Setting Goals for 2010

Wilt thou be made whole? (John 5:6)

Don't forget yourself...Often we as Christian women get so involved in meeting the needs of others that we forget to take time to refresh ourselves.

If you have flown on a commercial airliner lately, you will recognize the speech the flight attendants recite just before taking off. It goes something like this, "In the event of a loss of cabin pressure, an oxygen mask will automatically be lowered. If you are sitting beside a child, first secure your own mask before applying the child's.
Why do they advise you to do that? They realize that unless you as the adult are getting the oxygen you need, you will be of no help to the child, and you will both perish.

Jesus, filled with absolute love and compassion, went to the mountain to spend time with His Father in prayer, to renew His weary body and soul. When the crowd pressed in on Him, He suggested to the disciples that they all get away from the crowd and go to the mountains alone.

Are you getting enough "oxygen" in your life to be of maximum benefit to those around you? It is not a selfish thing to set goals allowing you to "refill your cup."

Just as an empty teakettle will crack or melt as the heat under it is turned up, so you also will break as the heat of life is turned on "high" when your "cup" ~ your emotional and spiritual life is dry.

So, take time for you throughout the year, get the oxygen you need so you can help others.

Have A Vision

Where there is no vision, the people perish; but he that keeps the law, happy is he. (Proverbs 29:18)

There is something about hesitation and reconsiderations that is curiously fatal to successful achievement. Good fortune is in going on ~ not in going back. The parable of Lot's wife (Genesis 19:26), who turned into a pillar of salt because she looked back, is by no means inapplicable to the life today. Let no one who the vision has shone look backward instead of forward, and he become paralyzed and immovable. He is impeded by the shallows and the miseries. He has withdrawn himself from all the heavenly forces that lead him on. This fidelity to the vision is the vital motor. It gives that exhilaration of energy which makes possible the impossible.

Each recurring New Year is an open door. However arbitrary are the divisions of time, there is inspiration and exaltation in standing on the threshold of an untried year, with it's fresh pages awaiting record. It is, again, the era of possibilities. The imaginative faculty of the soul must, indeed, be "fed with objects immense and eternal." Life stretches before one in its diviner unity ~ even in the wholeness of the life that is and that which is to come.

There is no one set of motives and purposes to be applied to this life, and another set to that which awaits us. This is the spiritual world, here and now. It is well to drop the old that one may seize the new.

What vision do you have for your, your family, your business, your life this 2010?

Spur Each Other On

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. (Hebrews 10:24)

The word spur conjures a vision and brings the old west to mind of cattle drives and cowboys, of other times long left behind.

When used as "on the spur of the moment" it could even become an element of time or perhaps, a short section of rails that run off, away from the main line.

However, to do God's work, silver spurs we need not wear. Share the "Good News" with others as you travel about here and there.

Cowboys old and new wore their spurs to urge their horses to greater heights to do the job that needed done or face lonely sleepless nights.

The word "spur" has a much older meaning than that which was found in the west...The Bible, in Hebrews chapter ten, an early writer definitely says it best, "Let us consider how we may spur each other on toward love and good deeds."
Then ideas and good thoughts dawn, "encourage one another." The words brought to mind, "do not give up meeting together."

The true meaning of life you'll find...In other words, if you keep on traveling your old sinful path you shall surely experience the suffering of God's eternal wrath.

Remember, Jesus was sent to save us, from heaven above.

So above all, "spur" yourself and others on to believe and live...in God's eternal love.

Written by Blair Sneddon for our Women's Day Retreat

How will you spur (encourage) someone today?