POTW - Psalm 107

POTW - Psalm of the Week, if you're not familiar with my blog. Here's the verse that caught my eye: "For He has satisfied the thirsty and filled the hungry with good things." Ok, ok, that's totally not spiritual because I'm on day 4 of the diet. Last night, after church, we were going to eat with some friends. They wanted to go to a SANDWICH SHOP. I should've cried out in protest but quietly went along. Hello, what do you generally put meat & cheese on to actually make it a sandwich -- carbs!! Oh, I mean bread. There wasn't even a salad on the menu but they will actually wrap your sandwich insides in large pieces of lettuce at this particular shop. They even have eating instructions on the wall for the lettuce wrap. It really was good and I made it one more day.

Here's what I really like about this psalm - it reminds me of God's faithfulness even when I am unfaithful. Yesterday in church we sang the hymn "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing." I can so relate to the verse that states, "Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee. Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love." My heart, if I'm not terribly careful, can pull me in the direction of busyness, wanting comfort & easiness over discipline and servanthood, and just that plain ole carnal selfishness.

In Psalm 107 they wandered. They were hungry and thirsty. We can get hungry and thirsty spiritually when we're in that place of disconnectedness with God. But, verse 6 is the key: They cried out to Him in their distress. If we are believers and followers of Jesus Christ, what an awesome promise that even if we are wandering, if we cry out to Him out of our misery He will hear. Give thanks, the psalmist wrote, because He is good and He is faithful forever.

He satisfies the hungry and thirsty. He rescues from the pit. And, I love this, "He guided them to the harbor they longed for." (verse 30, in part)

What are you longing for? The harbor was the safe place for those in rough waters in the psalm. I want the safe place but even more than that I want to step out of my comfort zone and beyond my own abilities to be on mission for God. I want to be blessed. I want to be found faithful. It's a daily obligation that requires my willingness to surrender.

So my lips repeat the last line from the above mentioned hymn: "Here's my heart, Lord, take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above." That I might be useful today for the glory of His great name.

Serving the King,

Jeanette

Diet, Day 1

I rarely post here twice in one day. I contemplated a tweet, a facebook status change, a text to everyone in my contacts but ended up here. It's the end of my first day of no carbs. I'm hungry. I drank hot green tea in hopes that would help. NOT. I've read more articles online today about food cravings and reasons to give up sugar and healthy eating and acceptable low carb snacks and blogs by women who are doing the same...I'm looking for some support, here. I fixed Johnny a big ole glass of sweet tea tonight for dinner and he had the NERVE to ask me if I wanted some, too. ARGH! huh, I guess a gentle reminder for him NOT TO ASK may have to be given for a few days until he gets it. BTW, I'm not on a no carb diet. It just looks like that today. Tomorrow I plan to run 5 miles in training for the 15k -- how will I possibly run 5 miles without a carb?

I'll get back to you on that.....

Diet,

Back to the Heat

Yes, triple digits are expected for North Texas today. I most definitely will be in the pool today. In fact, sitting here at my kitchen table it looks awfully inviting. I have mounds and mounds of laundry to do to get the kids ready to go to camp -- they are leaving at 3 AM Sunday. Apparently, there have been requests made while Johnny and I were in Kentucky for kids to stay at our house Saturday night. Yes, we live one mile from our church and, yes, we'll be putting all three of our kids on that bus in the darkness of the wee morning hours so, yes, they can come. We'll be havin' a sleep over -- the more the merrier (I typed a little sarcastically). Truly, I don't care. I talked to one of our other pastor's wife yesterday and she also said she will have extra kids at her house Saturday night. That's what we do.

In other news, I'm officially going on a diet. Yep, I've put it off long enough. I'm training for a 15K trail run in November and running alone is not enough for this stage in my life. Which, BTW, I am definitely experiencing changes appropriate for my age group. ugh! I don't know how I'll stick to the diet at my mother-in-law's house -- the woman's spiritual gift is hospitality and one of her favorite things to do is cook and she always wants to make all of our favorites while we are there. It will be a challenge. So, I've checked my official ok to eat list and foods to avoid list and I'm going to do it. Foods to avoid for the first 2 weeks include all carbs. We eat a lot of carbs so this will be a radical change...

Well, I've got to run fix lunch -- one lunch for the kids and another for me.

