Blessings for the New School Year

When my kids were young, I loved taking them to pick out their new backpacks, school supplies, clothes and shoes for school. We would spend the day knocking it all out at once as we store hopped on a determined buying mission. We checked it all off our lists as we braved the trenches of school supply aisles in the local super center. We would be armed and ready for whatever the new school year would bring.

As the first day of school closed in on us, endless questions plagued my anxious mind. Would the kids like their new teachers? Would they get to be in the same classroom as their best buddies?

We would all have to get into a new routine, back to making those bagged lunches and after school snacks. There would be rides to practices, and piles of homework. Of course there would always be a few extra trips to the school to schlep the carelessly forgotten gear, lunches, and assignments.

These days the school supplies in my family have been replaced with apartment furnishings, car insurance and college text books.

There are many times I wish I could go back to the days of making those early morning waffles floating in maple syrup before school. Those days that seemed so rushed, stressed and hurried now are just cherished memories of a time I wish I could have back again. It has flown by so quickly and without my permission. They are suddenly grown and gone.

I realized that as we are reluctantly handing our kids over to new teachers, dorms, coaches, and even their own apartments, we can simultaneously hand them over to the complete, unchanging, infinite, protection of God!

He can and will be there to pick up the slack for us weary, anxious, parents. We can trust Him to always be there when we cannot. Whether our kids are coloring at the first grade art table or they are 500 miles away from us on a college campus, We can trust that our almighty God is watching over them and He will never leave them nor forsake them (see Hebrews13:5).

I like to start my mornings, coffee and Bible in hand, sitting on my back patio with my dog curled up next to me. It's where I have my morning prayer time with God. It is where I hand it all over, my concerns, fears and worries and ask Him to amazingly bless the days of my children. I ask for His ultimate protection over them. I visualize them covered in the full, securing, armor of God. I pray that His perfect will be done in their lives, and that they would make wise choices according to His word. I ask for His unceasing favor and noble grace to be upon them. I ask for Him to send a legion of His heavenly angels to surround my children continuously and to pluck them out of harms way. I pray for wonderful Christian friends and teachers to surround them. I visualize the mighty hand of God holding them up, so safe and protected, so strong, changeless and unfailing. Then as I continue on in my day, I know that my words will not return to me void (see Isaiah 55:11). I know God has heard me and if it is His will, He will honor my requests.

So as we begin this and all new school years and as we are diligently packing up the school gear, waking the kids up early, and sending them out the door, let's send them securely wrapped in the Lord's arms with an abundance of favor and blessings heaped upon them, dressed in their new shoes and of course in the full armor of God!!

By Nina Keegan, find the original article HERE

How to Embrace Rest When Work Never Ends

After every vacation, my husband inevitably returns to work buried in emails. Since he’s in sales he always has customers in need of his product, so while he might be on vacation from work, his customers are not. In an ever-connected digital age, work never stops.

My experience after a vacation is a little different. While I may not come home to an inbox full of emails, I return to another monstrosity—laundry. Maybe it’s my season of life (three kids younger than 3) or maybe it’s just the fact that there are five people in our house, but laundry is my overflowing inbox. Everything else takes a vacation when we are gone (the cleaning, the cooking, and so on), but the laundry just keeps coming. It sleeps for no one.

Whatever part of your work is overflowing when you end your vacation, we all face this dilemma, don’t we? What do we do with the work that never ends? Taking it a step further, can rest sometimes look like work?

Work vs. Play

Since work is a fluid part of my life, with no real beginning and end, a question keeps arising in my own mind, and maybe in yours as well: What’s the difference between rest and play? Is it resting to read a book to your child? Is it resting to eat dinner when you open your home for hospitality? It can be difficult to discern what’s work and what’s play when it all melds together.

But if work is about people, our rest is as well. Just as we’re tempted to view our work as done for our own glory, we’re tempted to view our rest the same way. I see this in my own life when I lament my lack of rest—by which I mean I haven’t had a break from my kids in a while. But I can rest while watching a show with them, playing soccer with them outside, or eating dinner with them. Sometimes rest is watching Netflix by myself, and sometimes it’s eating pizza in the living room with my kids.

