Beautiful Day

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Emotions

When God speaks to us, He speaks to our spirit. But then the problem is the emotions and the reasonings like to get involved.

Our soul is all puffed up, all been leavened. They like to get involved and process. Then things get messy.

Although the emotions can make life colourful, some of the colours are not Godly colours.

It can be wild joy....all feeling pumped up and excited and wanting to hijack the spirit....When God first spoke to Abraham and showed him His vast grand promise, he must be feeling quite pumped.

But that feeling of overwhelmed joy and pumped is actually a result of puffed up leaven.

Then it can be pain....when God told Abraham to burn his beloved son as a sacrifice, it must be quite painful for him. Although the Bible didn't mention his emotional state.

The Bible only said that Abraham passed his test. I guess the test is a test of emotions. God wants to see if He speaks a word into the spirit, can that word go pass the emotions. Can we just listen, then simply obey and follow from the spirit, without getting the soul involved? The test is about whether the leavened bread has shrinked back to it's unleavened size so that the communications through the spirit can be delivered and carried out safely without being hijacked.

When you think about it, it's actually quite simple. Let the Spirit live and let the old self die. And when God says,"hmm....I smell death", that's the time when things can get a bit interesting.

I remember walking into houses where there's meat being roasted in the oven. Oh, that smell! To me(I'm a meat lover)that's the most irresistable smell.

When we put our old selves on the altar and offer it as a burning sacrifice, when we say to our emotions and reasonings, your dead now, stop reacting like a raging sea, just calm down...(LOL), we're actually creating a smell that's most irresistable to God.

Praises is good, worship is good, serving, doing things...etc they're all good. They all produce fragrant smells. But it's this smell of death that ultimately moves God as it's simply irresistable!

As seen by Susan @ 10:07 AM

Monday, August 28, 2006

Breastfed or bottle fed?

Breast fed babies are much healthier than bottle fed babies. Apart from the elements of nutrition, the breast fed babies are immune to a lot of the diseases. Babies that are fed cow's milk or formula are much prone to diseases and sicknesses. They get sick easily and more often.

I breastfed all my kids. They hardly get sick. In my memory they're only sent back from school or daycare like once or twice a year, while some other kids in daycare get sent back a lot more often.

One of God's name is El Shaddai. It means the breasted one. So that means, if we're drinking from God directly, if we have a Bible reading routine and daily devotion, we're then spiritually breast fed. And then we're spiritually immune!

Most babies(spiritually) these days are bottle fed. They go to church or some programes to get fed. Nutritionwise it's ok. We can still get satisfied and get fat. But something's lacking in "cow's milk"....the immune factor. We're prone to problems, troubles and attacks. We're much easier to get sick spiritually.

If we drink breast milk, directly from God, then a lot of the problems wouldn't even exist as we're immunised to them!

El shaddai also means Almighty. If we're breast fed, then we're to experience God's almighty power in protection and provision. This immune factor is the almighty power factor.

So, are you breast fed or bottle fed? Would you like to change milk? :)

As seen by Susan @ 8:10 PM

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Bible reading

If you've read my post down below "daddy's dream", you'd know what I mean by giving kids chocolate to get them practice piano every day. Because, if you want your kids to learn to play piano, then it's quite important that they practice every day. And not many kids would want to do that by themselves.

So, I've been this little kid when it comes down to Bible reading. I know that it's vitally important to read every day if I want to be serious about serving God. But somehow I just can't get rid of my kid nature.I get excited for about 3 days then forget all about it. Phil's blog has been a chocolate for me for quite a while....but then the comments dropped. I tried to follow it anyway, but the speed is like 5 chapters a day, way beyond my ability to follow, I'm a slow reader. So after a while I gave up.

So I asked God to help me as I know I can't do it on my own. I know I should. But I also know I'm still such a kid. I need some kind of motivation. Last week at Hillsong women Katrina(Catrina?)Henderson spoke about Bible reading. Didn't fire me up too much....(well I was mostly outside with baby)...but funny thing is a friend of mine who lives just around the corner got really excited and convicted by her word and even got a CD after the meeting. She came around and visited me on Monday...and guess what, we ended up deciding that we'll read Bible together and we'll get together once a week to share what we've learned.