Serving the King,

Jeanette

In Kentucky

It's the end of June and I've gotten on an airplane for the 4th time this calendar year to take a trip. This time I'm Louisville, Kentucky for the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. Me, I'm a hardcore Southern Baptist -- always have been and suspect I always will be. More so, I am a believer and follower of Jesus Christ. There's a lot of talk this year about "The Great Commission Resurgance" and there was a vote today to initiate a taskforce on that subject. There's no doubt that somewhere along the way Southern Baptists, in general terms, have lost focus. We became dependent on our pastors, our churches, and our agencies to do the work of ministry. Even as parents, we depended on the church to teach our children spiritually. It is absolutely necessary, and the only way for us to walk in obedience, for each of us, as believers and followers of Jesus Christ, to live doing the Great Commission.

Jerry Rankin closed out the night by giving the IMB report. God is calling people to vocational missions but the funds are not there to add any additional people to the field. While money is absolutely necessary, adding more people doing short-term, voluntary missions will be one way that Christians can fill the need, can help in the field.

And, Johnny and I are having a great time in Kentucky. It's relaxing...I sent Johnny off early this morning to the convention and I slept late, went to the fitness center to worked out, and worked on my Bible study! yeah, it was nice!

Maybe I'll have an update on the convention tomorrow. I'm sure it will be exciting!

Serving the King,

Jeanette

Just a Little About New York

This just happens to be my favorite picture from our trip to New York City. It was taken the last night we were there in Times Square. The column of lights between my older son and husband's head is where the famous ball drops to welcome in the New Year.






We took this picture across the street from where the Letterman show is filmed. Of course, this was before all of the commotion with Letterman's comments about Sarah Palin's daughter. Therefore, I'm not endorsing the Late Show but just like this photo of Johnny and me on Broadway.






This photo was taken at the top of the Empire State Building. We went at night because we heard that's when there's not a line that's hours long to go to the top. It was about 11:00 pm and it started to rain while we were there. The view was great, though.






This 9/11 memorial was probably one of the most moving things we saw while there. Where the twin towers once stood is now a construction site so there wasn't much to see there. This is several blocks away, near a hospital where people left notes looking for their loved ones. The fence is now full of tiles that represent people who were never found.

Me & my man in Central Park.

Of course, I could add several more pictures and go on and on about all we did while there. We took a boat tour out to see the Statue of Liberty. We went to Battery Park. We found a charming place to eat in Little Italy and chatted with the owner, while our older son got escorted to a private room upstairs to look at knives.
We went to see Shrek on Broadway which turned out to be really, really good. We went to China Town but didn't buy anything. We walked our legs off and finally got a subway pass the last day because it was raining and cold. All in all, it was a fabulous trip and I am so thankful that we got to go. We definitely made some great family memories!

And that's what I did on my summer vacation.

Serving the King,

Jeanette

Insomnia and Irritation

I just typed a totally ridiculous and nonsensical blog about how I scared Josh on accident at 1:30 in the am because I have insomnia and Johnny told a creepy story and that I really should be sleeping because tomorrow is the last day of VBS. I gave an update on the excitement of the week and what's up for the weekend. Yeah, 13 cheerleaders overnight at our casa manana. But, alas, you will not be able to read it (I know, I know, you are heartbroken) because internet explorer decided to randomly restart and I lost the whole thing. I've never seen internet explorer randomly restart in my life. And now I'm way too tired to retype the whole crazy thing. In fact, the whole thing has made me rather tired. Oh, wait, the computer just freaked out again...I better hurry and go...goodnight.

Missions

Well, I only had one taker for my psalm of the week. I'm not giving up, though! I think the thing I miss the most about working on my master's degree is reading Scripture and/or books and the discussion that follows. I hoped posting a psalm each week might fill some of that void. I'm also in a book club but I like to think before I speak and by the time my words are formed the conversation has moved on to the next subject. I really love to read but almost need a reason to read something deep and challenging. It's so much easier to pick up fiction. Especially in summer -- to me, summer days are made for reading fiction.

I received a magazine from my seminary the other day that had an ad for their missions degree. Students can take a semester on the mission field and have it count for course credit. The time is way past in my life that I would be able to go on a long-term mission assignment. After about 10 days I'm ready to come home. My heart is for missions, however. I'm Southern Baptist to the core -- we grew up learning about missions. Now, I not only want to be involved myself, I really like to see people and read about people involved in missions.

