Right away, all the way, happy way.


If you’ve been around me and my children for awhile, you’ve undoubtedly heard me say this. And while I know it can be controversial (“It’s not right to expect them to be happy about obedience all the time!”) we make it a part of our DNA in our family. And no, I don’t expect my children will always be happy to obey what I’m asking/telling them to do. It’s not about their attitude toward the action, it’s about their attitude toward me. 


“You don’t have to be happy about it, but you don’t have to be disrespectful either.”


“You don’t have to like it, but you know that I only ask you to do things that are for your good and betterment.”


“I don’t expect you to skip with delight over this, but I do want you to choose joy in the midst of disappointment.”


Obedience is an important value to our family. And obedience, while not always full of happiness, always brings joy in the end. It may be awhile before we see it, feel it, know it, but it’s there waiting for us to experience.


“If you love me, you will obey my commandments.” John 14:15


“Whoever knows me and obeys my commandments is the person who loves me. Those who love me will have my Father’s love, and I, too, will love them and show myself to them.” John 14:21


“Jesus answered him, ‘Those who love me will do what I say. My Father will love them, and we will go to them and make our home with them. A person who doesn’t love me doesn’t do what I say. I don’t make up what you hear me say. What I say comes from the Father who sent me.” John 14:23-24


Obedience has such high value in the Kingdom of God. Obedience proves our love for the Lord. It is the primary way we show our affection and our gratitude to Jesus for all He has done. If we love Him, we WILL obey Him. 


It doesn’t say perfectly, but I think it implies that our hearts are continually becoming bent toward obedience. We aren’t naturally that way. We are rebellious and self-focused people. It is the grace of God that has made us think of anyone other than our own desires. It is the grace of God that prompts us to obey. It is the grace of God that wins us over to JOYFUL obedience. We learn - through obedience - that He is trustworthy, that He is looking out for our best interest, that He knows what’s truly good for our hearts and souls and bodies. Through obedience we come to know His heart and what may start as skeptical obedience grows into joyful obedience. 


“Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the JOY that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:2 (emphasis added)


It was FOR JOY that Jesus obeyed the Father unto death. He knew that obedience ALWAYS brings blessing and joy. We may have to go to hell and back before we experience the joy, but it is always waiting for us on the other side. And it’s greater than the trip to hell. It’s greater than whatever suffering we may endure. Suffering as small as not having candy for breakfast or as great as losing relationship with a loved one. If it’s done out of a heart to obey the Lord, there will be joy waiting for us.


And sis, I can’t promise when our joy will be made complete in all things. Some moments will be on this side of Heaven, but others will be when we see Jesus face to face. Either way, either grace we’ve been given, it is enough for us to obey having full trust and confidence that the Father is worthy of our obedience. We can have peace knowing that joy awaits us. 


What area of your life are you struggling to obey the Lord? Think about it…


Do you have your answer yet?


Take as long as you need to remind yourself of past moments of obedience that brought blessing. Remind yourself of His goodness, His faithfulness, His wisdom, His heart for you, His sacrifice on the cross for you. If he spared not His son for you, why would He withhold what He knows is good for you? Obedience is the pathway to blessing. Obedience is the pathway to joy. 


Right away, all the way, happy way - it’s the only way sis. He is worthy of our obedience.

​From the dawn of time, God’s plan for mankind was to be accomplished through obedience. 

When God placed man (Adam and Eve), in Eden’s garden, he basically said, “Here you go. You are in charge of this paradise. I planted this garden, now you take care of it, nurture it.”  And paradise it was. No weeds, so the work was not backbreaking; it must have been incredibly rewarding to see and experience the results of their labor.  I can only imagine the beauty of creation in its infancy.  

Do you wonder if God walked with Adam and Eve every evening in the garden?  What do you think they talked about? What must it have been like to have no concept of evil in the beginning…only good, coming from the heart and hands of their Creator? To know that God had given them dominion over all the earth and every living thing on the earth? That alone would be enough to keep them talking for weeks or months. This nurturing/ruling thing…keeping it all in balance was going to be an adventure. And God was sharing the adventure with them.  

