Morning Dedication

"Morning Dedication" From The Valley of Vision- A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions...

ALMIGHTY GOD,

As I cross the threshold of this day

I commit myself, soul, body, affairs, friends, to Thy care;

Watch over, keep, guide, direct, sanctify, bless me.

Incline my heart to Thy ways;

Mould me wholly into the image of Jesus, as a potter forms clay;

May my lips be a well-tuned harp to sound Thy praise;

Let those around see me living by Thy Spirit,

trampling the world underfoot,

unconformed to lying vanities,

transformed by a renewed mind,

clad in the entire armour of God,

shining as a never-dimmed light,

showing holiness in all my doings.

Let no evil this day soil my thoughts, words, hands.

May I travel miry paths with a life pure from spot or stain.

In needful transactions let my affection be in heaven,

and my love soar upwards in flames of fire,

my gaze fixed on unseen things,

my eyes open to the emptiness, fragility,

mockery of earth and its vanities.

May I view all things in the mirror of eternity,

waiting for the coming of my Lord,

listening for the last trumpet call,

hastening unto the new heaven and earth.

Order this day all my communications according to Thy wisdom,

and to the gain of mutual good.

Forbid that I should not be profited or made profitable.

May I speak each word as if my last word,

and walk each step as my final one.

If my life should end today,

let this be my best day.

AMEN.

Faith: New Levels

My family loves traveling. My father and I were talking about some of our favorite places we have visited so far in the world. Mine, of course being Greece. The culture, faith community, Biblical history, scenery, and cuisine all made the country a place I would love to go back to. My father then mentioned their neighbor Turkey as one of the most spectacular places he's ever visited.

One of the intriguing things he mentioned were underground cities, levels and levels deep. At first I thought he meant layers of cities that were thousands of years old that were built on top of each other. No, he meant actual cities, big enough for up to 20,000 people, and up to 20 levels deep! This is so fascinating to me. We spent some time researching around and looking up pics of Derinkuyu, Turkey. Derinkuyu was the largest of these cities, but there are over 200 underground cities in the area. These were not just holes in the ground where you would hang out for a little while. These were fully functioning cities with toilets, a ventilation system, a system of keeping livestock (what?!?!), multi-room houses, wine-presses, chapels.... how did they do all of this 2000 years ago? The crazy thing is that these were only discovered in the 1960s and people had been living in a city above all of this for YEARS.

The underground cities were intended as a place for protection from invasion and, more importantly, they became a hiding place for Christians escaping persecution from the Roman Empire. I don't think in our very blessed situation in America we understand what this "kind" of Christianity is. At the least we tend to forget. Their whole life was in hiding just to stay alive, because of their faith in Jesus Christ. We are so blessed to be able to worship, evangelize, fellowship, and live freely as we follow Jesus. To their advantage, and many other circles of believers around the world today, I cannot imagine any "luke-warm" Christians devoting their lives to living in those caves. No half-hearted believers were pretending to be a Follower as they fled for their lives and hid. Hypocrites were not polluting their fellowship of believers.

I pray my faith would increase everyday to that of those blessed saints. And I am so grateful that they are in Paradise now with their Savior who promised them (and us):
"He has caused us to be born again to a living HOPE through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an INHERITANCE that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you...in this you REJOICE, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various TRIALS, so that the tested GENUINENESS of your FAITH..may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." (1 Peter 1:3-7)

Keeps things in perspective.

check it...
http://www.picsroll.com/2009/09/derinkuyu-mysterious-underground-city.html

new things

almost all the things i learned today:
::i sleep past my alarm much better when i feel the weight of my own down comforter as opposed to someone else's.
::when i turn onto park street, it will have changed 4 names before i turn off of it.
::north holiday hills is off of the same street as International Aid.
::I am very inconsistent when signing my signature "carolyn moeller".
::the trick to creating a contract is making many ways to get out of it if you need to.
::tapanga, from Boy Meets World, does a random commercial for "style". and looks old.
::i forget my phone charger about 50% of the time when i stay at someone's house.
::the going rate for pet groomers in the area is an average of $40.
::it takes about 16 baby wipes to clean up a nasty poo diaper.
::there are plans to put up a Mosque at the 9/11 site in New York.
and that was the most ridiculous, inappropriate thing i learned today.

The Goal

Psalm 77
"I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, and He will hear me. In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord; in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying..."
"Will the Lord spurn forever, and never again be favorable? Has his steadfast love forever ceased? Are His promises at an end for all time?"
"I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your wonders of old, I will ponder all your work, and meditate on Your mighty deeds."
"Your way O God is Holy."
"What God is great like our God?"
"You are the God who works wonders."

I write this to reinforce it into my mind. To remember the Almighty God I claim to follow. The things I turn over and over in my mind, in perspective of what God is doing in this planet, turn out to be really quite small. The frustrating question at stake...am I being used to my fullest potential for the Lord? Will I ever? Was my preparation in vain? O God forgive me, us, for making You too small in my eyes, or rather, for making myself too large for my life which "is not my own."

We have 1 thing to keep in tact, just 1 thing. 1 thing. Our relationship with Christ. [said many ways.] to "seek first His Kingdom", to "delight ourselves in Him" "to offer up ourselves as a living sacrifice" to "present yourself approved to God" ... God will direct and use our lives from this point. Why are we so petty to think that He wont? Or too proud to think that He will use us the way we think we should be? Perhaps we, I, have skewed the goal.

