Year: 2016

Categories
Christian Living

Sorry For the Month Long Hiatus! Maybe I Need More Conviction.

Im-Back-But-Where-Have-I

Yeah, Where HAVE I been? I’m not quite sure… It seems like the first month of 2016 has disappeared in the blink of an eye. Am I losing my mind? Ha!

My last post was on January 1, explaining that I was going to cut back just a bit on my posting this year, but I certainly didn’t plan to go a whole month without posting anything.

Instead of posting, I ended up spending a lot of time catching up on some relationship-building, especially with one good friend who was back in the States for the month. I will say that it was quite nice to be off of social media for the month. I think breaks like that can be quite healthy as we change up our routines and get off the “fast-track.” But my friend has headed back south to another country, and my life is getting back to its normal routine. Therefore, it’s time to get back into writing and sharing some of my thoughts. So here goes…

When Was The Last Time You Were Convicted?

I’m not talking about being convicted by the justice system of our nation (which doesn’t require a heart change). I’m talking about being convicted by God Himself – a conviction that causes deep repentance in your heart and mind.

“Conspicuously absent today in many churches is conviction concerning sin…. The average believer says, “Yes, I trust Christ.” But he has no real conviction of sin in his life at all. It is absent in contemporary church life. It is seldom that we come forward with tears – convicted of our sin before a holy God that cannot accept us as we are….

“Someone has said that the modern pulpit has become a place where a mild-mannered man gets up before a group of mild-mannered people and urges them to be more mild-mannered…. No wonder the world has passed by the church. We don’t need reforming; we need to be regenerated. We need to be born again.”

These two paragraphs by J. Vernon McGee remind us that we need convicting. I’m not sure what sin or sins you have been struggling with lately, but pray to God that you would see your sin as He sees it. Ask Him to help you be truly heart-broken over the ways that you do not imitate Christ.

May we truly know the conviction of the Lord that leads us to repentance and into more holiness.

Categories
Ramblings

Day One 2016: Time for a New Year and a New Plan

Day One 2016 - Happy New Year with fireworksWow… another year over and done. And a new one about to begin. We come to Day One 2016, what will take place this year?

The quick review of my 2015 plan:
Though I had selected 365 quotes to share through the year, the actually number of posts I made was slightly less than that due to me not posting on several mornings. I had all sorts of great excuses for those days I missed: the issue of my computer dying, then I had the A/C at the house go out, and there were a few days I didn’t post when I went out of town for various reasons. Whatever the excuse, instead of meeting my goal of 365 daily posts, I ended up with about 340 daily posts, and I learned a number of lessons.

The main lesson I learned is that it takes a lot of work to post something every single morning. I remain impressed by those who do so with such consistency.

But the other key lesson I learned is that I didn’t feel I could flesh out some of the ideas as much as I would like due to me pushing myself to post something each day. Of course, the only one who put the pressure on me to post each day was myself because I set a goal and wrote about it at the beginning of last year. So for this new year of 2016, I am going to cut back and I plan to post less often than I did in 2015 but more often than in ’13 & ’14. That means that I plan to post something about three days a week. I hope that doing so will allow me to put more thought into the posts, and therefore make them more meaningful to everyone who takes the time to read them.

Thank you for reading and for encouraging me throughout the year. And I hope that this year is one where you will grow closer to God than you ever have before.

On Day One 2016, that is my New Year’s Resolution – to grow deeper in my relationship to Jesus Christ than ever before – and I hope that is also the commitment you are making to Him this year.