In the midst of this garden, God placed two particular trees. The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In creating Adam and Eve in His own image, God was also giving them the opportunity to choose. They could eat from any tree in the garden except for one; the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He even told them why. If they ate from that tree, they would surely die (Genesis 2:16).

The choice was really quite simple. Obey God and live, or disobey and die. And we all know what happened after that. If you’re not sure, go read about the fall in Genesis chapter 3. 

Yes, they fell. They sinned against God. They knew they had really messed up. They fell from their state of perfect unity and fellowship with each other and with God. Everything was different now. And what a hot mess it made of things. Severe pain in childbirth, weeds, thorns, and thistles. Instead of rewarding and meaningful work, they would experience hard labor, and work by the sweat of the brow. Oh…and that whole unified relationship between man and woman was now an unholy mess! And to top it all off?  Death…separation from God…spiritual death along with eventual and inevitable physical death. 

BUT GOD…

God is love. And Love makes a way. Even in the beginning, He knew that to give us choice meant we could/would choose to disobey His command. But it also meant that we weren’t just puppets put on this earth to blindly walk through life with no way to choose love. He created us to live, to love, and to choose eternal life. And so He made a way to restore fellowship with man. So God drove them out of the garden and closed the gate so they could not re-enter the garden and eat from the tree of life. Doing so prevented them from eating from that tree and living forever in their sin. 
 
And so even before he proclaimed the aforementioned curses upon Adam and Eve, God said to the serpent, “...I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” (Genesis 3:15 NIV) 

There is so much to unpack in this verse, but for our purpose and the sake of brevity, let’s just say that this was the beginning of the end for Satan. God would provide His Son, the seed of the woman, to administer the final death blow to the head of Satan. The striking of the heel is a picture of Christ’s death on the cross...but we know that Satan did not have the final word in Christ’s death because we serve a RISEN SAVIOR! We have access to the Tree of Life through the saving work of Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross, defeating the enemy and rising again to life, so that we too may rise with Him to life everlasting.

And that brings us back to obedience. While man’s original disobedience closed the gate to the Tree of Life, God opened the way through His Son. I love the way the Amplified Version says this in Philippians 2:8, “After He was found in [terms of His] outward appearance as a man [for a divinely-appointed time], He humbled Himself [still further] by becoming obedient [to the Father] to the point of death, even death on a cross.”  

Romans 5:19 tells us this, “For just as through one man’s disobedience [his failure to hear, his carelessness] the many were made sinners, so through the obedience of the one Man the many will be made righteous and acceptable to God and brought into right standing with Him.”

When the man failed to obey, a sacrifice was required. In the garden, God provided an immediate sacrifice for Adam and Eve when he “made garments of animal skins for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.” Their awareness of their nakedness required a covering…their sin a sacrifice. They wore a reminder of their disobedience…the consequence of their sin. This also served to remind them that God would provide a way back to Him through the shed blood of the perfect lamb of God. 

1 Samuel 15 says that “...to obey is better than sacrifice…” All that I have just written drives home the point that it is our disobedience that requires sacrifice. And that breaks my heart when I think of it in terms of my own sinful choices in life. It kind of makes it personal. My sin caused the sacrificial death of Christ on the Cross. All of our sins really, but still. If you never sinned, my sin would still have caused His sacrifice and that makes it personal. And heartbreaking. And humbling.

And thankful…oh so thankful, because He died on the cross to bring us back to the life of obedience. 

All this talk of obedience puts me in mind of a puppy I had years ago.

Puppies are a bit like toddlers as they go about exploring, everything ends up in their mouths.  Clair quickly became well acquainted with the words, "no", "quit", "put that down", "spit it out...NOW", oh... and "that's my shoe, thank you for bringing it to me but I would rather you had left it in the spot by the door".

One morning it occurred to me, as I was yelling once again, "Clair...where are you and what are you into this time?",  that I am a bit like my puppy...and maybe you are too.  You see, Clair loved to please us and she was a very loving puppy, but she had a tendency to test every boundary that we put into place.  Some things she learned rather quickly, but others...took time and work.

She was a work in progress.  Aren't we too a work in progress?

