Week 5 - "In My Thought"

I'll be honest, this is a hard one for me.  Maybe it's because here it is Monday night and I just finished up days 5 and 6 from last week.  I feel somewhat disconnected. 

As I was sitting in my rose garden around 7:00 tonight reading chapter 15 I was reminded of how God shows Himself to me in such small ways.  In this chapter Lysa talks about God showing Himself to us throughout our day and how, if we could just see this, it would radically change the way we think, the way we process life, and the degree to which we trust God.  It would make us more than good Bible study girls!  It is possible to see God every single day.  In August of 2005 Michael and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary by taking a trip to Key West!  It was great.  While we were there we passed a church with this on its sign:  "People see God every day, they just don't recognize Him."  I took a picture of that sign and have it posted next to my computer in my home office.  How true this statement is, but it doesn't have to be!  We CAN recognize Him if we just seek Him, search Him out, activate our thoughts about Him moving beyond wishful thinking for a deeper walk with God.  Matthew 5:8 tells us that we do not have to be perfect or perfectly ready in order to see God.  We just have to get to a place where our hearts purely desire to see Him, and then we will.  Lysa goes on to say that seeing God is not for us to be "wowed" but to change and grow us, and to strengthen and remind us of His love for us.  So the next time you walk out your door and before you get in your car, look around for God, He's looking around for you!

Believing God ~ Melinda

Week 4 In My Struggles - Praise The Lord

Well, there are only 2 more weeks left in the Bible study.  It sure seems to be going fast. 

This week?  Praise and thanksgiving.....praise and thanksgiving.....praise and thanksgiving!!!!  That about sums it up for me.  I learned that we are not to praise our circumstances or the situations we are in but we are to praise GOD despite our circumstances.  When we take our focus off our circumstances and put it on praising and thanking God then our attitude changes.  I love the way Lysa puts it:

"Thankfulness breeds thankfulness.  The more we practice it, the more we'll live thanksgiving out loud.  And the more we live it out loud, the more thanksgiving will become the natural groove of our heart."  Living thanksgiving OUT LOUD.  I had never thought about it that way. 

So, the next time my "uglies" come out, I'm going to practice praise and thanksgiving!  Where there is praise God's presence can be felt, and we know what His presence brings with it:  Galatians 5:22-23, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Let's practice God's presence this week like never before....praise and thanksgiving.....praise and thanksgiving....praise and thanksgiving!

Believing God ~ Melinda