My favorite D.L. Moody quote is : "The world has yet to see what God can do with and for and through and in and by the man who is fully and wholly consecrated to Him. I will try my utmost to be that man".

My job and goal is to be that [wo]man. I must trust God will use me as He sees fit beyond this commitment. "Commit your way to the Lord. Trust in Him, and He will act." (psalm 37) And what a privilege it is to serve the KING! I pray that I am considered worthy to serve Him, and that I keep that (serving Him) the undefiled goal.

1 more invention

The ideas just keep coming. This one i know Chris, my husband, would greatly appreciate because I press snooze at least 6 times a morning from 6:45 until 7:15.

Silent alarm clocks.

Inventions...

My sister and I were just thinking through some things today we want to invent. I think we could really capitalize on these ideas.

water-proof towel
Glow in the dark sunglasses
Solar powered flashlights
Submarine screen doors
A book on how to read
Inflatable dart boards
A dictionary index
Powdered water
Pedal powered wheel chairs
Water proof tea bags
Watermelon seed sorter
Zero proof alcohol
Reusable ice cubes
See through toilet tissue
Skinless bananas
Do it yourself roadmap
Helicopter ejector seat
Unsweetened sweetner
0 calorie ice cream
high heeled flats
non skin contact tanning beds
silent car horns
non-peddling bicycle
fart detector
invisible sweaters
reversible microwaves
cut proof knives
perfect pitch pills
Dummy books for Dummies.

Ooops...looks like someone is already getting ahead of us here...

http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Book-Touchstone-book/dp/0671212095/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274380034&sr=1-1

Got to go...have a lot of work to do.

"Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus..."

We were singing this hymn at my sister's graduation from Wheaton College, and I thought what a beautiful, life-altering prayer this is...

May the mind of Christ, my Savior,
Live in me from day to day,
By His love and power controlling
All I do and say.

May the Word of God dwell richly
In my heart from hour to hour,
So that all may see I triumph
Only through His power.

May the peace of God my Father
Rule my life in everything,
That I may be calm to comfort
Sick and sorrowing.

May the love of Jesus fill me
As the waters fill the sea;
Him exalting, self abasing,
This is victory.

May I run the race before me,
Strong and brave to face the foe,
Looking only unto Jesus
As I onward go.

May His beauty rest upon me,
As I seek the lost to win,
And may they forget the channel,
Seeing only Him.

[lyrics by Kate B. Wilkinson, music by A. Cyril Barnham-Gould, both 1925]

"For Freedom, Christ Has Set Us Free"

In reading through Romans 6 the other day, I realized a very important truth that I was ignoring that has been costing me dearly...

I tend to be an anxious person. Anxiety and fear come naturally to me. At times I feel downright enslaved to it. Yes, I have learned to overcome and recognize most it, to cope, and to learn when it is illogical. There are even times when it is not a struggle- by the grace of God. But I had been missing what it really is at the root. It is sin. I was reading this passage from Romans 6 - "our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin." - when I was struck with the reality of anxiety.

The well known passage Philippians 4:6 states "do not be anxious about anything." I have never so clearly seen that when I choose to let anxiety rule my life, I am choosing to let sin rule my life. I am choosing not to trust God, to diminish His character, to make God too small and to magnify my worries. I "justified" it as being just who I am and something to work on. I was not viewing it as a rebellion against God. After all, it wasn't what I naturally thought of as sin-slander, sexual impurity, stealing, cheating etc.

What a relief and breakthrough it was to hear the truth earlier in Romans 6 "just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." This perspective has given me new motivation for putting aside my old self "anxiety" and putting on the new self in Christ- peace, joy, faith. Christ died to set me free from my sin, not so that I would continue to live in it! I will type out this last passage in Romans 6 which deeply speaks to me.

"for the death He died He died to sin, once for all, but the life He lives He lives to God. Let NOT sin therefore REIGN in your mortal body, to make you obey its PASSIONS. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for RIGHTEOUSNESS. For sin will have NO DOMINION over you..."

You have your own tendencies and know its never a breeze to put aside "self". It is a daily dying to sin and self. But we can always claim God's promise in 2 Corinthians 12:10. "My grace is sufficient for you, Carolyn." (carolyn added) :)

I grew up in the D.C. Talk era, and I can definitely relate with this line from their hit "In the Light"

"What's going on inside of me? I despise my own behavior. This only serves to confirm, my suspicions, that I'm just a (wo)man in need of a Savior."

entering ...

the world of the blog. you're welcome. ;)

Entering this blog scene at 11:00pm at night, on a monday i add, i will make my debut into the blog world with this:

today i opened my back door just in time to see a deer running past. in our suburbian subdivision. no idea where he could have come from. clearly lost, he chose to do what seemed to be the best decision at the time and jumped into our pond. i have never seen a deer swim before and it made my night. he did make it to the other side at what seemed to be a better situation to him- trees and foilage. but he was still stuck. poor lil guy.

well, that's it. no deep thoughts and eloquent writing today. i'm sure you could create your own analogies about the spiritual life from this short memoir. even now, they're flooding in...