Just as He did way back in the Garden, God, in His loving kindness, has set boundaries for us.  He created us and knows what is best for us. Some of those boundaries aren't really hard for us to abide by...I mean most of the Ten Commandments are easy to keep aren't they? After all, I've never killed anyone.  But there are those things that I know God asks of me that I don't always follow through with. How about you?

As Clair found...some of the bad things we do are well...just plain fun...but the end result is well...not fun.

Obedience is a hard lesson to learn.

When Clair was being obedient she anxiously waited at my feet either for her reward, a loving word, and a hug, or she waited for the next command.  When she was not being obedient, she was so busy getting into trouble she missed out on the reward and instead suffered the consequences of her actions.

Sound familiar?  Yeah, me too!!

With all my heart I want to be known as one sitting at the feet of my Master, anxiously awaiting my reward, a loving embrace, and looking forward to the next command.

I want to have a heart that is captivated by His voice, filled with His love, and obedient to His plan!

The other day I was listening to a sermon that had nothing to do with this topic of “ordinary” but the speaker touched on something that struck a chord in me…


If God did not spare his own Son for you, why would He withhold any of the lesser needs or desires from us? That’s like buying an expensive Ferrari as a gift for someone, but not wanting to spend an extra $10 on a big red ribbon to put on the car. If you can spend thousands and thousands of dollars on a gift, why not $10 extra dollars? That is practically nothing in light of the cost of the gift itself. 


Is it not the same with the Lord? If He paid the cost of His only child, why would He withhold healing from you? Why would He withhold provision from you? Why would He withhold marriage from you? Why would He withhold (insert blank here) from you?


And yet, sometimes He does … there must be a reason, but what?


“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28 (ESV)


God is always working for our benefit. If He says no to a lesser gift - the big red ribbon - it is because it will not be the greatest blessing to us. That’s a hard pill to swallow at times. Healing seems like the greatest blessing. Marriage seems like the greatest blessing. Financial provision seems like the greatest blessing. Whatever your heart sincerely longs for seems like the greatest blessing and yet sometimes the Lord says no. 


Sweet sister, it’s for our benefit. It may not feel like it, but it’s true and He is trustworthy. His love is no ordinary love. He doesn’t give only what we want, He gives what is the greatest blessing to us. He doesn’t give based on what is happening right now, He gives with all of time in mind. He may say no to healing on earth, but He says yes to healing in Heaven - always. He may so no to marriage, but He says yes to a supremely intimate relationship with Himself. He may say no to abundance of finances, but He says yes to our daily bread. 


All of these things produce more trust, more hope, more faith, and more love - no ordinary love - but fully reliant, fulfilling, steadfast love from us to Him and from Him to us. 


I don’t have all the answers when it comes to this. I’m struggling with it myself. One of my dearest friends is terminally ill. They’ve given her just weeks. I’ve prayed for healing … we all have. The Lord has helped me understand something for the first time and has reminded me again and again when my heart just can’t stand it … Heaven is the greater healing. We pray for healing on this earth and when it just doesn’t come we often think we lacked faith. If we had just believed more or prayed more or trusted more … but truly, is not Heaven the greater healing? What a gift to pass through this earth and into the next with no more pain, no more sorrow, made completely whole, and in the arms of Jesus forever and ever. 


So yes - sometimes God says no. And it hurts. It hurts so badly at times. But isn’t He good? Isn’t He trustworthy? Isn’t He worthy? His love is no ordinary love, sweet sister. His love is infinite and infinitely for our good and His glory. 


Can I pray for you?


Jesus, help us trust in your decisions What to offer in blessing and what to withhold as a blessing. Help us to fully surrender our way for yours. Help us to see what you are doing and faithfully trust you when we cannot see. We love you. We give you our heart, our yes, our trust. You alone are worthy. You alone are faithful. We trust you Jesus.

Reaching goals doesn't happen without effort. Moving from intention to action is the first step, but our daily choices help or hinder us from forward progress. Building consistent habits that support our goals is a powerful way to press on toward growth and success. 

 “It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives. It's what we do consistently.” ― Anthony Robbins

Have you realized you aren’t where you want to be in some area of life? Maybe you even set a few goals or made resolutions this year and your progress has been sporadic.

