Your Next Coffee Break - A Dose of Encouragement

Easter time two years ago.


I had 3 large Galaxy bars of chocolate which were almost out of date and I didn't know what to do with them.

Gee what a problem!!


               Eat them of course.


                                 

 But not when we were trying to lose weight & cut down on cholesterol.

       

My friend had called round the day before.


                Maybe I should have given them to her?


                                But wasn't it bad for her health too?








Maybe I should have taken them to the kids in our small Sunday School Class?


But they had already got lots of Easter Eggs from everywhere they went and should they really be eating too much chocolate?


 I know they were too young to be disciplined enough not to tuck in quickly to any chocolate they get.












Is it a sin to throw out chocolate?



                                           I don't think so.


                                                             But did I have the willpower to do it?


                                                                                       Yes, they went into the bin!


















My will power is not always this good with chocolate, is yours?



There are lots of other things in our lives that we really need to throw out but ??????????


There are things that clutter our homes.

Then there are also things that clutter our minds.

These can be very difficult to get rid of.


But as a Child of God we are not alone and when we take the first steps to decluttering our minds so that they are freer to concentrate on

the Bible Study we have been planning to start into for months,

                or the one we have started and not continued with

                                or the extra time we had planned to take to pray;



God will be ready to meet with us.

God will be ready to meet with us

Yes it is us that have the cluttered minds and are not ready.

But

My will power is not always this good, is yours?



So let me offer a little suggestion to help us get started and throw out some of this clutter from our minds.

Instead of grabbing a novel, or an ipad or even your phone when you are having your mug of coffee or tea in the middle of the morning or afternoon,

why not

Make your next coffee break time for you & God

No Time For Study! - A Dose of Encouragement

I know that I am easily distracted.

Especially when I am trying to organise my Study which can get into such a mess very quickly and easily.

But also when I'm reading or trying to study something or preparing a talk for the kids at church.

You see I can see something that I have for a kids craft and then it reminds me of something else I saw on Pinterest and that means

• I just have to go look for that pin again 
• and then I will just have a look to see if there are any other nice ideas on Pinterest 
• and then I will just check my emails when I'm on the laptop 
• and then a quick look into Facebook working on something for the kids in church
• and then my messages 

and then the time has flown and there is

And by STUDY I mean the verb not the room in my house that is always a mess.


Now all of this really spoke to me about this other type of

STUDY

I can sit down when I know I have a decent amount of time and do a Bible Study and I know that lots of you can too.
But frankly this is not every day.


I can in fact sit down when I don't have a lot of time and read a few verses each day and I know you can too.
But I was also very conscious of the fact that I was always lifting my ipad and checking emails or facebook in the morning before I was picking up my Bible to read those few verses or to sit and study for a while.

Yes I could have been lifting the iPad to read my Bible App first thing but I wasn't.

You see I was too easily distracted by those "dings" and little notifications that keep popping up to draw me back into the virtual world.

So last Thursday 30th October I felt challenged 

to determine that I should make a change in my habits 

- because Yes it was a habit I had sunk into.

I was coming to the end of a month and the end of a blogging challenge so why not go straight into another personal challenge and make a new habit of reading

at least one verse from the bible 

before I do any lifting of the iPad for anything else.

Hence of course I needed to tell Fred about this because I need to have to be accountable to someone but then he is travelling a lot these days so I decided to take it to my friends on facebook as well.


On Friday 31st October I posted this so I would now be accountable to them as well.

And that is how I got myself started.

Each day since then I have got my bible and I'm reading through Proverbs 31 before I lift the iPad.
Sometimes one verse sometimes two verses and making a brief comment my Bible Reading Journal.

Then later when I eventually go to the computer I post the verse(s) and my notes on Facebook.

On the first day I even made a graphic of the first two verses (just because I like playing with graphics).

So I have now today reached verses 8 & 9 which is the end of the first section of Proverbs 31 and tomorrow I start unto the Virtuous Wife section.

I really do hope that by the end of the 30 days it will have become a habit and one that I will not find easy to break.

Why don't you think about this.

Are your Bible reading habits good?

You don't have to wait to start something like this at the beginning of a month - you could start today!

What chapter or Book of the Bible would you start this with?



Just remember

before you get drawn into all the other things in our 21st Century life.

The Third Coffee Mug - A Dose of Encouragement

I love to read little phrases that may be clever or humorous 

and I love going round craft shops or gift shops.  

        One day in Cookstown many years ago, I found a nice shop and spent an enjoyable time wandering round picking out some very early Christmas presents. 

          
        
The shop had a great display of mugs and of course I found one which I couldn’t resist.  

Firstly its design was in blue (which is by far my favourite colour I even wrote a post on it "I Love The Colour Blue" and I would probably have everything in my house blue if Fred would let me) and secondly the words on it amused me.  
        
         It read  

                      “I would get organised except it would only confuse everyone”. 

I bought it for my husband Fred because he told me that his desk at work was always a mess and I thought he could use the mug at work.  However the nice blue design was rather a floral design and I felt that Fred might not appreciate it, so I kept it for myself.  

          Anyway, I was always trying to get organised, I had a small two drawer filing cabinet in the kitchen, two drawers of my roll-top desk were filing drawers and the large drawer at the bottom of the computer armoire was also a filing drawer.  With all of these you would think that all our papers etc. would be organised and nothing misplaced or forgotten about; but no! 

