Choices

I love how God just loves to slide a piece of vital information that could be life-changing, if I allow it to, into a what felt like it was going to be just another regular day. When will I realise that God doesn't want me to allow a day to pass by in ordinary fashion? time is precious. I've been feeling empty lately..lonely, fed up..sick of me being on facebook for a large amount of my day because I don't know what to do with my day. God's blessed me with all this free time, I should be appreciating every moment of it. Once I was sick with this sick and tired feeling, I turned to my faithful friend and BAM! God's gentle and loving voice spoke softly to my heart. It shouldn't be my emotions that are leading me but I should be asking the Holy Spirit what CHOICE I should be making about the way I'm feeling. Emotions aren't reliable, God is. It's only me who decides how to act and if I'm feeling empty I should be making the decision to come to Jesus to fill me and change my heart, not choosing to spend the rest of my day feeling miserable.

Romans 15:13 - May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

So I urge you today, ask the Holy Spirit to guide you in making decisions on how your emotions will effect your day because like I said time is precious.

Jesus most definately saves!

Well, for a long time now I've had writers block on the blog front and I'm guessing that is because my mind has been quite cluttered. In a sermon some weeks ago, the theme was about being rooted in God's love (Ephesians 3:14-19) and that some of us could be like a christmas tree: pretty on the outside but no roots or like a tree that is ready to be taken from the pot and planted in good soil or like a tree planted in bad soil that isn't growing well. I quickly discovered with every tear that dropped that God wanted to do some things in me so that I could be rooted in His love and ready to face whatever conditions to be thrown at me. I was rooted in the wrong things and my past was pulling the strings as if I were a puppet. That is no way to live, Jesus died and rose so that I could live life to it's fullest. I'll tell you a key thing, ignoring the hard topics of your life doesn't work. Remember, you don't have to do it alone; that's why God made us to be in relationship with others. God provided me with amazing people to go through the process with. If you want to be rooted in God's love you need to get uprooted from any nasty stuff first which means acknowledging it. So I did and it was the best decision I could have made. God is bigger than any circumstance or emotion. Once I acknowledged that I needed to be uprooted from the unhealthy, unsettling soil; God revealed more to me including the next steps that I needed to take. I took those steps and I let go. Such a weight has been lifted. A new hope has been given to me. Freedom. So while Christians all over the world have been reminding themselves of what Jesus' act of the cross means; that He saved us, I can encourage you all by saying that not only does the cross mean that we were saved from death but Jesus won our freedom for now. Thankyou my Jesus, my saviour! To finish I just wanna ask you: what are your roots in? did you sweep anything under the carpet? are you living out Jesus' gift of the cross?

The Lion and the Mouse

Along, long time ago a LION was awakened from his deep slumber by a frantic mouse running over his face. Rising up viciously, he caught him and was about to devourer him because of the untimely interruption.  

The mouse squeaked and stared directly into his eyes.   "If you would only spare my life, I would be sure to repay your kindness," offered the mouse. The Lion laughed a hearty laugh and decided to let him go. 

It happened shortly after this that the Lion was caught by some hunters, who bound him by strong ropes to the ground.  The Mouse,

recognizing his  anguished roar, hurriedly scuttled towards the hideous noise where he came upon the lion trapped underneath  net. On seeing this, the mouse began to gnaw the rope with his teeth and set him free.

"You scorned the idea that I could ever help you, now you know that a mouse is just as important as a lion.”

When I read this fable that I will be looking at with my year three class next week, six ideas came to mind.

1) Don't place yourself in a proud and superior attitude, everybody needs help at some point in their life and always from God.

2) Don't look at outward appearances otherwise judgements may come back to bite you on the bum

3) If someone does a good deed for someone then they will be in some form repayed in a good deed/way back because they deserve it

4) If you call out in a time of trouble: especially God, you will be rescued.

5) Different people can get along and help each other

6) Never wake an angry lion!

Little Aims

Today is the day that people generally look back on their year that has just been. Sometimes that can be really good medicine for the soul. It's important to not just let life pass you by but actually make the most of it, which is why I think it is a great idea to think about what's been going on in your life; accept things and decide on things that you would like to change or achieve in the following. To put it simply, I'm talking about New Year's resolutions. I haven't had much time to reflect lately as I've been bogged down with assignment work but I know that I want to make five accomplishable New Year's resolutions; things to aim for and to put things into perspective. I encourage you to do the same! Don't dwell on the past, worrying about things you can't change now. Be positive, be active!

Never too old to...

There seems to be some hidden rules about what you use to do as a child isn't acceptable when you reach a certain age. Some things I agree with like grannies shouldn't wear a skirt that's quite a distance above their knees and sucking a dummy when you're a teenager. However....

You're never too old to like disney or any other animated film

You're never too old to fly on the swings

You're never too old to be bribed with chocolate

You're never too old for cuddles

You're never too old for dancing like no one's there or to dance at all in fact

You're never too old to get excited about your birthday or christmas

You're never too old to learn

You're never too old to hate housework

You're never too old to be afraid

You're never too old to eat jelly

You're never too old to have a box of treasured things

You're never too old to play games

You're never too old to dress up

You're never too old to hope for something

You're never too old to love surprises

You're never too old to have a money box

You're never too old to giggle at silly things with your friends

You're never too old to need you're parents

You're never too old to make new friendships

You're never too old to PLAY IN THE SNOW!!!

Poetry

The other day I had a literacy seminar on how to teach poetry to key stage two children, which I was pleased about because I love poetry and I had just had the most boring mathematics seminar on how to make links for a medium term plan. I came across a poet I had never heard of before, his name was Benjamin Zephaniah..heard of him? We were asked to read some poems from his book 'talking turkeys' and then to perform them from to the class. I love performing so i thoroughly enjoyed interpretting his work. The class clapped at the end so I guess that's a good dign :-) When I was reading the different poems with my group, the words were like little rays of sunshine. He writes about deep topics with such a great light-hearted sense of humour. I think I may just buy the book! Anyway, I enjoyed reading them so much I thought I should just share a one.

Eat your words

I am a veggie table

A table made of veg,

There's so much fruit upon me

All living on the edge,

Life is hard

But so are plates

And tea can be quite hot,

And vegetarian poets

Make me nervous quite alot.

De-stressing

I have been having nearly fainting spells lately so I had a blood test and the results came back clear. Therefore, the only other reason that people have suggested and I agree, that they are a result of stress. So now it's my mission to find ways to de-stress. I know that I can gain strength through Jesus building me up and giving me peace in my quiet times with him but is there any other actions that I could be doing that could lead to the disappearance of my fainting spells along with the stress?

The stress aint gonna go away anytime soon with my choice of degree and the other activities I do alongside so I guess I need to start being proactive and not allowing myself to get caught sinking like as if I'm in quick sand.