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Thanks for visiting my diary. I've been journaling since 1984 and have chosen to share some of my entries online. They are not all positive thoughts, but I hope that reading them might be a blessing to someone who needs encouragement.
If you are just coming to my diary for the first time, please read my introductory entry, where I share some background that is important if you plan to follow this diary regularly.
Please also visit my music page, where you can hear samples from my debut CD, I Believe, which features songs written based on experiences shared in this journal.
Faith "invites God to answer with proof..." I've always felt something negative about challenging God. I don't think I've realized it, and I don't really know what to call it; but it's there. I took the idea that I should not doubt and turned it into the idea that I should not ask because I might be asking with doubt--and what a way to breed doubt! I didn't ask, so I didn't receive; and since I didn't receive, I believed that God wouldn't give. How can I turn that into faith? Well, for one thing, I need to look for place in my life where God *HAS* answered. My own testimony will build my faith if I let it.
As part of the "homework" for day 1 of Believing God, I'm supposed to write a one-sentence summary of Ephesians 1:11-23. I sort of understand that there is a point to this, but I always hated summaries and I always will; and I think I'm feeling very rebellious about this. There's so much more in those verses to write about! I think that's why there are 12 verses and not one!!! I would be shortchanging myself if I condensed that into one sentence. But I'll try... I was chosen to be a part of a group whom God blesses, and my belief opens the way for that blessing.
She talks about "present active participle believing..." Life is a maturing process. But how can that maturing happen if I only believe once and then sit back and wait for something to happen? It can't, and that's not relationship with God. That's making belief a work.
I really think I need/want to sit down and look more in depth at the relationship of this passage to what's in Ephesians 2. I know there are more references to faith there. One disadvantage of doing studies like this is that we lose the continuity from the original text. Not that I think I should abandon studies like this. They help me understand continuities from one book of the Bible to another. But I also need very much to see how the text of a particular book fits together.
I'm rambling here... I'm having a hard time "getting into" doing this "homework-style." I'm seeing that God wants to do something in my life, and my faith is required.
Ok, now here's something I can do (I think):
Lord, the biggest challenges I have before me right now are:
I know there are others, but I'm not thinking well tonight.
The deepest desires about those challenges are:
From what I understand so far from my relationship with You and from Your Word, Your will seems clear to me about the following challenges.
But it seems less clear to me in these challenges.
There doesn't seem to be an answer to my money problem--or at least not an immediate one.
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