Sunday Snippets

Actually I will begin my Sunday Snippets by talking about a wedding Steve and I went to last night. Ashley Moore was one of the children in the 3rd-6th grade group that I used to do things with in Mesquite (before coming to R.E.)She just graduated from ACU and was getting married. It was such a fun wedding! The music was non traditional, she and the flower girl were barefooted, the bridesmaids and groomsmen did a twirl when the girls came down the aisle. The reception was cake and coke floats! The best part for me was seeing about 8 of the kids who were in that group. 4 of them were in the wedding party. To see that they had maintained those friendships all these years was just so sweet.

Then tonight we had a great time at Life Group. It was a game night and we played a game called Encore where you have to sing songs with a certain word in the title. The women won (we won our game night last month too!) Then we played the musical version of Scene It. It was a fun evening.

This morning started off with me listening to Ed Young Jr. on T.V. as I got ready for worship. He had a great lesson about the "Pits of Life" using the life of Joseph to teach the lesson. He talked about how all of our pits have a purpose. He suggested if we find ourselves in five pits or more, we might question what God is trying to teach us that we are not learning. I started thinking and I could only come up with 4 pits in my life, so hopefully I have learned the lessons? He reminded us that the race we are on is not a sprint it is a marathon. And that God uses the pits in our lives to transform our character. Therefore the race will be unique for each one of us. He said when we are in the pit we can either get chummy with the adders, who will cause us to look like them and act like them or we can keep our eyes on the ladders who will be those who try to help and support us and help us to get out of the pit. He said we need to use the breakdown to breakthrough in order to breakout. I cannot really do his sermon justice, but it was timely for me and encouraged me to keep running the race and trusting God to see me through.

Steve did not sleep well AGAIN last night because of his pinched nerve, so he did not feel like going to worship this morning. My mom and I went to Greenville Oaks.
We sang one of my favorite songs "Ancient Words". I love this song that reflects on God's Word and the timelessness of the truths. "Ancient words, ever true, touching me and touching you, we have come with open hearts, oh let the ancient words impart".
I think we should sing this song before every sermon to prepare our hearts to receive the Word. The preacher's text was on Ephesians 4. He stressed how God loves it when spiritual babies are born, but he does not want us to stay that way. He talked about the body and our different spiritual gifts. It was a familiar text but the one thing he did say that I had not thought of is that even though we may not have a gift we still have a responsibility. We may not be gifted to teach but all of us still should have the desire to teach others about Jesus, we may not be gifted in singing but we all have the responsibility to praise God in song, we may not have the gift of mercy but we are all to be merciful, we may not have the natural gift of evangelism but we still need to be evangelistic. But there are areas that each one of us are gifted at and while we each may have a different gift they are all powered by the same spirit. He gave the analogy of what if you were given a very special gift that someone took great care to get for you and you took it from them and just put it on the shelf without opening it, how would it make someone feel? It is how God feels when we don't use the gifts He has given us.

Hope wherever you were today the Lord was able to speak to your heart through His ancient Words. Have a great week!