As Kevin DeYoung observes, “Effective love is rarely efficient. People take time. Relationships are messy.” Anyone who spends any amount of time investing in people knows this to be true. DeYoung isn’t saying we don’t rest when our work involves people; he’s simply saying a people-oriented life might change the way our rest looks—or might make us even busier than we intended to be. He goes on to write, “Stewarding my time is not about selfishly pursuing only the things I like to do. It’s about effectively serving others in the ways I’m best able to serve and in the ways I am most uniquely called to serve.” I long assumed I can only rest when doing the things I want to do, the things I find restful. But rest is sometimes about enjoying my kids, enjoying the fruit of my labors.

We view rest and work as things that exist for us. But they don’t.

Rest as Neighbor Love

Marva Dawn, author of Keeping the Sabbath Wholly, says that this view of rest actually frees us to love people more, since we aren’t seeing them as a means to an end:

When we are not under the compulsion to be productive, we are given the time to dwell with others, to be with them and thereby to discover who they are.

Rest is about people as much as work is. People aren’t efficient, and can sometimes be draining, but they’re part of our Sabbath rest.

The church community must be our accountability here. We can serve our fellow believers in their quest for rest by helping with chores around their home, participating in a restful activity together, and even encouraging the weary to sleep. This is another reminder that, along with the work itself, the rest from it is a community effort. Left to ourselves, we would either be lazy or workaholics.

By embracing time in our Sabbath rest, we’re free to love others in our resting. Since we’re not bound to productivity or a schedule, people aren’t a hindrance to those things. Dawn notes that if we’re resting in God’s grace, we can fold others into that freedom also. When our kids interrupt us, but it doesn’t derail our day. When our neighbor needs help moving a piece of furniture, and we can joyfully serve. In our resting we’re not a slave to the clock. In Christ, we’re free to serve because he’s the Lord of the Sabbath. Dawn procceds to say that this ceasing opens us up for inefficient things like “sitting quietly together and enjoying each other’s company.” Without the demands of life and work, we aren’t blinded to the people in front of us. Rest gives us the chance to value the people for whom we labor every day.

While we might cease from work in our rest, we don’t cease from delight. Our resting makes way for feasting. And our ceasing makes way for embracing and loving others. Of course, this requires a shift in our thinking. Work and rest are about loving our neighbor. Work and rest are about worshiping God and enjoying the good things he has given us. Yes, balance is needed. Personality types and seasons of life determine how much individual rest we need. But it’s not all about our own personal gratification.

Sometimes our rest includes others (like playing with our children), and sometimes it’s just us. But it’s always about God. 

Article by Courtney Reissig / Click here to read the original article

What Does it Really Mean to #Blessed?

Feeling blessed is in vogue. 

A quick look at Facebook and Twitter shows how many people today feel #blessed. In our social-media world, saying you’re blessed can be a way of boasting while trying to sound humble. 

College scholarship? #Blessed. Unexpected raise? #Blessed. Wonderful family? #Blessed.

As Christians we use that term too, of course. We pray God will bless our family. We attribute our undeserved gifts to “God’s blessings.” We talk about ministries being blessed. But what does it really mean? How should we understand the blessing of God? 

The Good Life

For believers, is the blessed life synonymous with the successful life? Is it the Christian version of the good life? A loving marriage, obedient children, a vibrant ministry, a healthy body, a successful career, trusted friends, financial abundance — if these are the characteristics of a blessed life, then having all of them should translate into an extraordinarily blessed life.

But does it? If someone had all those things, would they be extraordinarily blessed? 

Rather than turning to God, they might feel self-sufficient and proud. Perhaps a bit smug and self-righteous. After all, their hard work would be yielding good fruit.

