I like to text though I only do it a few hundred times per month. I am not like a lot of teenagers today that text thousands of times per week! I ain't got time for that! HA!
One of my favorite text messages is an encouragement text that I have used as my blog entry tag line several times: u r a bcog u r fawm That stands for "You are a beloved child of God. You are fearfully and wonderfully made". I love those two sentences, especially when I am having a a "down" day! The second part of that text is from the Psalms:
“I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well” (Ps. 139:14).
What a wonderful reminder of who we really are whenever Satan tries to tell us otherwise!
Lord, thank you for making us in such a miraculous way!
Simply Saturday
I keep my eyes out for new tag lines for the end of my daily blog entry. I started keeping them on Evernote so I have them with me whenever I need them -- either for my blog or just for some encouragement. I ran across one this week that I want to write about:
Excavating your heart will unearth the beautiful things God has planted in you. - R. Howerton
R. Howerton is a friend of mine from college. When I saw this posted on Facebook, I asked him for the source. He is the source! Great job! Here is what the saying means to me.
Excavate gently
I am not an expert on archaeology, but I have seen enough movies and TV shows to know this: archaeologists don't use a bulldozer or large pick axes to excavate! That is the way we can be with ourselves at times when we are excavating our heart, whether we are looking for good things or not so good things. Be careful!
Extract lovingly
Whenever archaeologists extract something from a site, they do it gently because they can't be sure of the value of each object until it is examined by an expert. Our expert is the Holy Spirit that helps excavate and examine each object from our heart. The miraculous thing is that each object can be good and bad. I tease a friend of mine that God planted a stubborn spirit in each of us so we could be stubborn for God and NOT stubborn for the sake of being stubborn! God can take each object we excavate from our hearts, look at it and then lead us in how to deal with that object. Oh, and the best part? God will plant new, wonderful things in there as well!
Never forget
There are a LOT of small fragments of pots and jars and scrolls in museums all around the world. It always amazes me how God can use each fragment in some special way. For example, I saw the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit in the Cincinnati Museum Complex recently. While most of the artifacts were small in size, they were big in meaning as their historical relevance displayed. We should always remember where we came from and what God has done in our lives. Praise God!
I am reminded of yet another song: Something Beautiful by the Gaither Vocal Band
Something beautiful, something good
All my confusion He understood
All I had to offer Him was brokenness and strife
But he made something beautiful of my life
If there ever were dreams
That were lofty and noble
They were my dreams at the start
And hope for life's best were the hopes
That I harbor down deep in my heart
But my dreams turned to ashes
And my castles all crumbled, my fortune turned to loss
So I wrapped it all in the rags of my life
And laid it at the cross.
Let God help you find something beautiful and plant something beautiful in you today.
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We are far from perfect, but despite our mistakes and our sins, we will never abandon the Lord and he will never abandon us - adapted from a statement about Abraham from the EfM Training Guide
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