I've been working on our 2016 family album online. Before you get all impressed with me...I mean how can I possibly be working on my 2016 album? Well, lets just say I skipped 2015! :)
I'll get back to it but I wanted needed to start fresh and create something that didn't seem so daunting and well, working on my 2015 family book felt daunting!
I use Shutterfly to make my books. I used to scrapbook all my albums but was going to need a bank loan and separate room in the house to store them all so I decided to take my scrapbooking digital.
Anyhow, I was creating a page and was looking for a quote to add to it. I came across these verses from Romans 12.
I loved what I read but wanted to read the entire chapter so I pulled it up on my YouVersion Bible app. I looked it up in the Message version.
Place Your Life Before God.
v. 1-2
So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life - your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around-life - and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity. God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
I'm not going to share the entire chapter with you but if you have the time I encourage you to read it on your own. It's really good!
There are so many parts I love about this chapter but here are a few of my favorites.
- "Take your everyday life and place it before God as an offering." I get so busy in my life that I feel like sometimes I'm in a robotic state. Just going from point A to point B. This is such a good reminder to do every ordinary thing as an offering to God. Commuting to work, cleaning my house, paying bills, etc...
- "Fix your attention on God." I've been watching the Summer Olympics (Go USA) and there was a swim meet where Chad Le Clos was swimming in a lane next to Michael Phelps. Multiple times during the race Le Clos turns to look at Phelps. It cost him the race. Phelps won the gold and Le Clos didn't even medal.
We need to keep our eyes on God. Period. Nothing else. No one else.
- "God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you." Be mature people! That means no whining! :) I'm not pointing any fingers...I'm guilty of it too. What does it mean to be mature? I like this definition, "A mature person intellectually is someone who knows how to take decisions in life, rather than using emotions, using rationality which means takes decisions based on reason."
I'm Hispanic and we're emotional beings. It was eye-opening to read that a mature person bases his/her decisions on reason and takes all emotion out of the equation.
- And finally my favorite part of Romans 12 is, "Don't pretend to love others, really love them." I have this picture of my grandmother that I love!
She's looking at my cousin, her granddaughter, with such love and excitement. My grandmother was a REAL love giver! There was no doubt in your mind that she loved you. I want to love like that.
Thank you for stopping by the blog today!
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Have a blessed day.
xoxo
Delilah
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