Moreover, they wouldn’t need to cry out to God for deliverance; everything would already be perfect. They wouldn’t need to trust God; they could trust in themselves. They wouldn’t need God to fill them; they would already be satisfied.

God’s Richest Blessings

My desire for God is greatly fueled by my need. And it is in the areas of loss where I feel my need most intensely. Unmet desires keep me on my knees. Deepen my prayer life. Make me ransack the Bible for God’s promises.

Earthly blessings are temporary; they can all be taken away. Job’s blessings all disappeared in one fateful day. I, too, had a comfortable life that was stripped away within a span of weeks. My marriage dissolved. My children rebelled. My health spiraled downward. My family fell apart. My dreams were shattered. 

And yet, in the midst of those painful events, I experienced God’s richest blessings. A stronger faith than I had experienced before. A deeper love than I had ever known. A more intimate walk than I could explain. My trials grounded my faith in ways that prosperity and abundance never could.

While my trials were not blessings in themselves, they were channels for them. As Laura Story asks in her song “Blessings,” “What if your blessings come through rain drops? What if trials of this life — the rain, the storms, the hardest nights — are your mercies in disguise?”

This revolutionary idea of blessing is also firmly established in Scripture.

The Common Thread

One translation of the New Testament (ESV) has 112 references with the words bless, blessing, or blessed, none of which connect blessing to material prosperity. Consider these passages:

“Suffering and trials are not blessings in themselves, but they are channels for God’s grace.”

“Blessed are the poor in spirit. . . . Blessed are those who mourn. . . . Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake . . . Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you.” (Matthew 5:3–4, 10–11)

“Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” (Luke 11:28)

Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven. (Romans 4:7; quoting Psalm 32:1)

Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial. (James 1:12)

“Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. . . . Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” (Revelation 14:13, 19:9)

There is no hint of material prosperity or perfect circumstances in any New Testament reference. On the contrary, blessing is typically connected with either poverty and trial or the spiritual benefits of being joined by faith to Jesus. 

According to the Key-Word Study Bible, “The Greek word translated blessed in these passages is makarioi which means to be fully satisfied. It refers to those receiving God’s favor, regardless of the circumstances” (emphasis added).

What is blessing, then? Scripture shows that blessing is anything God gives that makes us fully satisfied in him. Anything that draws us closer to Jesus. Anything that helps us relinquish the temporal and hold on more tightly to the eternal. And often it is the struggles and trials, the aching disappointments and the unfulfilled longings that best enable us to do that. 

Truly Blessed

“Unmet desires keep me on my knees and make me ransack the Bible for God’s promises.”

Pain and loss transform us. While they sometimes unravel us, they can also push us to a deeper life with God than we ever thought possible. They make us rest in God alone. Not what we can do or achieve for him. And not what he can do or achieve for us. 

In pain and loss, we long for Presence. We long to know that God is for us and with us and in us. Great families, financial wealth, and good health are all wonderful gifts we can thank God for, but they are not his greatest blessings. They may make us delight, not in God, but in his gifts.

God’s greatest blessing always rests in God himself. When we have that, we are truly #blessed.

Article by Vaneetha Rendall Risner, a freelance writer and a regular contributor to Desiring God. Click HERE to read the original article.

Fresh Ways to Refocus Your Mindset on God's Word

There are many ways to focus your mind on "what is above" (see Colossians 3:1-2). If you're feeling a bit stuck, try developing fresh habits. Whether you're getting back to spiritual disciplines, just starting out, or in the middle of a long run, here are some ideas you may want to try:

• Write a prayer that expresses your heartfelt desire to follow God in this season of your life. If you keep it somewhere close, then you have a starting point for your daily time with God.
• Read one Psalm each day.
• Use a journal. You can write your prayers to God. You can list concerns or what you're grateful for. You can write the first thing that comes to mind when you consider what God is doing in your life.
• Stop and listen. Too often we feel we aren't doing anything if we aren't doing anything. That's not true. Sit before God in silence, inviting Him to recalibrate your soul (see Psalm 46:10).
• Practice posturing. Allow your body to reflect your heart. Bow low in humility before God, get on your knees in prayer, or hold your hands out in acknowledgement that anything you receive comes from God.
• Get a Bible dictionary and read some background information about the Bible passage you're reading. Understand more about the ears those words first fell on. You might read something in a whole new light (see Psalm 119:33-35).
• Think more deeply about small bits. Let that one verse roll around in your mind for a few minutes instead of reading five more verses. Give God room to surprise you with insight. If you read only three verses in that sitting, that's OK (see Psalm 119:47-48).
• Pray Scripture back to God. Pick a passage and pray the same one for a week at a time, allowing it to fully sink in.
• Get really honest with God. Let go of old ideas about how you "should" approach God. Pour out your heart to Him (see Psalm 62:8). Trust Him to be big enough to handle whatever you're dealing with.

Read the original article here

25 Ways to Spend Time with God on the Go

Are you longing to spend refreshing moments with God, your Bible, and a cup of coffee? The most important thing we can do as we minister to the next generation is to ensure that our relationship with God is strong. And devoted daily time with God is critical.

Sometimes, though, we miss those times and can run on empty spiritually. Is lack of time forcing you to abandon your dream of a time alone with God each day? Instead of rushing off on a guilt trip, use these 25 tips to spend time with God on the go!

1. As you drive around, tune in to a Christian station or play your favorite praise and worship music. Don’t be afraid to sing along as you drive. No one can hear you. And besides, your smile will be contagious.
2. Sing your favorite praise songs as you mop up your chores.
3. Whenever you’re faced with a dilemma, thank God for being with you in the midst of it. Then ask God to give you wisdom.
4. Count your blessings whenever you write a check. Thank God for providing for you.
5. On a 3X5 card, make a list of people who need prayer. Beside each name, jot a note to remind you of that person’s prayer need. Post the note in your kitchen. While you prepare a meal or clean up, glance at the list and pray.
6. As you drive to work, think about each staff member. Create a prayer acrostic for each person to help you pray for him or her. For example, T — time he wants with his family; O — obedience to God even when it hurts; and M — ministry with fifth-graders will flourish.
7. When you see a school, skyscraper, hospital, prison, business, or cult meeting area, ask God to break the power of the enemy on the lives of the people inside.
8. At the sound of an approaching siren, ask God to protect the people involved in the emergency. Pray that God’s love will shine into that situation.
9. If a face stands out in a crowd, pray for God’s blessing and guidance in that person’s life.
10. Stuck in a traffic jam again? Don’t sweat it; pray for the other motorists around you.
11. Get some fresh air and a renewed spirit with a listening walk — even if it’s only a quick trot to the mailbox or a whirl around the grocery store. Ask God to speak to you. Listen quietly for God’s voice.
12. Whenever you look at your watch, take time to ask for God’s presence to guide you through the day.
13. When you stop at a stop sign, stop and pray for someone in your family.
14. Pray for your city, country, and leaders whenever you see a flag.
15. Whenever you think of someone who has wronged you, ask God to give you the grace to forgive the person.
16. If someone is rude to you, ask God to bless the person.
17. As you kiss family members goodbye, ask God to bless and protect them through their day.
18. Instead of looking at your speedometer when you pass a policeman, pray for his or her protection. Do the same for firefighters.
19. Pick a different neighbor family to pray for each week. Whenever you pass their home, ask God to bless them and pray for any needs you know of.
20. Whenever you see a cross, remember that Jesus died for you. Thank God for the gift of his Son.
21. If you drive through the country, let the sight of sheep remind you of your good shepherd. Thank God for his love and care.
22. Allow the sight of stained glass to remind you of the stains Christ removed from your life. Thank God.
23. Leave your Bible by the television. Before you turn your television on, read a verse or two from Proverbs or Psalms.
24. Trade Bible teaching tapes with your friends or church library and listen while you work.
25. Listen to the Bible as you run errands in your car or wash dishes.

Read the original article here