                     
Even though 

                                                   

 I rarely end up completely organised.

In fact I'm pretty good at starting and not finishing things.  I'm good at getting everything out to rearrange cupboards etc. and taking ages to get it all back in again.

Fred often asks me why it is that every time I say I am sorting out something, he finds me in the middle of a mess.  

            
 My answer is 

 "you can’t tidy up properly without making a mess".  

I know that sounds stupid but it makes sense to me. 

When you are organising things you need to have piles or boxes for 

• Things you will throw out
• Things you will donate or give away
• Things to keep
• Things you like and know you don't really need but you don't want to part with.

Some day I will have a 

                                                                            

 but not just now.  

The only problem is that this can often affect my spiritual life too. 

• When to read the Bible?
• Where to read the Bible?
• What to read in the Bible?
• When to pray?
• Where to pray?
• What to pray about?
• When to study?
• How to study?

I kept thinking I must organise how I read, pray and study the bible; so then I would want to try to plan it all out in advance and decide when the best time was and method was but then I would get started and change my mind.


Let’s face it if I tried to wait until I got all that organized perfectly,

then I’d never be found in a quiet place with God.

So I knew I could not have it just perfectly organised and instead 

I just had to do it.

because otherwise I would never learn from the promises, love, mercy, grace, compassion of Jesus and the instructions God has given us.

Of course that was all years ago when I had the kids at home, I was working and Fred travelled a lot with work so perhaps the reason for not being properly organised was due to all of that.  

So now then when the kids are grown and away from home and  I am not working things can be organised perfectly can't they?

   No, not at all, it is just the same now as then.

(except I don't have that coffee mug now because it got broken some years ago)  

and I know


I just have to do it.

So I'm thankful God doesn't wants us to do it absolutely perfectly

 but just wants us to do it to the best of our ability and His Holy Spirit

 will help us with the rest.

Are you like me?
Or perhaps you have no problems at all with organising your quiet times with God.

The Devil and Our Minds - A Dose of Encouragement

There is a passage in the Bible about someone very strange.

Someone whose mind the Devil had invaded

Let's Look at Mark ch 5 v 1-17

This passage tells us about the encounter the man called legion had with Jesus.

1 Then they came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gadarenes. 2 And when He had come out of the boat, immediately there met Him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, 3 who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no one could bind him, not even with chains, 4 because he had often been bound with shackles and chains. And the chains had been pulled apart by him, and the shackles broken in pieces; neither could anyone tame him. 5 And always, night and day, he was in the mountains and in the tombs, crying out and cutting himself with stones.6 When he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and worshipped Him. 7 And he cried out with a loud voice and said, “What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore You by God that You do not torment me.”8 For He said to him, “Come out of the man, unclean spirit!” 9 Then He asked him, “What is your name?”And he answered, saying, “My name is Legion; for we are many.” 10 Also he begged Him earnestly that He would not send them out of the country.11 Now a large herd of swine was feeding there near the mountains. 12 So all the demons begged Him, saying, “Send us to the swine, that we may enter them.” 13 And at once Jesus gave them permission. Then the unclean spirits went out and entered the swine (there were about two thousand); and the herd ran violently down the steep place into the sea, and drowned in the sea.14 So those who fed the swine fled, and they told it in the city and in the country. And they went out to see what it was that had happened. 15 Then they came to Jesus, and saw the one who had been demon-possessed and had the legion, sitting and clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. 16 And those who saw it told them how it happened to him who had been demon-possessed, and about the swine. 17 Then they began to plead with Him to depart from their region.

Below are some questions I asked the kids in our church one Sunday morning.

I'd like to ask you the same questions:

• What was his name?
• Where did he live?
• What did he do?
• Who loved him?
• Who didn't love him?

When we think on these questions we get a picture of the circumstances of this man's life. Not a life we would like to have.  

He was tormented within and many people today are also tormented within, not perhaps in the same way as this man but still tormented within feeling unloved, lonely, no self-worth.

The answer to the last question is very important.

Satan doesn't love any of us. 


Satan wants us to

• Feel unloved
• Be lonely
• Hurt others
• Hurt ourselves
• Hate God
• Blame God for everything that happens
• Or at the very least just not think about God

Satan DIDN'T solve any of Legion's problems because 

he DIDN'T care about Legion.

Jesus DID care about Legion and deliberately went to help him.

It is the Lord who is in control over all and only His titles matter.

Above we can see just a few of the titles or names that the Lord Jesus has.  

In this passage of Scripture we are not told the names of the many demons that were trying to kill this man because their names do not matter.

 It is the Lord who is in control over all and only His titles matter.

Satan wanted to destroy Legion's mind

And he wants to destroy our minds too.

Satan wants to destroy our minds.

Jesus loved Legion.

And He loves us too.

Legion became like a new person, a new creation, when he met Jesus, and so can we when we turn our backs on Satan and don't listen to him and instead turn to Jesus and let him be the Lord of our lives.



If you enjoyed reading this post you may enjoy some of my other 

Devotional or Bible Study Type Posts

or

Encouragement Posts

or 

read more from Mark ch 5

I'm thankful that Jesus loves me and is my Lord.


Do you know that Jesus loves you too?