Each Day Already is a Challenge

Monday Meanderings

Every once in a while, I go to this web site to see if my favorite pin is still available. One day, I'm going to buy it for myself. It's the one about the Proverbs 31 woman.
http://scripturewear.com/onlinestore.html

I was conducting a Bible study one time and the Proverbs 31 woman was part of the study. I think the study was Becoming a Woman of Excellence by Cynthia Held. Have you ever seen/done any of her studies? I love them.

As we read about the Proverbs 31 woman, so many of the women in the class said that they just could not be like that woman. I told them - if they were totally responsible for the household, including the cleaning, laundry, shopping, plus responsible for feeding her family, and all of the other things that women tend to (besides holding down full time jobs) that they were probably closer than they thought. I also shared a favorite paraphrase by Beverly LaHaye. It can be found in the book Spirit Controlled Family Living by Tim and Bev LaHaye.

In the paraphrase, LaHaye says:

31:14 She shops wisely at the local supermarket and fresh-vegetable stands for the best buys in foods and provides well-balanced nutritious meals that are attractively servced.
31:15 She rises early in the morning and serves a good breakfast to her husband and children before driving her children to school and starting her day's schedule.
31:16 She holds home Tupperware parties. From the money she earns, she pays her children's tuition for a Christian education.
31:17 She goes to the local health club and exercises her body to keep physically fit and strong.

Don't you just love the part about Tupperware parties? I do. These words and phrases that we understand. In fact, LaHaye calls this The Twentieth-Century Woman of Proverbs.

Anyway, I just love the pin that depicts the Proverbs 31 woman. There are new pins too, since the last time I visited the site above. Like the one about being a New Creation.

I don't get any kick backs for mentioning this site. I just like it. I think the women who make the pins are stay at home moms.

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I know I have mentioned taking sermon notes before, but I'm not sure if I mentioned that our pastor provides fill-in-the-blank pages to take notes. I dutifully fill them in like everyone else. But I make lots and lots of scribbles in the margins. I think some of the pastor's best words are those ones I've put in the margins. Maybe because they're not rehearsed, but, more likely, the Spirit giving him some words to share as he goes along.

I never did like coloring in the lines, you know?

The sermon yesterday morning and the study last night were about hurting and healing and forgiveness. Big topic(s).

Here are some of my margin notes:

Want to get well? Want to get even? You can't do both. Resentment and bitterness hurt you and everyone around you.

What you resist the most is what you become. Your focus is what you teach and what you learn and what you live. Focus on peace and joy and become peaceful and full of joy.

Negative and faulty data (that we receive from others and ourselves) never disappears. Your self-esteem is defined by what the most important person in your life thinks about you. Make sure that most important person is God...then yourself. What others think should not overshadow what God thinks of you. And God perceives you as clean. (Jesus saw to that!)

God never wastes a hurt.



The main points of our pastor's sermon were:

Prescription for Healing:

1) Reveal my hurt. Learn to be honest with yourself, with God and with someone you trust.

2) Release those who have hurt me. Why forgive? Because I need forgiveness - today, tomorrow and to get better. If I need forgiveness, so do those who have hurt me.

3) Replace old tapes with God's Truths.

Romans 12:2 (NLT) "Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think."

Ephesians 1:4 (TLB) "God chose us to be his very own through what Christ would do for us; he decided then to make us holy in his eyes without a single fault -- we who stand before him covered with his love."

4) Refocus on the future.

Job 11:13-26 NIV "Yet if you devote your heart to Him and stretch out your hands to Him, if you put away the sin that is in your hand and allow no evil to dwell in your tent, then you will lift up your face without shame; you will stand firm and without fear. You will surely forget your trouble, recalling it only as waters going by."

I think this explains why one of my sisters calls me Pollyanna. She's always surprised at the hurts I seem to have forgotten. Our pastor shared that these verses say it's not only okay but important that we forget the hurts done to us - UNTIL WE NEED TO BE ABLE TO SHOW COMPASSION TO OTHERS BECAUSE WE HAVE BEEN THERE/DONE THAT. And then, we will only remember them as passing hurts. "recalling it only as waters gone by." Now I know why I'm made this way!

II Corinthians 1:4 (NCV) "He comforts us every time we have trouble, so when others have trouble, we can comfort them with the same comfort God gives us."

Yes, indeed, it all makes sense now.