ImNoBetterThanU

Do you raise your hands during worship? Do you pray out loud? Why? Why do you do these things? Is your heart in it? Often times the aforementioned actions are done to impress those around you. Or maybe you do those things to hide the lies of your "private" life and private sin from others. Or you do them just because you feel like it is what you are supposed to do. When this occurs these all become ritual idols . You spend so much time thinking about these things that they themselves become an idol.  Others may be thinking that there is no need to raise your hands during worship or no need to pray out loud. Be careful, do not let these actions become idle rituals either. There is meaning behind the lifting of our hands. It shows surrender and we are designed to worship. Just send anyone to a sporting event, concert, (or whatever it is that gets someone excited. You scream, raise your hands, jump up and down, just to name a few). Praying out loud (or even just speaking c

I feel like that is what God is wanting me to do these days. He has been doing such an amazing work in my heart over the last month. For several months now he has been telling me to be a better steward. Not only of my finances, but of everything He has blessed me with. My job, time, friends, family, health, etc. I feel that I have been doing a great job of being a better steward in all areas...but we all know God will allow trials to enter our lives in order to stretch us as individuals and make us more mature in the physical realm as well as the spiritual. Well, Friday July 30th my income dropped over $12,000.00 year. This is a significant amount of my net income. This happening at a time when my insurance renewal is due, vehicle maintenance is rapidly approaching, the need for new tires seem to be on the horizon, and that is just expenses related to my car! Needless to say, this is one of those trials. It was extremely discouraging initially, but I have an amazing peace about it

So I realize it has been a while since I have written a post. So much has happened since then. There is much to rejoice about! Will you rejoice with me? I will start with some great things about my son Andrew. I have kind of kept him out of the blog for a while, but this is worth sharing. Recently he graduated pre-K; at that time they had a math test of 100 problems of addition and subtraction. The children were then told they had five minutes to complete as many problems as they could. Well, my son Andrew completed all 100 and got them all correct! How incredibly exciting and awesome is that! WOOOHOOOOOO! I got to talk to him about it and he spoke to me longer than he ever had previously. We must have talked for a total of fifteen minutes or more. He told me about a medal he got and then he sang to me! It was incredible. Then a couple of weeks ago when we spoke he was reading with his mother when I called. So when he got on the phone he asked if I would like for him to read to me. A