A good cut of melon on a hot summer day

With three kids awake before seven, it can be a long day. It could be even worse when looking at my phone. I still felt a little cold and checked the temperature, -2. It was a good time to thank God. Here I am in a house that is just three feet, some wood, insulation and a heating vent away from this brutal temperature. I am blessed that I am on the inside looking out rather than the outside looking in. I say a prayer for those who don’t have homes and hopefully found some warm place to be indoors. Life can be full of glass half empty or half full moments. This weather makes me think what five months from now will be like. This weather makes me think how crazy this world can be. Five months from now we will forget about this cold, cold weather and start saying things like I can’t believe how warm it is. I look back to last summer and one of my favorite summertime things, relaxing and eating some good cantaloupe.

Cantaloupe has to be one of my all-time favorite fruits. It has such a smooth and great taste. The problem with this fruit, it’s like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get. It’s not easy to pick out a good melon. I have tried all the methods: smelling, tapping, looking distinctly at the color and choosing one based on size. Sometimes they are great and sometimes they are a complete failure. I am about 50-50 with picking a good melon. Yet when I am right, there is nothing better than this beautiful great tasting fruit in the middle of the summer. It’s sometimes hard to pick great fruit, but it’s worth the gamble everytime.

 Good tasting fruit can be tough to find, but Paul uses good fruit as an example for what a good Christian looks like.

 Galatians 5:22-23…

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”

 Being a Christian and living life according to God’s way can be a losing battle. We can struggle daily to keep our composure. Sometimes we are good fruit, people can see us being full of everything talked about in this scripture. Other times we can fall short, we can be bad fruit. It’s a daily struggle what we bring to the table. There are days I do extremely well, but there are days I fall completely short. I mess up, I lose my cool, and am bad fruit. It’s a daily and sometimes hourly battle to be good fruit.

This is the challenge with faith. We have to look on the inside and produce on the outside. We can know everything the Bible teaches but unless we show the characteristics show above we fail. Living life God’s way is a challenge. Some days are extremely hard, but it’s during those times we are especially called to be good fruit.

 What will you become today? With this weather, with the bad stuff going on in your life, you can choose to be bitter, angry, mopey and miserable. What happens to bad fruit? It gets thrown out, people don’t eat it. People want to surround themselves with people that lift them up. Not saying you have to fake being happy (There are fruits that look great but taste awful) but knowing there so many things to still be thankful for can be a great start. Become what you believe, be full of love and peace today.

 

Have a great day.

Good or bad

We have a chance to be good or bad. My son Ty can be one of the most lovingly and sharing kids. It's normal of him to go somewhere and not eat all of his food so he could share some with brother and sister. He will go to the doctors office and always get a little sticker for his siblings. Yet while he can be good, he can also be bad.

Ty had some issues with listening to his Sunday School teachers. He bent one of his teachers fingers around and also was repeatedly hitting his teacher. Not the behavior we expect. For the good he can do, the bad he can also do. We can be the same way. While we might not hurt our teachers like Ty did, we have plenty of choices to do good or bad.

What we do can effect us in positive and negative ways. Listen to what Paul says in Romans 6:21-23...
What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

There are bad things we do that result in bad. This is what happens with sin, we can do things and face the punishment in the end. When you do bad things, bad results often happen. When you do good, good things can follow. Doing bad things against God's will is sin, nothing good happens from sin. Yet with faith in Christ, we are offered something even better, eternal life. You don't have to be ashamed anymore when you have Christ. You can be good.

You can do bad or you can do good. What do you regret in life? What if you didn't have to be haunted by those regrets? This is what Christ offers, no matter how much bad you have done, you can be modified. You don't have to be the person of your past and you can be a better person in the future. I love Ty, hopefully we will see him do more good and less bad. What about you?

Have a great day.

If your friends suck, maybe it’s you that sucks and they’re all awesome

Having friends can make all the difference in the world.

There have been scientific facts of what having friends in our lives can do for us.  Lower blood pressure, higher happiness in life and other things you can find out if you go to the Mayo Clinic website.  It’s nice to have great friends.

Friends came through for Paul in Acts 27:3…

“The next day we landed at Sidon; and Julius, in kindness to Paul, allowed him to go to his friends so they might provide for  his needs.”

As Paul was sailing as a jailed prisoner, he was able to go see his friends to meet for his needs.  Friends can meet a need in our lives.  Friends can make a huge difference in the lives of others.  Sometimes though, we are not the best friends.  We think of our own thoughts and wants above others.

There was a time I thought I was really good friends with someone else.  We were talking online one time and I noticed the conversation was all about him (This isn’t always a bad thing). So I kept talking and saw if he would swing the conversation around, her never did. We were decent friends, but I realized the majority of the time we just talked about what he wanted to do.

Finally I decided to stop calling him and saw if he contacted me back. He never did. As a result, we went our separate ways. There are times I have not been a good friend and need to work on it. A good friend can make all the difference in the world.

I am glad to be surrounded by so many loving people.  There are things I need to do to be a better friend. What are something’s you like in a friend? What are things you can improve on to be a better friend? Are you a friend that can meet other’s needs? If not, you can improve and help someone out in a tough time. Try to work on being a better friend today.

Have a great day.

Opinions can be good

Arm chair quarterback, columnist, talk radio and so many more can be known for giving their opinions.

Facebook can be funny because of all the funny things people can say or do.

I would say the same goes to Pinterest and they can crack me up.

One recently suggested that “Pinterest was created by a group of men who are tricking women everywhere into cooking, cleaning and working out.”

Cracked me up.

Opinions.

Opinions can be taken as a bad thing, like unwanted advice.

We can take some Opinions in a bad way.

Are there times when opinions are good?

Sometimes opinions can change our mind to do something better or give us a better idea.

I had knee trouble for a long time.

I went to a specialist and he told me there was nothing he could do, I had a problem with my knee that couldn’t be fixed.

I was down, but Hailee worked with a friend who used another doctor in town and got me in to see them.

They told me something was wrong with my knee and they think they could fix it.

I trusted their opinion and got the surgery.

Best decision ever.

Sometimes listening to others opinions can be a good thing.

Paul was on trial and people brought false witnesses and told the judge wrong things.

That judge didn’t think he did anything wrong but sent him for a second opinion (Governor Felix), but first he stated his, this is some of the letter written to Felix…

“I wanted to know why they were accusing him, so I brought him to their Sanhedrin. I found that the accusation had to do with questions about their law, but there was no charge against him that deserved death or imprisonment.”

Getting a second opinion to make sure you make the right call.

Paul’s life was on the line and while their might have been other motives for not naming him innocent rather than sending him to Felix, he got a second opinion when a man’s life was on the line accused of things he didn’t do.”

Opinions can help.

Opinions are not always evil.

They can help give a great perspective.

They gave a great perspective on Paul and how he did nothing wrong.

Opinions can be helpful even if we are stubborn.

How has listening to another person’s opinion helped you out?

I loved my second opinion about my knees.

They are great and improved drastically since the surgery.

Don’t just automatically ignore another’s opinion.

Think about it, it might help you out even if it’s not what you want to hear.

Have a great day.