We all have goals, aspirations, and dreams. Even the most unmotivated people have things they want to accomplish in life. Most of us–the imperfect types–have a list of areas ripe for growth and improvement. In essence, we don’t want to stay where we are…like we are.

Physical health, spiritual development, and personal growth are areas we often target for improvement.

When it comes to reaching goals or building better habits of health, what holds you back? Motivation, time, knowledge, skill, finances, equipment, or even current level of health can be obstacles to moving from intention to action.

The Challenge of Consistency in Reaching Goals
We may start strong but staying consistent is challenging. Last year I had a goal to lose weight. I worked at it (most of the time) and was sort of successful in a frustrating way. What's that, you ask?

I lost the SAME five pounds at least five times. Maybe more.

I stopped counting. At times I stopped trying. Let's face it, lack of progress is seriously demotivating. I had conversations in my head that went like this:

• "Well, you already blew it today."
• "You'll never make progress."
• "I just can't do this."
  
  

We call that the yo-yo cycle.  Start-stop-start-progress-blow it-stop-start-stop-start. . . Up or down, success or setback, good or bad, healthy or unhealthy. . .  Do you recognize this problem?

Inconsistency kept me running in place rather than moving forward toward my goal. The Yo-Yo Cycle of inconsistency can keep us from making lasting changes. Consistency is a battle, and the struggle is real. Can you relate?

Move from Motivation to Habit to Reach Your Goals
Jim Ryun said this about the role of habits in accomplishing goals: “Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.”

A vital part of accomplishing goals is establishing small habits and routines that help us succeed. The word habit is defined as “a usual way of behaving: something that a person does often in a regular and repeated way.” ( source: https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/habit)

Practice bridges the gap between intention and habit. The positive habits we build form a support structure for the life we desire. Small changes and helpful habits can become part of our daily steps as we pursue our goals.

Athletes and musicians practice new skills until they become intuitive, part of their muscle memory. In many ways, practicing helpful habits is like developing muscle memory. What once felt unfamiliar, requiring great concentration, begins to flow automatically.

Focus on Progress Over Perfection
I’m discovering I tend to sabotage my good effort when I fall short or default to old habits. Failures and setbacks prompt a cycle of shame and guilt in my self-talk. How often do we allow today’s lapse to defeat our next step?

Elevating perfection over progress can derail consistency in creating new habits and accomplishing goals.

What could it feel like to change your perspective and expectations? What if you let go of perfectionism, recognize progress, and celebrate growth? Shift your focus to the next right step and make the next good choice. This mindset shift fuels motivation to keep moving toward our aspirations.

7 Ways to Move Forward with Consistency
The more we choose well, the more consistent good habits become. This makes it sound easy, but changing our thoughts and patterns is hard work that takes time and consistent effort.

Consider how these words from Philippians provide a pattern for pursuing your goals:
“Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus”. –Philippians 3:12-14 NASB

Although this passage refers to spiritual growth and sanctification, we can discover some practical habits of consistency.

1. Have a realistic view of yourself—someone who is in process. You are on your way, but not there yet.
2. Value progress rather than perfection. Many small steps in the right direction will take us where we want to go.
3. Cultivate a “this one thing I do” mentality. Stay focused on your goal. Effort is required. Be willing to do the work.
4. Live in this moment. Past failure is past—it’s no longer relevant. James Sherman wrote, “You can’t go back and make a new start, but you can start right now and make a brand-new ending.”
5. Stay on the course. Don’t get sidetracked or even road-blocked by things that should be left behind. Shed negative self-talk, comparison, all-or-nothing thinking, or unrealistic expectations that discourage and distract you.
6. Don’t run backwards. Focus on forward motion toward your goal. Have you ever tried to run forward while looking backwards? It doesn’t work.
7. Keep going. Remember why your goal is important and refuse to give up. Staying in the race is the only way to reach the finish line.
   ​

Celebrate Your Progress Toward Your Goal
Don't let inconsistency or discouragement tempt you to abandon your healthy goals. Celebrate the small wins of your forward progress. In Genesis 1, God "saw" that each day's work of creation was good. The meaning of the word "saw" is to see, to look at, inspect, perceive, consider. God recognized and stated the value of the good work that was accomplished. How often do we do this?