Wow! that's some big doze of chocolate for me! (LOL)
We decided to start from John. I suggested 3 chapters a week. But my husband said hmmm...that's too much for John, maybe just 1 chapter a week. Coming from the speed of 5 chapters a day I said one chapter a week's kind of too slow, so I insisted on 3 chapters a week. And I started straight into it the second day. I started journaling as I read, and guess what, after an hour I still haven't finished the first paragraph....I journalled a whole page on my notebook just about the first paragraph...I guess my husband was right, with this speed I'd be lucky if I could finish one chapter by the end of the week.

I feel I should go slower and go deeper. There's so much in there if I'm not in a rush and just take time to dig into it.

I'm not sure if I'd keep on with my other blog, the Bible study notes blog. It takes time to write and I don't have too much time with four kids. Plus I don't think there're any readers.It only helps to keep a better record for myself.

It's really like learning piano or trying to be a professional athlete. You've just got to practice every day. A little bit of progress at a time, one day at a time, and over the years you'll then be able to see the result.

As seen by Susan @ 3:54 PM

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Marty Sampson

To all the people who come to my blog wanting to find out about Marty Sampson's girlfriend....

The answer is "I Don't Know!!!"
I know absolutely NOTHING about him and his girlfriend and have no interest finding it out....so stop searching my blog for that! (LOL)

As seen by Susan @ 12:34 PM

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Daddy's dreams

I've learned heaps from my kids about God and this is what I was thinking yesterday.

You see, if I want my child to learn piano, it's kind of my dream for my child.But then for my child to get that dream it's kind of immature. It'll excite them for maybe 3 days and then when practice and lessons hit they back off. But I really want them to learn.However they can't understand why they have to endure the pain of having to practice everyday. Then the little trick for me is to say, if you practice today, I'll give you a chocolate...it really works for kids. For a while I buy these 50 cents gifts of all kinds just to keep them going. But it gets them into bad habit I know, so after a while I dropped the game.

I remember watching a movie when I was young, how a father wanted his daughter to be a volleyball champion. He said to his little girl, if you win at the Olympics, I'll give you your mom back.This became a huge motivation for the little girl, and she endured all the tough trainings and eventually she achieved. What daddy really wanted is for the girl to be a volleyball player. But he used other motivations, because the little girl simply couldn't comprehend daddy's dream when she was young and couldn't endure the tough training for that cause. But then when she got older, daddy's dream gradually became her dream as well.

This made me think that God also has a dream for us. But a lot of the times we're still like a little kid in His eyes, too young and immature to comprehend His dreams. His dreams don't make any sense to us and don't excite us. And we're most reluctant to submit to the trainings that are necessary and vital for our age.
So for the real little kids He used chocolates....but to get us really passionate about training and pursuing He used our dreams....our desires and yearnings, the things that will excite us and motivate us to do everything needed...until we're old enough to understand His dream.

If I wait for my child to understand how and why I'd like her to play piano, by the time she's ready she's almost too old and she has missed the prime time for training. But if I get her started, however method I use, when she's older, and when she can understand, the basic skills are already there for her to carry on.
I think most parents will somehow experience this training process at some point. And as children of God we can also know that our Father God has a bigger picture, a bigger purpose than our understandings. We might not appreciate the hard trainings or whatever's involved from time to time, but one day when we suddenly "get it", and His dreams become our dreams, we'll thank Him for everything we have learned in the process. And when we're excited about His dream, we're already on solid ground ready to go on to see that dream fulfilled.

As seen by Susan @ 4:00 PM

The prophetic school update

It's been 3 weeks now we had two meetings of prophetic schools at our house.
This Friday day school(level 1) we had 35 adults and numerous kids, and it looks like it's still growing. So we're changing to a church hall. I'm a bit sad about the change but it's ok, the night school is still at our place at this stage.

It's amazing... people come from Taree(which is 3 hours drive),New Castle, inner city, northern beaches, Penrith...every week just for the meeting.

Our house is still ok for the adults, but on a rainy day it's crowded for the kids.

Funny this morning Peter told me he had a dream last night, and then Ellie had a dream,too. And their dreams were almost identical!
Both dreamed to a certain point and then Kate woke them up....
This kind of makes me nervous....

As seen by Susan @ 3:49 PM