Bah humbug

Well I've managed to get sick just in time for the start of the busy season. Yup. I have great timing. Haha
Tonight is my work Christmas banquet. Tuesday night is another work party in the city. Next weekend I write my exams.
I managed to get a bunch of studying done today. It looks like I should manage to pass. :) I'm really glad my work banquet is in my town this year. I can go straight home and sleep after. Definitely a bonus. Ok. Time to get moving. I hate being sick! Achy, cold, tired, sneezy..ick.

Change..is good? right??

Goals are planned changes in life. Life has definitely been changing for me in the last year. I moved to my little town a year ago. I decided to work only part time at the Credit Union in April. Now for the big changes..I handed in my notice at work and will no longer be an employee at the Credit Union after December 31st. I have decided to finally pursue something that interests me. I am working towards becoming a certified personal trainer. Of course, since I was homeschooled, there was some housekeeping items I had to take care of in the way of a graduation certificate..I don't have a diploma. So..I have been studying like mad to prepare to write my GED exams. I will be writing my exams next week. Yikes! Scary stuff..haha. Next plan of action is to find a couple low key part time jobs in the area to make ends meet while I study. So..onward and upward into a new career focus. It would be so easy to stay in the safety of my current career. I know I'm good at my job, I am comfortable there and I have a work family, but it's now or never so here I go!
Well, those are the changes that are foremost in my mind at the moment. I'll try to share more later.

Great Expectations?

Sometimes expectations drag you down. I've been discovering that more and more! Expectations of myself, expectations of my friends, family, coworkers, God, the server at the restaurant..and the list goes on..
Ok, so I'm not saying that it's wrong to have expectations or standards, but sometimes I tend to go a little overboard. I have always been a competitive person and so I have high expectations of myself to perform well in whatever I'm competing in. Problem is, sometimes I make life a competition. haha
I seem to spread myself a little thin and the biggest problem is that I'm still not happy with the results! I'm not happy about how I prioritize and what takes precedence. So I've been thinking a bit about simplifying. Why do I make life so complicated? So I started thinking about what God's expectations of me are.
First and foremost, he expects me to love Him and love people. Simple right? Ok so that rearranges some of my priorities. In order to love God, I need to spend time with Him and nurture my relationship with Him. Read His word, praise Him and thank Him and involve Him in my life. Even if He knows what's going on, He still wants me to communicate with Him.
In order to love people, I need to have the perspective of God. All the more reason to spend time with God. I can't know God's perspective and how he wants me to view people, unless I actually know Him intimately! I know that God's love for people is unconditional. God expects me to love people as He does..that means unconditionally! Ok, now things might seem a bit harder. The problem is that most of the time when we love people, they love us back. :) We like to be selfish in love. We want to get something out of our love of others. We want to feel good!
Loving people is not as easy as loving God. God is perfect, people are not. People disappoint us..uh oh. There go the expectations again! Expectations are pretty much impossible to get rid of. They seem to be ingrained in us. Human rights, fairness and everything else that gets hammered into us from a young age. I'm not saying that all expectations are bad, but that we have to Expect to be disappointed as well. People are not perfect. People are all different and have different standards (not necessarily wrong, but different).
I guess I've come to the conclusion that I need to weigh my expectations. I need to gauge how appropriate they are in relation to myself and other people. I also need to expect to be disappointed and even hurt. Making oneself vulnerable to pain is completely against human nature..yet another reason to be in communion with God. He is completely set apart from human nature. How much pain is he vulnerable to each and every day? He has expectations that we disappoint, but yet he loves unconditionally and maintains a faithful relationship with us from his side.
I guess my challenge now is to allow myself to be vulnerable to hurt and disappointment, because loving God and people is how I need to live.

Just some food for thought. :)

Resolutely

Hey everyone. It's been a long time..again. I'm not going to even try to tell you about everything that has been going on in my life. :) The main things are I have moved to Morris and I am now working part-time. I would really love to get back into writing! I was doing my daily bible reading this morning and I am currently in the book of Luke. I read Luke 9 and a verse stuck out while I was reading, that I have never noticed before and a few things clicked together in my head about the life of Jesus.

I apologize in advance if my thought processes are slightly disconnected. Like I said, it's been awhile. :)

Luke 9:51 is the verse that caught my eye this morning. It says: As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.

So, what about this verse struck me as special? The fact that Jesus had to have resolve to set out for Jerusalem.

I teach a Sunday School class for grade 2 and 3 and over the easter season (Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday) we did a quick timeline review of Jesus' life. I got the kids to tell me all about Jesus starting with his birth and as much as they could remember until he died and rose again. During the discussions I did my best to explain that Jesus came to earth as a man and that he was both fully God and fully man. I wanted the kids to understand that he experienced life just like we do. He was born, he grew up, he faced fears, he made friends, he was tempted, he had friends betray him. On top of all that he was also God, he was perfect, he was obedient, he could perform miracles, he raised the dead, he healed people, he calmed the storm, he walked on water.

So in explaining this to the kids I was trying to help them understand that it wasn't easy for Jesus to die. He didn't want to die. He didn't want to experience pain and death! He struggled with it! So this verse caught my eye because it shows another example of Him not eager for suffering. He didn't want to go to Jerusalem, but he had resolved to go. He had firmly decided to go. Why? He loved each person (past, present, and future) so much that he knew he had to go through with the plan, to be able to offer a way of Salvation to all who believed in Him as Saviour.

I think that sometimes we can skim over just how difficult it was for Jesus to go through with his decision. He prayed that the cup be taken from him in the garden, but he was obedient to God's will. He was obedient to the decision that he had made at the beginning of time!

You can imagine the interesting conversations that arose in my Sunday School class. It is impossible for our human minds to fully grasp the amazing truth of God as man in the form of Jesus. Children will come up with very creative thoughts in an effort to understand something. One thing one of the kids said was "I want to see Him!" I agree with that. I want to see Him too! I want to see this God/Man who decided to give up himself so that he can be with me in eternity!

So that was my thought for you. Here's a challenge for me and for you. If Jesus decided to die for me, doesn't it make sense for us to decide to live for Him?