98%

The last three days have been so random.  Encouraging words one minute, words of conviction/correction the next.  Good decisions applied to my life. Then I make a Forrest Gump "Stupid is as stupid does" move that my friend Jen swears is an acting out manifestation of my new hair color!  Moments of thinking I am of little use immediately dashed by being used of God to move someone closer to Him.  Prayer with a god fearing friend that left me knowing I was at the foot of His throne and excited because I know He is going to turn our world upside down with His answer! Whew.  That was all before our service on Sunday morning!

We've been reading the book Weird by Craig Groeschel for a Sunday night discussion time at church.  This book rocked my world about 4 months ago and I was only too pleased to have the chance to share it's insights with other believers.  To say the conversations have been rich would be an understatement!  This past week we read on relationships and one sentence that Groeschel wrote has been working it's way in my mind and then my heart:

                "Have you noticed that we tend to judge others by their actions, but we judge ourselves by our intentions?"

Wow.  Now, maybe you are more evolved/self aware in your relationships and already understood this, but not me.  This blew me away. Truth so often does.  I am guilty of this very thing.  While I am a proponent of the truth that a person's actions are the primary evidence of their heart's desire, I need to be very careful in thinking that it is the whole story.  I am often so quick to want to write someone off because of their actions yet would be hurt if that were done to me.  Often, my intentions are good, but my follow through is anything but good.  Kind of like Paul, I know the good I want to do, but too much of the time I do the very thing I don't want to do.  But before you fear that I've gone soft and think we ought to let ourselves off the hook, I am riding the pendulum back to the word 'consistency'.  What are the consistent actions being witnessed by others? Again, from the wisdom of Jen, if I am spouting good, godly words 2% of the time, but the actions of the other 98% are belying the truth of those words in my life, chances are my intentions aren't good. Oh how I want to live those percentages in the opposite direction!! Just some external processing here that I hope makes me think and act differently....and challenges you to the same! :)

Craving what Redbox doesn't have....

Today, I drove past the local video/dvd store and again noticed an advertisement that irritates me every time I read it.  It says,"We have ___________________(insert title of movie) and Redbox doesn't have it".  Now, I wish I could give you a hard, fast, totally sane reason why it irritates me, but I can't other than it sounds like something a whiny 2nd grader would say.  Having studied a bit of marketing in college, I am well aware of the roll of the dice a company takes when it goes negative on a competitor and mentions their name in the ad.  I thought about what they were trying to say (we are bringing you this movie first) and what it actually said to me (While Redbox may have a lot of very recent movies for only a dollar, we have this ONE new one that you can rent for $3.50...oh, and we are sorely losing to the competion so we need to point out that they CAN'T give you what we can today....).  I really wonder how many people jump at that promo?  I wonder how much it helps their bottom line?

Maybe because I'm rereading the book by Craig Groeschel called, "Weird: Because normal isn't working", or simply because the Lord is convicting me on several areas related to this, but I am noticing how many times I will go negative on a situation instead of camping out on the beauty of the truth.  I will allow the enemy of my soul to draw my attention to the one thing I don't have, instead of dwelling on all of the truly wonderful things that I do possess. Just like the world does.  An interesting task we were given in this book to do is to sit for 5 minutes and rest.  Do not allow your mind to wander to the "have to do" task list, but really rest in the Lord.  I decided that I was going to take that 5 minutes and spend it thanking the Lord for everything I had experienced that day.  Whoa!  I got very specific and was amazed at how much I came up with...some small stuff, some big stuff ~ but all of it was because the Creator of the Universe looks down on this lowly woman and chooses to bless her.  Interestingly, it could have went on longer than the 5 minutes!  The Lord also is showing me that by 'marketing' in a negative way, I am really taking away from the beauty that is within me because I am spending my efforts and energy trying to tell the world why __________________ isn't good enough instead of concentrating on what is really great within me.  Jesus Christ.

Yeah, I think I want to be 'weird' and do what is opposite of normal on this one..... :)