Feeling ordinary

Jeremiah Burroughs says this:

“A Christian values every service of God so much that, though some may be in the eyes of the world and of natural reason a slight and empty business, beggarly emoluments, or foolishness, yet since God calls for it, the authority of the command so overawes his heart that he is willing to spend himself and to be spent in discharging it.

It is an expression of Luther’s that ordinary works, done in faith and from faith, are more precious than heaven and earth.”

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Let me translate:

4 things you should know about God’s control over your life today

Yesterday I experienced my second Father’s Day without a dad.

It was actually a pretty sweet weekend.

Thanks to the book of Esther, I was feeling filled with faith that God is working out this really complicated story out through things like dads.

I can rest my heart in the providence of God.

I can trust that His control is absolute.  It never fails.  It’s super complicated and always directed with the best of intentions.

#1 God’s control is absolute

Why no one needs to feel weird on father’s day

Happy Father’s Day.

What a complicated story our God is writing.

He is writing it through your father and mine.  He is writing it through the perfect dads out there and the broken and absent men.

Esther seems the perfect book to read on Father’s Day.

It’s a story of twisted circumstances, turned so strangely for the deliverance of God’s people.  It’s confusing to me.  The King decrees the Jews be killed and instead of just changing the King’s mind, God engineers a crazy series of random events to rescue His people.  Why the complicated plot?  Why the intrigue and drama?

Confessions of a coward

[This is a guest post from Annie Lent. One of my favorite people.  One of my favorite writers. Read more of her heart here.]

Maybe it’s because I have recently finished reading Exodus. Maybe it’s because I saw Zero Dark Thirty. Either or both, I cannot stop thinking about suffering.

I must admit, I am terrified of punishment, shame, torture. I am terrified of my need for comfort. I am ashamed of how much I fear suffering.

When I was younger, I used to read those books about Christian martyrs. I daydreamed about being killed for the sake of the gospel.

Hugs can’t save

I would like a hug, please.

I am open to receiving said hug from one of three people: (1) Jesus (2) my dad (3) my husband.

Bad news for me: short of the return of Christ, I’m not gonna get a physical hug from any one of those three people today.

Good news for you: I will use myself as a case study on how to fight discontentment!jcisbetter

Longing for something is not automatically bad.  Discontentment is what happens when that longing is so great that I begin to doubt the truth and turn to a savior other than Christ.