Moving Forward

Worship everywhere!

So I've been reading through the Gospel of John in the last few days and I always forget how much I love the way John writes and explains things. He gets to the point without neglecting anything Jesus said or did. Anyways John tells us that when Jesus met the woman at the well He talked to her about worship and it's place a little bit. As I was reading through this story that I've read so many times something popped up for me.
We go to church on Sunday and worship God. We sometimes go to church on Wednesday to worship God as well. But how many times during the week do you actually take the time to worship the Lord? I'm not just talking about singing some songs, I'm talking about being in CONSTANT communication with the Lord. Why is it so easy for us to sing on Sunday or Wednesday and be content with that being our only worship? Worship is so much more than a few well-crafted words and notes on a page.
In all that we do we are called to worship the Lord. Every act should somehow glorify God. The glory He gets... that's our worship of Him.
Now, the Samaritan woman is talking about an actual physical place, Mount Gerizim, to worship, but Jesus proceeds to tell her that a time is coming and is here when it won't matter WHERE you worship the Lord. He tells her that it's HOW you worship Him, in spirit and in truth. In spirit and truth. This is huge... and it's hard sometimes. Every word we say and everything we do can be an act of worship. Worshipping in truth is what gets people a lot of the time too. In churches, it becomes a performance, so in our hearts we receive the glory because we're doing it for ourselves, not for the glory of God. To truly be 100% percent worshipping the Lord we have to lay everything else aside. This is a daily task too... laying down your life daily. Being a "Christian" doesn't mean going to church one day a week, or when it's going to impress someone, it means living completely surrendered to Jesus. Worship is similar in that way.
Let's go back to constant communication with the Lord. For me, it's an all day convo with a best friend type of thing. Letting Him know (what He already knows) what's going on at that exact moment in my day, being angry at Him, or upset, or rejoicing and laughing. It all sounds so amatuer and it is. Constant communication with the Lord changes the way you act, think, and do.
I hope this is making sense. In a lot of ways this is stuff we already "know", but are we doing it everyday? It's sounds so easy and it can be, there's no need to make life more complicated that it already is. This also sounds so simplistic and happy like a warm spring day, but it's much more then that. It's so much deeper than I'm letting on, I suppose. Deeper doesn't mean complicated though.
I hope that you find yourself in constant communication with the Father this week. I hope that you take an attitude of worship into your everyday lives.
On a completely different note... my sister, Liz, just found out that her new baby, Alexandria Marie with be born by C-section on May 2! I can't wait!! This time I won't be 4 hours away and dying to see my new niece. :)
I don't think much else is new though. I've seen a couple of decent movies lately, I got to hang with Beach, Trent was here, I got to hang with some extended family recently too.
Ah, I've had a headache for 3 weeks now and it's kinda kicking my butt. I've only had one day in those 3 weeks when it was gone. Before you start telling me I need to go to a doctor, number 1... I don't have insurance and number 2... I know it's stress related. This whole moving thing along with trying to find a job and not wanting to say goodbye to people is weighing me down a bit. But I'll be good! and life will be good and move on, so prayers are welcome, but no worries folks!
I've also been hanging out with Becky Keller, old youth pastor, mentor, and friend and it's been great. She's so uplifting to be around and she's so faithful in her friendship to me. I highly recommend being in a relationship of this type with someone because we all could use spiritual guidance at some point, right? Everything seems so much easier when you surround yourself with those who love the Lord.
Wow, this is long, but you know you loved it! Be blessed. Lata!

Labels: soapbox

posted by Moving Forward @ 3:48 PM 0 Comments

so much

When I last left you I had just gotten back from Vegas with the fam. Well a ton of stuff has happened since then, so much I can't put it all on here because lets face it... I'm not all about blogging these days.
February flew by. The girls from college came to visit for a weekend and it was awesome as always. Carley is engaged and will be married to Matt on August 12th this year, so I've gotta start saving money for my dress and everything else that comes with being in a wedding. I'm really excited. The dresses she chose are gorgeous. V-day was welcomed by a blizzard-type storm and we got about 14 inches of snow... needless to say I had a snow week that week! It was kinda nice, minus the whole not making any money thing.
The Monday after v-day I flew to Phoenix to drive back here with my brother. He decided to move here on the drop of a dime which is crazy. He's living with my sister and Terry now... maybe he'll grow up now that he's away from my parents. He already has two jobs so he's already doing better than he was in AZ. My parents were in town from Feb 23rd through the 26th picking out final colors and such for the new house. It was nice to spend time with them, even though I had just seen them on monday of that week.
Other then that I've been working and job hunting. Since my bro lives with Liz and Terry now I'm not gonna move in there, so I'll be staying with my Aunt until we're ready to move into the other house. It'll be good. My extended family is great. I'm still in talks with the United Methodist Church in Plano, so we'll see what happens there. I've been spending a lot of time at Wheatland Salem UMC (my home church) and it's been awesome being with the people there. I never feel more at home in a church setting than I do there. I love it.
Like I talked about in a previous post I'm not good at dealing with all this change, yet change is what I desire most. Make sense? I'm reading a book right now and it's made me realize how tiny I am by myself, but I can do some really huge stuff for the Lord. I can do that. And I'm ready to do that. It's such a cool time for me (aside from the fact I have no money) because I can do anything I want to and go anywhere I want to. I'm not just looking for a new job in IL... I'm looking everywhere. I'll go anywhere. I guess I'm just waiting on the Lord to make it clear. We'll see! How exciting though, yeah?
Well that's it for now. Hope all is well with you. :)

posted by Moving Forward @ 3:36 PM 0 Comments