If you saw my last post maybe you read the comment left by Kathy W. Her daughter amazes me. She just graduated from high school and is gone overseas for a month doing mission work. She felt God calling her to go, she got the information, raised the money and went. I wasn't near as brave as that when I was her age. Another young friend of ours is doing a 2-year assignment in Africa. I'm going to take a group over to work with her in January -- I'm really excited about that.

God has called us, yes all of us who are believers and followers, to be on mission. Our pastor is challenging all of the members of our church to be on mission this year. There are countless opportunities all around us, here in our community. We don't all have to go to Africa or India or even to another state. In fact, the nations are here. Just look around our community (or yours, if you don't live here) and see the many different nationalities and cultures represented. Psalm 67 is about God being worshipped and known by people from all the nations.

How will they know unless someone tells them? How will they worship unless someone shows them how? The harvest is plentiful, the laborers are few.

Serving the King,

Jeanette

This week is Psalm 67

Oh, I have some big thoughts about this psalm. But, really, John Piper is way smarter than me and a commentary I read includes this quote from Let the Nations Be Glad: The Supremacy of God in Missions by Piper in the notes for this psalm: "Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't...Worship, therefore, is the fuel and goal in missions. It's the goal in missions because in missions we simply aim to bring the nations into the white-hot enjoyment of God's glory. The goal of missions is the gladness of the peoples in the greatness of God."

Wow. The psalmist wrote that he wanted God to look with favor on us and to bless us so that people would know Him and praise Him.

Our goal and our purpose is to worship Him. To bring glory and honor to Him alone in all that we do.

What are your thoughts either on the psalm and/or the quote by Piper? What about the part of the psalm that states that God judges and leads the nations?

It's been a couple of weeks since I've posted a psalm of the week so I look forward to reading your responses!

Serving the King,

Jeanette

Back

I can hardly believe 2 weeks have flown by since I last posted a blog. I hope to return soon with some fun pics from our New York adventure and we'll get back to the psalm of the week next week for those of you willing to participate in the sharing of that. I am just stopping by because I've missed being here. I even went to some blogs that I regularly read but haven't been to in a while to catch up with what others are up to as well.

We had some awesome storms here in North Texas over the last hours. It looked like a strobe light in my bedroom last night the lightning was coming so fast, one after another. Even this morning we had some really close lightning strikes. It finally seems to have calmed down. I thought the sun might peek out earlier but the clouds have covered the sky again for now. The house is full of teenagers and everyone is just chillin'. It's our first day to do that since school has been out. Don't get me wrong, our vacation to NYC was awesome and we had a blast. But, we walked our feet off and saw as much as possible in our short time there.

I went with a friend to Beautiful Feet last night. No, it's not a place for a pedicure but a ministry to homeless in Fort Worth. We were going to help with the children's ministry last night but because of the severe weather no children showed up. We chatted about future ministry opportunities then helped serve dinner when the service upstairs was over. My job was to pass out cupcakes. Because the ministry gets food donations the cupcakes were leftover bakery graduation cupcakes. The kind with lots of fluffy, colored icing. My plastic gloves looked like I had been finger painting. One guy was a little belligerent and one guy told us some off-color jokes. I wanted to be polite but not approving of the jokes so it was a little awkward. Mostly, the people were thankful and friendly. One guy particularly caught my attention. He came back for seconds and I gave him another cupcake. He sat by himself but seemed particularly sad. When he got ready to leave he stopped by a table to chat with some of the other men. He seemed lonely and wanting conversation. I stayed in the kitchen, not really knowing my way around down there yet. I cannot imagine being homeless or needy or dependent on others for even my next meal.

Johnny and I have remarked over and over again lately about how blessed we are. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by God's goodness to us. I am beyond thankful and humbled. Even on this rainy, cloudy day with the sound of the movie the girls are watching blaring in the house and the boys upstairs for hours on end playing video games (no, we don't allow that everyday) I am completely content (even with Jacob just now trying to irritate his sister) and happy.

Yep, God is good. He is faithful. He is marvelous. I believe that with every fiber of my being.

Serving the King,

Jeanette