One of my favorite books that I read last year was “Dangerous Wonder” by the late Michael Yaconelli.

This book helped me to see the wonder and absolute joy of my relationship with God, and discover childlike faith. It also made me examine areas of my life.

Michael writes about four obstacles that get in the way of adults living a childlike faith.

One of those is “The obstacle of the banal: we become so immersed in our culture and in the material needs and wants of life, that we fail to live in abject dependence on God for every breath of air and every bite of bread.”

The quote from the book that has stuck with me most is; “When our possessions possess us- imprison us- risk and adventure become impossible.” Wow, he is talking about financial margin and all my stuff. This quote drove a deep desire to develop a plan that would pay off all of my family’s debt, including our mortgage. That way Terry and I will have major margin in our finances, and be ready for whatever adventure God has for us. That excites me!! We are not there yet, but I can already imagine the freedom that will bring.

Are you at a place where your stuff is imprisoning you? If God were to present a risk or adventure to you today, would you decline because of your stuff or would you be free to take the leap of faith He is asking?

This past week’s message, Margin- Scheduling Margin, was major convicting for me. For much of my adult life, I have been the “Queen of Busy”. I am not sure why, but often if I am not busy doing, I feel as though I am not being productive. Sometimes I subconsciously act or feel like the world would probably fall apart if I am unproductive for an hour or morning or even a day. Wow! How prideful and arrogant is that statement? I act like the God of The Universe; Creator of Everything can’t handle things while I take a time out and rest. Are there any other “Kings or Queens of Busy” out there?

As I reflect on this past decade of my life, I realize that God has been working on getting rid of the busyness, so that I can have time for the important stuff. It has not been easy, and many of the decisions that were about time, were also about money.

What has helped most in making major changes is seeking God’s wisdom before making changes or committing to something else. Searching scripture for guidance, seeking wise counsel and just spending time with God are tools that have worked well.

One thing I learned early in the business world was that if someone wanted my answer immediately without time to review all the information, saying “No” was the wisest answer. Slowly, I am learning to apply that principle to my everyday life.

I love the simple questioned posed in this week’s message; “In light of _____, is it wise?” Fill in the blank with whatever applies; your family situation, your health, your finances, whatever the important things are in your life. Most likely, you can answer that question without thinking twice.

If not, I highly recommend getting your nose in the bible, seeking wise counsel and spending some time seeking God’s wisdom.

James 3:17 says But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.

Since Craig’s sermon this past Sunday, have you been thinking about creating margin in your life? One of the best pieces of advice I ever received was “Put God First”. I have found that applies to all areas of my life, especially in a practical sense to my daily schedule. Non-morning people will hate this next part. It is not easy and I am not always successful, but when I get up 15-30 minutes early and devote time to reading my bible and actually asking God to guide my day, a cool thing happens. He actually does! How great is that!

In Mark 1:35, we see that Jesus found time early to be with His Father early in the morning.

“^“Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.”

This early morning environment seems to be the time when I am able to “Be Still” before God.

What about you? What environment works best for you to be still before God? Are you creating margin so that God does not get squeezed out of your daily schedule?

A couple of Sundays ago we were challenged to think about what “one thing” we feel that God has for us to do.  At first I felt like this was just a really good effort at filling a week with a first of the year sermon before Craig launched into the Margin series that I knew he was very excited about.  I mean you hear so many things at the first of the year about resolutions and making changes and really examining your life. And I know I’ve had so many years where all of that examining didn’t necessarily add up to a whole lot of change throughout the year, so hear was just another talk about the same old topics you expect to hear at the New Year…or was it?

You see there was one key difference in this talk and that was the reminder to set your mind on the things that God has for you to do.  To seek his will for what one thing you would need to focus on so that all other things seem to fall in line behind it.  This dove-tailed beautifully into Margin as we were reminded that we can be so distracted by many good things that we lose sight of the one best thing.  By doing less things and taking time to really seek God’s direction before moving, we reduce a lot of wasted effort chasing hunches about his will.

