Live in His Word

  I shared a picture of something I wrote on a Facebook Group. It was a rather quick thing, I didn’t think much about it. I wrote down a quote on a sticky note from a speaker that really stuck out to me and put it on my board in front of me. I thought the quote was really good, so I took the picture and posted it. As of right now, it has almost 200 likes, which thoroughly surprised me (although it was a good quote). The funny thing is the more people that liked it the more I looked at the picture and was frustrated with myself that I didn’t write it cuter. I mean I love to write things in a cute way, and this I just wrote quickly and in black ink, not in my best handwriting, just put it on the paper. So I did this thing to try and encourage others and ended up being insecure because strangers, who don’t even know me, will see sloppy handwriting. So much of the time we do and say things because we want to be seen, we want to be known, and we want to be loved- yet more often than not...

  “And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.” Philippians 4:8 We have spent the last several weeks reminding ourselves that we need to be intentional in what we are thinking about. We have talked about fixing our minds- that we have to be active in this. No one is going to do it for us. We are thinking of things that are actually true, thinking correctly about ourselves, thinking of ways to treat others correctly, thinking on things lovely, and things that are of good report. This week we will focus on the last two words- excellent and worthy of praise.   I put these two words together because they are put together in a separate sentence in the Biblical text and because in a lot of ways they are connected. The word for excellent is arete, which means virtue or praise. The Strong’s Concordance definition sa...

Have you ever been around a person who is just negative ALL THE TIME? Everything they say to you is about how bad something is. They are quick to tell you all the things wrong with this world and everyone around you. Is this person you? Are you constantly telling yourself everything wrong with you, with those around you, focused on the difficult circumstances and events in your life? Philippians 4 tells us that we are to think about things that are of good report or some translations say worthy of praise.  I don’t know about you, but when I look at my thought life, unfortunately all too often my thoughts are not worthy of praise. They are more than likely about how annoyed I am, how tired I am, how much I have to get done this week, etc. As I scroll through Facebook, I find myself getting frustrated with people and wanting to let them know. I let myself dwell on things that are not of good report. This isn’t what God wants for us. What does he want? A good report. When we look at t...

  I love to be surrounded by lovely things. I think as women we tend to want to surround ourselves with things that we see as lovely. I had a friend who could see the lovely in everything. She would write and tell me how lovely the sky was that morning. She would witness the birth of a baby animal and see it as lovely. We all find things that we see as lovely, and they may not all be the same things. If you haven’t guessed by now, our word that we are focusing on this week is lovely. In the Aramaic translation, it says precious. So we are to be thinking thoughts that are lovely and precious. All of the things I mentioned are things that we see around us and things we might think are precious or lovely. Did you know that God thinks of thoughts that are precious and lovely too? In Psalm 139 we find what God thinks about as precious, and you know what he is thinking about? Us!   Psalm 139:13-19 says, “You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my m...