Dear Lord, I missed my journaling last night but I did not miss the study, nor the message in -Luke 1:57. You continue the lesson with me by drawing on the works and studies of Luke, a physician and historian who relied on personal accounts of the people that came in contact with the Lord. Your message reminds me that research (reading the bible), is an act of obedience and a discipline that I can't take for granted as we go through this coming year. To know you, to commit my whole life to you to do as you wish, will require obedience and discipline on my part.
Mary, Joseph, Zackariah and Elizabeth were four people who committed themselves fully to God and their commitment did not come easily. It was filled with your request for what seemed impossible. A childbirth after childbearing years, and a virgin birth! WOW! Could you have tested unbelief any more strongly? You know me and my heart so well Lord. I want the immediate response, the immediate change, and true to your words, just like last year, it takes time, obedience and discipline. This will be a year that will consistently change and grow if I can fully commit my time, my energy and my heart to include all my doubts and my fears to you and your plan for me.
I asked you to guide me yesterday and specifically help me to be less confrontational at work and not so combative. I didn't do so well yesterday and I come to you with my actions, thoughts and words and again ask for your help in changing my heart. I am not sure why Lord, but lately I have acted as though my actions are perfect, and the actions of others are deceitful, and deliberate in their attempts to undermine the company and the leadership. Who am I to judge? And who am I to be rude and demanding? Lord, help me to be a witness to others of what your love can do iand has done in my heart and in my life. Change me Lord, not them. Change me. Bless them with your love and commitment in their lives so that they may have the gift that I have. Fill them with the holy spirit and give them all the blessings they desire. A healthy fulfilling life, joy, financial security, give them all the blessings that I desire and then bless them again. I know that it is through you that I must change my heart. Listening to the Holy Spirit and responding the way you desire and not what I think is best for me, others or even the company. For only you know the plans you have for the company, the members and the people who support it.
I am struggling Lord with my job, and the people that are there. A new additional boss after a year of direct reporting, a disenchanted staff threatening behind backs to leave, talking about others, is to me indications of my need to leave or continuing to trust in your and my bosses even though I sometimes feel they have been deceitful and dishonest, witnessed the clash of egos, and am probably so unaware of many unspoken issues in their own lives that I have no right to judge or condemn.
I am trying to eliminate my participation in the negative yet some times I find myself participating if not starting conversations on my own and in my own head. Please Lord, in these times remind me of my promise and commitment to you. If its time for me to look for another job, or time for me to pursue your plans for me outside this job, then I pray in Jesus name that you show me the way. AMEN.
Showing posts with label finances. Show all posts
Showing posts with label finances. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Monday, October 6, 2008
Day One.
Dear Father, its no surprise to me that I open the bible to begin the journey and you take me to the first time I ever dedicated my life to you. Jeremiah 4:1-22. What stands out to me in this reading is that I need to begin to live a good honest life. Plow up the ground of my heart and not wast my time in bad areas. I seem clever enough at doing wrong, but have no talent at all for doing right. What amazes me even further is that I am still repeating bad behavior. You are teaching me and I am learning, so we can call that progress, but I long to honor you more. To change these bad habits and live a better life. I want to be able to give back to others; to give back to you.
Thank you for the fact that I can say, I am gaining talent for doing right. I recognize the areas that I need to change and with you as my leader, guide, father, confidant, parent, friend I know I can succeed. I know I challenge you often, and you patiently wait for the doubt, sadness, anger, fear to lessen so that I can hear your voice and direction.
Lord, today I come to you with a commitment to daily bible study, attendance at church. Guide me in the direction you desire me to begin. Help me at work today Lord to remain positive, supportive and not combative. You have touched on me going back to school, considering different options for my career and more, and yet I realize that none of that will be done in a God honoring way if I don't correct my health and my finances. I can't solve a symptom; I have to solve the problem first.
Heavenly Father, I give myself to you today to guide me, teach me, and begin to apply the discipline I need to succeed at the tasks you have set in front of me. In the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, I ask you to show me the way today and all days for the rest of my life. Amen.
Thank you for the fact that I can say, I am gaining talent for doing right. I recognize the areas that I need to change and with you as my leader, guide, father, confidant, parent, friend I know I can succeed. I know I challenge you often, and you patiently wait for the doubt, sadness, anger, fear to lessen so that I can hear your voice and direction.
Lord, today I come to you with a commitment to daily bible study, attendance at church. Guide me in the direction you desire me to begin. Help me at work today Lord to remain positive, supportive and not combative. You have touched on me going back to school, considering different options for my career and more, and yet I realize that none of that will be done in a God honoring way if I don't correct my health and my finances. I can't solve a symptom; I have to solve the problem first.
Heavenly Father, I give myself to you today to guide me, teach me, and begin to apply the discipline I need to succeed at the tasks you have set in front of me. In the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, I ask you to show me the way today and all days for the rest of my life. Amen.
Good Morning God, Thank you for another day.
Heavenly Father, you have prodded me over the years to begin keeping a journal. Off and on I have and it has helped to track our progress in changing my life. You have consistently led me in directions I never felt possible and together we have walked a path that has always been the right one for me. Today I begin my journey "live" for everyone to read and see. May this journey of ours reach those people that you know are out there searching for you. May I be honest in every circumstance. How I am feeling, my decisions to listen or ignore. All of it. Let this be an open book into the year that I put all my faith in you. The year that I let go and Let God. While I give you all of it Lord, now that we have accomplished the first task: My Sobriety, I feel that you are leading me to focus this year on the remaining two priorities: My health and well-being and my financial situation. That requires some embarrassing statistics so that we can begin to track our progress. You know it all, but I know that it needs to be my starting point.