One healthy habit that is OH-SO-GOOD for your soul is to value small victories. Notice what went well this week. We often discount the small positive steps we make, but success creates energy for more success. Honor the good effort of each step forward as you build consistent habits to reach your goals.

What encourages you to press on today? Fight for consistency but give yourself grace as you pursue the positive habits for a life well-lived. What next step do you need to take toward your goal today?

What is “Ordinary”?
According to Webster’s Dictionary Ordinary can mean:
​
1. Of a kind to be expected in the normal order of events: Routine, Usual
2. a. Of common quality, rank, or ability.
    b. Deficient in quality: Poor, Inferior.

Oxford’s Dictionary defines Ordinary as:
Not unusual or different or special or unexpected in any way; usual
Synonyms of ordinary include Normal, Usual, Standard, Natural, Typical

It seems that somewhere inside of us there is a desire not to be ordinary. It may be because we think we’ll be lost in the crowd. It may be that we equate ordinary with inferior. 

There are seemingly infinite ways for people to express their uniqueness or their desire to stand out. Differences are expressed through clothing, hair, body art, vehicles, not to mention bumper stickers on vehicles. There are expressions that scream, “NOTICE ME! I AM HERE AND I NEED TO BE PART OF SOMETHING BIGGER THAN ME!”

Well, I have come to believe that we are part of something bigger than ourselves, however we need to see ourselves from a different perspective. 

I’ve read that a jumbo jet has six million parts, forty thousand rivets on each wing and that it takes 43 days for skilled technicians to build. I would not dare to say that the smallest rivets were not important. If I heard the builders say, “Yeah, this one had some rivets left over. We didn’t know where they should go. We didn’t have time to look, but it seemed sturdy enough. We threw the leftovers away.” I would not get on that plane.

I don’t believe God made anything or anyone for which He doesn’t have a specific purpose. If there is a “specific” purpose, it can’t be ordinary. Look in the Psalms. Ps. 147:4 He counts the stars and calls them all by name. Why would anyone waste time on counting and naming the stars, unless there was a purpose? Unless it was important? Unless it brought Him pleasure to count and call the names of His own?

God says SO MUCH MORE about you and about me than He counts us and names us. He counts our hairs. (I wonder if He has named them too?)

Psalm 139:1-18 is a beautiful portrait of the intimacy we were made to have with God. It is evidence that we are not ordinary. You are not ordinary. You are not inferior. You were not an afterthought. You were made, on purpose, for a purpose, that God Himself wants to reveal to you and He is excited to do just that. 

Read it slowly as if you are reading it to Him as He is listening.


1 O LORD, you have examined my heart and know everything about me. 2 You know when I sit down or stand up. You know my thoughts even when I’m far away. 3 You see me when I travel and when I rest at home. You know everything I do.4 You know what I am going to say even before I say it, LORD. 5 You go before me and follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand! 7 I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your presence! 8 If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there. 9 If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans, 10 even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me. 11 I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night--12 but even in darkness I cannot hide from you. To you the night shines as bright as day. Darkness and light are the same to you. 13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. 15 You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. 16 You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. 17 How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! 18 I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up, you are still with me!

Read verse 17 again and again…

His thoughts about you are precious. Precious means of great value, not to be wasted or treated carelessly. Let’s not discard God’s thoughts about us because they reveal our identity. They reveal our value. They reveal our purpose and tied to all of these is His pleasure. (Rev. 4:11 Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.)

His precious thoughts cannot be numbered. This means He’s still adding precious thoughts about you to His repertoire. You cannot number something that is continually growing in number. He hasn’t laid you aside for the newer models coming along. His purpose for you hasn’t diminished alongside of anyone else. 

Even though days upon days seem ordinary and nothing seems to stand out or make a difference, there’s much to be said for finishing the race and remaining faithful. When you look at yourself through the lens of the scripture, you will not see ordinary. You will see an extraordinary God who wants you to know He is near.

One of my favorite verses to mediate on is Zephaniah 3:17…
​
The Lord your God is in your midst, a victorious warrior. He will exult over you with joy, He is quiet in His love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.

