30 January 2010
By Amber
In Accountability, Faith, Questions
I want to let you all know first that this is a very honest confession, one that is hard to put out there but by doing so I think it will help me thing through everything. I like “seeing things in print” and I value your opinions.
Image: Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Church….I love my Church I love what it represents that it is reaching out to others and inviting them in. I love the people in it, they are my local family. But because of the outreach mission of my Church 70% of the time the sermons are very well… basic. Again there is nothing wrong with this but I’m finally in a place where I want to learn, I want to know the history and the background not just the stories. I’ve got the basics down. Don’t get me wrong I have no plans to leave my Church that would honestly hurt to much. These people were with me during the hardest parts of my life and are now celebrating the good times with me. I have no desire to leave I just have a desire to learn. We do have small groups and the point of those are to feed the ‘non-beginners’ so to speak. However the series we are doing isn’t what I thought it would be. It is more a discussion about common “rules” of Christianity and challenging their merit. There isn’t a lot of study to it like I thought there would be. I’ve been doing some studying on my own and Ry and I are going to start soon (he has a much more in depth background than I do.) so that is exciting to me.
I wish there could be a happy medium. but those Churches just don’t make it in this world. You have to the either or.
So here is the contemplative part. The question I guess. My Church does a good job of clearly stating that Church is for the seekers and Bible study is where we get the meat. Why don’t other seeker Churches do this??? Have we become so complacent that these basic sermons are enough? Do we just go to Church because we are supposed to and really aren’t paying attention? I’m glad that there are Churches out there for the new Christians but if we the ‘long time’ Christians are going to them without any other supplement (devotions, Bible study, etc.) how are we learning anything?
28 January 2010
By Amber
In Thoughts on Thursdays
“Recognize each others priorities”
Pictures are of great importance to me, the hubby recognizes that and even encourages it! Not only my shutterbug habits but also my scrapbooking. He likes paintball and hockey and since he has a desk job if the opportunity comes up for him to play either (and we have the time) I encourage him to go. Those two things are easy and obvious but what about the less obvious things?
Hubby hates dirty dishes in the sink, I don’t like them either but after cooking I’m not really in the mood to do them right away. This drives him crazy. Really what would it hurt for me to spend an extra 5-20 min doing them no instead of later? Then when he gets home he wouldn’t have to see that mess first thing as he walks into the house. This would make his nights so much more relaxing.
Hubby knows I cherish time with him especially when I’m sick, yesterday I was SICK. He was so good about sticking with me, checking in on me when I was sleeping. I don’t think he has any idea how much that meant to me he just knew it was the right thing to do.
Just making sure that we are aware of each others priorities and then making them a priority ourselves I think we could eliminate a lot of the ‘everyday’ frustration in marriage.
27 January 2010
By Amber
In Hints, house
So Out living room was WHITE I mean ALL WHITE with old brown carpet. A month or so ago we painted the 3 living room walls red, 4.5 coats of paint later I was sick of painting and decided to put off the other walls for a while.
After 5 hours of taping Friday night Ryan and I had the main room ready for my friend Sarah and I to paint the next day. The room looked crazy with its white walls and blue tape. One of our friends even commented saying ” I think I liked it better the old way” then his wife informed him that it was tape, lol.
*Hint for a crisp line wile painting use a putty knife to push down the tape.*
Then Saturday my friend Sarah came over and we painted for 3 1/2 hours and pretty much got the main room done. Then we had fun at a friends house making some meals for our freezer, and finally we went to a bar and played bingo (Don’t knock it till you try it it was great!)
Sunday I spend from 12-6 taping and painting the hallway and entry as well as touching up the rest of the living/dinning room !
We almost have all the tape down and by this weekend the room should be back together with all of our pictures hung!
26 January 2010
By Amber
In Life
So I just realized that it might seem a little weird that I post for 2 or 3 days in a row and then disappear for a while….well that is exactly what I do.
During the weekends I try very hard not to become addicted to my computer or I would get nothing done. I barley even check my e-mail. It gets delivered to my phone but if its not an emergency I wait and deal with it during the work week. I’m one of those people that once I connect to the Internet I find every reason to stay connected.
Recently I’ve learned that I can post date my blog entries to be published on later days as well as just trying to spread out the ideas I have. I hope to have more consistent postings in the future.
Meanwhile I will continue to go ‘off grid’ for the weekends for my and my houses sanity.
22 January 2010
By Amber
In Search for Significance
I’ve finished the book, The Search for Significance, and now I’m going through the workbook section. Its been an interesting ride, I’ve learned a lot I just wish I could implement some of the strategies faster. Of course it takes a long time to overide 26 years of doing the opposite.
Anyway that is not my point, through this journey I’ve been doing a lot of observing of other people trying to figure out how they tick, and this morning as I was driving to work I had an interesting thought.
“If we focus to much on what we think of ourselves and not what others think, that we get stuck. We don’t realize the parts of us that still need improvement or the parts of us that are still hurting.” (I hope that makes sense this is hard to explain)
This is why its so vital to keep God in the mix as well as solid Christian friends. We need people around us to encourage us and point out things that we are doing wrong. I know the word conviction isn’t a popular one but just think of where the world would be without Godly conviction let alone legal conviction….yikes.
I guess I was under the impression that if I could just stop living life for other peoples opinions I would be good. I never thought about that fact that since I’m an all or nothing type of girl this could fall drastically the other way. Instead of worrying about what others think there are some that don’t care at all what others think, they are always right and are living for themselves. There needs to be a balance between depending on others opinions to make you happy and not caring at all.