I am what doctors call morbidly obese. Not a very kind word, in fact a hurtful word that seems to make me feel so sad. I have had gastric bypass surgery which helped me to lose 140 pounds of which I have maintained loss of. I have been unable to lose more because of the excessive drinking, and because of lack of exercise, and poor eating habits. Today I weigh 326 pounds. I have a hard time getting my self up out of a chair. My back and knees are always in excruciating pain, and it is difficult to do much around the house. I rely on my husband a great deal of the time to do the things I can no longer do because of the energy it takes for me to just get around the house.
My finances...UGH! I seem heck bent on destroying anything good in my life. I have terrible, horrendous credit. I spend every dollar I take in, and barely remember to pay my bills until the past due notice is on and functioning loud and clear. I don't have much credit debit because I can't get a credit card, which I feel is a good thing, but still as I get older, I think its important that I can take care of and support myself. My husband and I have no children, we both hold decent jobs, so the ability to save should be an easy one. But its not. I think I have replaced drinking with spending. Trying to feed some hunger within myself.
I have over the years struggled with depression and probably tried every medication known to man to treat it. I have been at one time diagnosed with low level bi-polar disorder. Lord, you encouraged me to get off all the medications and rely strictly on you. While I don't think this is the message you would offer to others, I think you asked me to do it, because I was relying too much on my excuses and not enough on you. I have not been on medications for a year and sometimes the depression is still there and I find myself struggling to work through it, when in the past I would drink or medicate it away. You have been my lifeline through it all. I think medication is vital to the healing of depression, but for me it wasn't working and I needed to start from the beginning with you Lord, a clean slate so we could learn exactly what was going on. I relied on a very strong support group to gauge my emotions, my mood swings and advise me to get help if they saw the need.
I do not have a savings, our house is in what I call a "hovel" and terrible disrepair and negligence. We have been up before our Association Board with so many external repairs and slowly have been making progress on those items that we would eventually be fined for not addressing. The inside has suffered the most, and it is on most days an extremely overwhelming task. All that needs to be done in my mind is almost impossible. We had a pipe break in our house several years ago and from that we made the choice to spend the insurance money to catch up on bills and work on our house on our own. The money was spent, we are back where we started and we have progressively given up on the house because the task seemed unachievable. There is not one room in the house that I would call livable enough to have guests over but, we did decide to tackle one room at a time, and two rooms, a small reading room and the living room are close to being completed.
Our taxes have been ignored. And just recently I took out a withdrawal my 401k to get my house out of foreclosure. Humiliating statistics Lord but I am putting my faith in you. Giving it all. Exposing it all. May this give other people hope.
I am what doctors call morbidly obese. Not a very kind word, in fact a hurtful word that seems to make me feel so sad. I have had gastric bypass surgery which helped me to lose 140 pounds of which I have maintained loss of. I have been unable to lose more because of the excessive drinking, and because of lack of exercise, and poor eating habits. Today I weigh 326 pounds. I have a hard time getting my self up out of a chair. My back and knees are always in excruciating pain, and it is difficult to do much around the house. I rely on my husband a great deal of the time to do the things I can no longer do because of the energy it takes for me to just get around the house.
My finances...UGH! I seem heck bent on destroying anything good in my life. I have terrible, horrendous credit. I spend every dollar I take in, and barely remember to pay my bills until the past due notice is on and functioning loud and clear. I don't have much credit debit because I can't get a credit card, which I feel is a good thing, but still as I get older, I think its important that I can take care of and support myself. My husband and I have no children, we both hold decent jobs, so the ability to save should be an easy one. But its not. I think I have replaced drinking with spending. Trying to feed some hunger within myself.
I have over the years struggled with depression and probably tried every medication known to man to treat it. I have been at one time diagnosed with low level bi-polar disorder. Lord, you encouraged me to get off all the medications and rely strictly on you. While I don't think this is the message you would offer to others, I think you asked me to do it, because I was relying too much on my excuses and not enough on you. I have not been on medications for a year and sometimes the depression is still there and I find myself struggling to work through it, when in the past I would drink or medicate it away. You have been my lifeline through it all. I think medication is vital to the healing of depression, but for me it wasn't working and I needed to start from the beginning with you Lord, a clean slate so we could learn exactly what was going on. I relied on a very strong support group to gauge my emotions, my mood swings and advise me to get help if they saw the need.
I do not have a savings, our house is in what I call a "hovel" and terrible disrepair and negligence. We have been up before our Association Board with so many external repairs and slowly have been making progress on those items that we would eventually be fined for not addressing. The inside has suffered the most, and it is on most days an extremely overwhelming task. All that needs to be done in my mind is almost impossible. We had a pipe break in our house several years ago and from that we made the choice to spend the insurance money to catch up on bills and work on our house on our own. The money was spent, we are back where we started and we have progressively given up on the house because the task seemed unachievable. There is not one room in the house that I would call livable enough to have guests over but, we did decide to tackle one room at a time, and two rooms, a small reading room and the living room are close to being completed.
Our taxes have been ignored. And just recently I took out a withdrawal my 401k to get my house out of foreclosure. Humiliating statistics Lord but I am putting my faith in you. Giving it all. Exposing it all. May this give other people hope.
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