Sunday

Started off the morning in the Word, praying for our service at The Vine and praying for my pastor friends and their service this today. Pastor David preached a good word at the Vine today. I took a FULL page of notes, but the take-away quote I got from today's message, Shaping Things To Come: Make Your Future What It Can Be, was this, "Not everything that happens is God's will, but nothing that happens is out of God's control". Pastor was preaching from Jeremiah 18:

This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” 3 So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. 4 But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.

In this point, Pastor was referencing verse 4 where the clay was marred, but the potter was able to start over and still create a masterpiece. Even when we mess up in life, if we will remain as clay in God' hand, God can take our mistakes, remold us and still create a masterpiece from our lives. The main point of the message was a challenge to stay FOCUSED on the Lord amid all the distraction and to stay soft clay in God's hand and not be a hardened rock. It was a good message and a good challenge.

When we came home from church today, this is what we smelled. There is NOTHING like coming home from church, coming in the back door and smelling a roast cooking in the Crock Pot. We had some GOOD eatin' for lunch today.

The roast was not quite ready when we got home, so Amanda and I played a little Carom to pass the time. I am sad to report that Amanda did win a few games this afternoon.

After lunch, I tried to catch a 30 minute nap, but it eluded me. Fortunately, I was able to catch it's 2 hour cousin!

Spent the afternoon sitting in the living with Brooke watching football and working on the church email announcements. This evening, had dinner while watching America's Funniest Videos, then watched a movie with Brooke, blogged and now I need to get to bed. It is going to be a full week this week. We have staff retreat Tuesday and Wednesday. Always fun hanging out with the people I have the pleasure of working with, and I'm praying we are going to come away with a clear vision of what God has for Vine Fellowship in 2013.

Lastly, when I started blogging again, I decided I would not blog political stuff. I wanted to stay true to the name and purpose of this blog...a bit about me, my family and the things I think about. In light of Pastor's message this morning and his challenge to stay focused on the Lord and His plans, I am going to try and stay away from political issues (no matter how strong my feelings) on my Facebook page as well. Since the November elections, I have been VERY pessimistic about this year and the future of our country. I will leave it at that, but I have noticed my pessimism (fueled further by recent political events) has affected me deeply...so much so that my family has asked me why I have not been happy. I do not want to bury my head in the sand, but I know this is not how the Lord wants me to be and I know I cannot focus on His plan for me if I am so focused on these matters. God wants us to be wise and discern the times. In the midst of troubling times, Christ's church needs to have answers for a troubled world (for those who are still asking). My focus must be on how God wants to use me in this, and so, I am going to try and focus more on what God wants me to do in this culture not just on the moral decay of our culture. I hope this will be reflected in what I post (and don't post) on my Facebook page.