(Skip Moen says the picture of “quiet in His love” is this: “I don’t need to say a thing.” Imagine a conversation between people who love each other deeply and intimately. One is weaker and needy. But the other loves so much that He says, “You have not shaken my love for you at all. I don’t need to say a thing.” This is the silence of approval. When God is quiet in His love, His smile is more than we need, to know we are His.)

And I would add, His smile is more than we need, to know that we are not ordinary.

When did “ordinary” become such a yucky word in the English vocabulary?

​When did the word ordinary become an insult when we talk about people, places or things? And why?


Everyone wants to do something extraordinary, ordinary is simply not enough anymore…don’t get me wrong, I long to do big things for God and His kingdom. It is not a bad thing to want to do extraordinary things in our life. It’s not a bad thing to have big goals and aspirations. It’s not even a bad thing to pursue them and work towards those big extraordinary things. That is good and great and I wish and pray that more kingdom people would grab hold of and run with what Jesus said in John 14:12 and do what He, Jesus, commissioned us to do, which is to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to Earth.


We know the verses. We say the prayers.


Our Father, Who art in heaven.
Hallowed be Your Name
Your kingdom come 
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven…


Jesus commissioned us to go and make disciples and to go and do the works He had done and even greater. We are called to bring the extraordinary (heaven) into the ordinary.


As I sat, meditating and praying over this verse this week, I felt the Lord asking me this…


Are you willing to give up your view of the extraordinary to receive my (God’s) ordinary?


That question stopped my thoughts and drew my focus in and I began asking the Lord what that meant…


You see, I had been so focused on the extraordinary of what I believed God wanted and still to this day wants to do, heal the sick, bring freedom to those who call on Him, restore marriages and identities, and reunite families, that I was missing the very opportunities for those things to take place in my everyday life, my family and my workplace.


All throughout the Bible when we read God doing big and miraculous things He didn’t accomplish the unimaginable because there was some extraordinary circumstances or greatness that happened. Instead, when He worked miracles it was created out of every day ordinary things and people.


When David defeated Goliath, it was an ordinary day. A day that David loaded up some ordinary food to take to his brothers. Nothing special and yet, on that same ordinary day God used an ordinary person to do an extraordinary act.


When Jesus feed the 5000+ and the 3000+, let me tell you there was nothing extraordinary about those loaves and fish. Gordon Ramsey was not the chef of the day. Just simply ordinary people with ordinary food wiling to let God do something unimaginable. And God took the ordinary and created the extraordinary.


Seeing a theme?


God has called us to be extraordinary IN the ordinary. He has called us to be the salt and the light in the midst of our families and our workplaces, our churches and schools. I wonder how much time I have lost looking for the opportunity to do something great for God. Waiting for the next “big thing” to happen. Waiting for things to fall into place in order for that extraordinary opportunity to show its face and bring glory to God, when in fact, God is simply wanting us to allow HIM to create the extraordinary in the middle of our everyday ordinary? 


What would happen if we created atmospheres of peace and love in the exact place we are? When we are at home and at work and at the grocery store. What would happen if we begin to use the ordinary everyday things to glorify God? Not just when we go to a big conference or on a mission trip or a prayer meeting. What would happen if we took God literally when He said “Go” or “Love God and love others”? 


We don’t have to be the most educated or trained. I wonder what would happen if we truly let God use our ordinary selves in our everyday activities? If God could do so much with plain loaves and fish, what could He accomplish with me, His daughter, His treasure, if I only let Him?


As I sat their contemplating all of this I felt Holy Spirit asking me again, 


“Are you willing to give up your view of the extraordinary, to see my ordinary?”


Maybe this is not something that speaks to you and that is totally fine. 
As for me, I say yes Lord.


God I want all that you have for me. I do not want to miss the things big or small that You want to do in my everyday ordinary. I don’t want to wait for experience to have You move in and through my life. I want You, God, to use my ordinary to bring glory to Your Name.


Love you sis,

Consistency.  

Why is it that that word immediately causes a reflexive “ugh” to rise within me?  It seems to have the same impact as words like discipline, self-control...trust.  