So my one thing is to build more consistency in my practice of reading his word.  Which has been greatly helped with my reading plan from youversion.com. I am trusting in the Lord that by doing this one simple thing, he will bless my path in 2010 and many years to come. What is your one thing this year? How did you figure that out?

This is a passage God brought to mind this morning. Thought I would share it with the church.

Ephesians 3:20 (The Message)

God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.

Glory to God in the church!
Glory to God in the Messiah, in Jesus!
Glory down all the generations!
Glory through all millennia! Oh, yes!

This week Craig suggested reading through a gospel to see  Jesus and who He is. I decided to take the challenged and read the Gospel of John.  I can’t get past John 1,  I’ve been reading it over and over this week and this morning I realize why I can’t get to John 2.

John 1 (The Message)

The Life-Light

1-2 The Word was first,
the Word present to God,
God present to the Word.
The Word was God,
in readiness for God from day one.

3-5Everything was created through him;
nothing—not one thing!—
came into being without him.
What came into existence was Life,
and the Life was Light to live by.
The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness;
the darkness couldn’t put it out.

6-8There once was a man, his name John, sent by God to point out the way to the Life-Light.
He came to show everyone where to look, who to believe in.
John was not himself the Light; he was there to show the way to the Light.

9-13The Life-Light was the real thing:
Every person entering Life
he brings into Light.
He was in the world,
the world was there through him,
and yet the world didn’t even notice.
He came to his own people,
but they didn’t want him.
But whoever did want him,
who believed he was who he claimed
and would do what he said,
He made to be their true selves,
their child-of-God selves.
These are the God-begotten,
not blood-begotten,
not flesh-begotten,
not sex-begotten.

14The Word became flesh and blood,
and moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes,
the one-of-a-kind glory,
like Father, like Son,
Generous inside and out,
true from start to finish.

15John pointed him out and called, “This is the One! The One I told you was coming after me but in fact was ahead of me. He has always been ahead of me, has always had the first word.”

16-18We all live off his generous bounty,
gift after gift after gift.
We got the basics from Moses,
and then this exuberant giving and receiving,
This endless knowing and understanding—
all this came through Jesus, the Messiah.
No one has ever seen God,
not so much as a glimpse.
This one-of-a-kind God-Expression,
who exists at the very heart of the Father,
has made him plain as day.

I sometimes so desperately want everyone have “abundant life” in the light of Jesus that when it seems that darkness is winning I feel like a failure.  I’m surprised at how quickly this feeling of failure can take me to my own dark places.  And what’s crazy is that 99.9% of the things or people in my life can be moving closer to the light and experiencing the “exuberant giving and receiving” of Jesus, yet I will be consumed with the small percentage of darkness.

Why do I trust my emotions?  Why do allow myself to go there?

In reading this passage over and over God finally got through to me this morning.  HE IS THE LIGHT! My assignment is not to change darkness into light, I CAN’T DO THAT.  Like John the Baptist I am to speak of the light, point people to the light and by the power of the Holy Spirit shine light into dark places.  I can’t control the darkness.  The darkness will either be consumed by the light or flee the light, the two, light and darkness, cannot exist in the same space.  You would think that I would understand this by now, I have to press into the truth, what I know not what I feel.  I am discovering more and more when I trust what is true I feel much better about life.  There will always be darkness, I can’t fix that problem.  I can continue to represent the light and trust God with the response of the darkness.

I’m starting to ramble, so it’s time to stop.

So, I’m going to begin John 2 this morning.  I wonder how many days this journey will last?

This morning I stopped by the Grace building and noticed that our Grace ducks have returned and are hanging out around the flower bed in front of the building. I don’t know why they choose to hang out here, since we don’t have any water anywhere near our building, but these 2 ducks have been there in the spring for the past several years.

Anyway, ducks always amaze me. Have you seen how colorful some of their feathers are? Why are they so vibrant and detailed? I’ll tell you why… we have a creative God who creates beauty with a wild imagination.

I’d encourage you to make a point of enjoying this time of year when the trees are budding, flowers are blooming, and birds are singing. It gives us just a small glimpse of just how amazing God is.

Where are you noticing God this spring?