15 Minute Religious Challenge

Most of you who frequently read my blog may be insulted by what I am about to say, but I feel it necessary to set the record straight. As you know, I am a mother, wife, entrepreneur, soccer mom, sometime girl scout leader, and I am fighting a very rare cancer. I am also, for those of you who do not know, a Christian. A devout Christian and I love worshipping the Lord. I am not a Saint, by no means, but I do try my very best to live up to His expectations. I am telling you all this now because my Pastor has issued a challenge to us. My pastor has asked us to start giving the first 15 minutes of every day to the Lord. Give our maker, our forgiver, the one who gave us His only son to deliver us from our sins, 15 minutes a day to just be still, pray, talk to Him, and truly listen. When my pastor first asked us to do this—to accept this challenge—I was a little taken aback. I did not fear the challenge itself, but I was afraid that I might not be able to sustain the challenge and let myself down, my church, my family, and Lord. Then I realized this…These 15 minutes are strictly between me and my Lord. No one else needs to know anything about my daily conversation with the Lord. So if I go a day or two without keeping this commitment, the only people I would be letting down are me and the Lord Himself. I would never intentionally do anything to let my Father down, that includes my father in the living flesh, and especially my Father up in the Heavens. With this in mind, I decided to accept this very important, yet slightly intimidating challenge.

I have “signed on” for quite a few challenges before (including weight loss challenges), but I never won. Part of the reason why I never won was because I could never follow through to the end. For one reason or another I would always drop out of the challenge. I made excuse after excuse for why I could not continue in the challenge because I was so ashamed of falling behind. It was not until I began thinking about this 15 minute challenge that I realized that the only person I ever let down was myself. I may have fooled a lot of people, but the only people I really hurt and really let down was myself and the Lord. He has always had faith in me even when others did not…even when I did not. This time will be different. I am telling you all this, because my blog will no longer be strictly limited to parenting success anymore. From this day forward, you will start to see some blog posts regarding my 15 minutes with the Lord. This include articles, excerpts from our conversation, quotes from the Bible, etc. If you are not a Christian or do not believe the Lord is our Saviour and that God gave his only son (Jesus) to us for forgiveness of our sins (past, present, and future), then you may not like my blog as much anymore. I hate to lose any readers but I do understand if you are offended by religious posts that you will no longer continue to read my blog. Hopefully there won’t be too many of you leaving. For those of you who are staying, please feel free to ask questions or make comments about anything you see or read. I promise to publish all comments or questions to the blog so that everyone will know what everybody else is thinking or feeling.

The blog posts that pertain to the Bible or the 15 minutes I spent with the Lord will start off with the subject line of, “Toni’s Interpretation of the Bible -------“ For example, my blog post today would read, “Toni’s interpretation of the Bible—Psalm 3:4 which reads “With my voice I cry to the Lord, and He hears and answers me out of His holy hill. In this portion of the Bible, King David is between a rock and a hard place. David has to decide between losing his kingdom AND his life, or he would lose his son. He seeks help and advice from the Lord. I have been in situations similar to the one King David is rustling with. They might not be as crushing as David’s, but in my heart I was torn between what to do. What I need to remember and never forget is that I should always seek guidance from the Lord. I should take my problems to the Lord and truly believe in my heart of hearts that He will tell me how to handle the situation. The trick here is , YOU MUST BELIEVE. You cannot have any doubt, you have to truly believe that once you take your problem to the Lord and lay it out on the table, you are done. The Lord will handle that problem or He will tell YOU how to handle that problem IF you believe in him.

Let Go And Let God
Have a Happy and Blessed Day, and Enjoy Your New Year. May all your wishes come through in 2010.

Sincerely,
Toni