean that it didn't happen. It is not a fairy tale. It is a biography, the story of the living God that He has chosen to reveal to us in written form. Wow, what a blessing that He would want to share His story with us and even more that He would want to share Himself with us. Of course, this is why He wrote this history. The whole Bible has been written...

“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. ” Philippians 2:5-8 ESV   Every year I struggle with just exactly how to celebrate Christmas. In fact, I probably struggle with how to celebrate every holiday, even birthdays! My husband says that holidays will never be the way that I want them until I'm in heaven! I so badly want them all to be about Jesus and I struggle with how to create that atmosphere for each member of my family. I remember when I was a freshman in college deciding that I kind of hated Christmas and holidays because I had the misconception that they were supposed to be about family and my family was broken with no hope of being whole. D...

     " Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving."   Colossians 2:6-7 ESV How often do we "abound in thanksgiving"?  It actually means: to overflow, to excel still more, to increase in excellence. I don't think that I can claim to excel in thanksgiving much less excel still more or increase in excellence. I am way behind when it comes to thanksgiving. It should be my daily attitude and practice but to often it is not. This is telling of a couple of major things: that I don't really know God, who He is and what He has done and I don't know myself, how sinful I am and what great need I have. Or I have lost focus, forgotten these most important things, it is the Gospel, after all. Throughout the Old Testament this phrase is repeated in some form over and over again: “Oh give thanks to the LORD for He is good, H...