Because instantly, I’m reminded of all the of the places I am currently not consistent.  I’ll spare you the long list, but if I were a bettin’ woman, I’d bet we had some similarities if we compared lists.  

And it’s not like they are new things, or even hard things.  In fact, they are the same things I’ve been working on for years…and years.  And that can cause me to feel frustrated with myself.  

So quickly I can find myself stuck in the mental loop of self-abasement.  What in the heck is wrong with you?  Why can’t you get your act together?  What is your issue with this one thing that keeps you from being consistent in this one area?
 
The thing is, it’s never just one area or one thing that I struggle with.  I’m actually usually pretty good at doing one thing consistently, consistently.  In fact, I’m wired in a way that when I get my mind focused on one thing, I work at it 150%.  It tends to consume my time, my energy, my ability.  All that I am can get so consumed with that one thing and usually, in this way, I can be pretty successful in that one thing.  For a time. 

This issue, however, is that in the pouring out of all my time and energy into that one thing, all of the other things, the really important things of life, tend to fall to the sidelines. 

For years I searched for that just right eating plan to help me be the me I wanted to be.  I would invest hours of my time researching and learning.  I would think about it, talk about it and post about it. I joined groups and found friends on the same journey.  I’m an “all in” kind of girl and each time I started ALL IN.   Most of my time and focus would be placed upon the current, at the time, plan.  

And then slowly…a little at a time, I would run out of steam.  I could only maintain that level of intensity for so long before I fizzled out.  And before I knew it, I just wasn’t doing it anymore.  It was too hard, too much to juggle with all the other pieces of life that demanded pieces of me.  The other things of life began to crowd their way back onto the field.  

I ran a marathon, once.  At 35 I decided that if I didn’t do it then, I never would.  I wanted that 26.2 sticker for the back of my car so bad I could taste it. 
 
I trained. Hard.  In the cold, in the heat, hour after hour of my feet hitting the pavement with an irritatingly (especially at 4am) cheerful accountability partner 11 years my junior.  

For a season, this goal held all my focus.  I thought about running, talked about running, ran and then ate chocolate ice cream because, after all, I ran, I deserved it.  And just a side note, my eating well consistency and my running consistency didn’t coincide in the same season.  

I’m glad I ran that marathon 10 years ago.  I’m not sure where the sticker that was so important to me at that time went, but I have the medal and the photo (somewhere…I’m sure of it.)  I haven’t really run since.  And please, if I ever tell you I’m thinking about training for another marathon just mention mile 22 and port-o-potties and you will have loved me well.  

Here’s what I’ve learned.  Balance is key.  Consistency in BALANCE.  Learning to balance all of these beautiful people and responsibilities and all that contains life in my world.  Learning to be consistent in allowing Him, the very one who blessed me with this body, this mind and all I have the privilege and responsibility to love and love well to lead me in my daily priorities.  

Consistency in yielding every single part of myself to Him, daily, to lead me in the way that I should go.  To make my priority list for me.  To gently nudge, to quietly whisper and to help me have the self-control I need to place His priorities as my own.  

I’ve learned that He cares so much less about all of the things that I tend to make so important.  The goals and dreams that I have elevated within my own heart and given so much of myself to.  He has revealed to me in this season that at His very core what He cares about most are people. 

Relationships.  
​
Loving with His love and being Jesus with skin on to those around me.  At home, at work, at the grocery store, in traffic.  

As I continuously endeavor to find balance in all things, my personal prayer is that I will consistently rest in His love for me and will consistently yield to that love in a way that allows me to consistently demonstrate His love to others.  

There is no goal, dream or desire more worthy of all of me.  Consistently.  

Let’s pray together,

Father, ABBA. Thank you for your unwavering, never ending, faithful and enduring love for me.  Help me to balance well all of these beautiful parts of this life that you have given me in a way that bring glory and honor to you.  Help me Father to hold your heart and to see others and myself the way that you do.  Help me to consistently love like you love and to place the priority of people and their hearts above any and all priorities that my own human heart would try to elevate above.  Help me Father to always let my ONE THING, my most important thing, to never fail to simply be sitting at your feet.