Recycling: Salvage Your Hand Cream

Tweet ‏@maryearlyknox

Yay #frugality! Cut off top of "empty" cream. Use #spatula, scoop out! Save $5 from what u salvage. Not bad! pic.twitter.com/B7QYPdokTm

WHAT IS WORSHIP?

Last night we had a great Growth Group discussion where we talked about "What worship is..." from the sermon yesterday at Egreen-Bloomington on John 12. To summarize "What worship is..." I'll list our list.
1. Worship is.... serving: both practical and lavish & extravagant. Luke 10: 28-41 and John 12: 1-8 about Martha and Mary. 
2. Worship is....surrender. Romans 12: 1-2
3. Worship is ...holiness. Romans 6: 13 and 8:13.
4.  Worship is...relationship with God.  John. 4: 19-24
5. Worship is... done by/ and in...spirit and truth.
6. Worship is...praise: words, prayer, singing,etc. Heb. 13: 15-16.
7. Worship is...telling [evangelism]. Hebrews 13: 15-16.
8. Worship is...$$ giving. Philippians 4: 18-19.

But the bonus: is two versions of Romans 12: 1-2.
One is from the Living Bible, no longer in print.
The other from the great J.B. Phillips translation.
Both are keepers.
Keep them on your phone, or in your lifetime journal.
Yes....they're THAT good.

Romans 12: 1-2 Living Bible.

 1 And so, dear brothers, I plead with you to give your bodies to God. Let them be a living sacrifice, holy—the kind He can accept. When you think of what He has done for you, is this too much to ask?  2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but be a new and different person, with a fresh newness in all you do and think. Then you will learn from your own experience how His ways will really satisfy you.

Romans 12:1-2:  J.B. Phillips New Testament

We have seen God’s mercy and wisdom: how shall we respond?

 12 ^1-2 With eyes wide open to the mercies of God, I beg you, my brothers, as an act of intelligent worship, to give him your bodies, as a living sacrifice, consecrated to him and acceptable by him. Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold, but let God re-mold your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity.

Psalm 112, Living Bible

Psalm 112 in the Living Bible is so good. Unfortunately, the Living Bible is no longer being printed. So...I felt compelled to type up the psalm for you, so you'd have it/ and could share it with others. I've shared it with so many, that it's just one of THOSE psalms. So here you are:

Psalm 112

    Praise the Lord! For all who fear God and trust in him are blessed beyond expression.
Yes, happy is the man who delights in doing his commands.1
    His children shall be honored everywhere, for good men's sons have a special heritage.2
He himself shall be wealthy, and his good deeds will never be forgotten.3  When darkness overtakes him, light will come bursting in. He is kind and merciful 4 ---and all goes well for the generous man who conducts his business fairly. 5
    Such a man will not be overthrown by evil circumstances. God's constant care of him will make a deep impression on all who see it.6   He does not fear bad news, nor live in dread of what may happen. For he is settled in his mind that Jehovah God will take care of him.7  That is why he is not afraid, but can calmly face his foes.8  He gives generously to those in need. His deeds will never be forgotten. He shall have influence and honor. 9
   Evil-minded men will be infuriated when they see all this; they will gnash their teeth in anger and slink away, their hopes thwarted. 10

All Glory To God.
   

Day 3

Today I met a Christian friend for lunch. I gave her my tract and she exclaimed, "I want to write one of these!" Cool!  We also gave our waitress one. Later today, the Culligan man came to fix our water softener. As he was leaving, I gave him my tract. I am excited. Our UNITE conference is themed, JUST SOW IT.
It just couldn't be easier to sow seed, than to write/ and hand out your personal testimony tract. Glory to God.

FILLING THE EMPTINESS: a God Story

“There’s a God-shaped vacuum in everyone’s heart…” is a quote that explains my former life. I lived that vacuum, feverishly trying to fill it with people [usually men], entertainment, and any physical pleasure you can name: food, drink, drugs, and sex. To be loved was my primary goal in life. I wanted to be the most popular and the most loved girl in my world. If I didn’t have a boyfriend at all times, I was on a quest to attract the next cute guy.

My senior year in high school, my then-boyfriend dropped me to date a sleazy sorority girl, leaving me heart-broken. I decided then and there, it didn’t pay to be good. I gave up my good morals to get what I wanted—love.  My four years in college were a whirlwind of changing boyfriends, and an escalating experience of sex, drugs, and alcohol. I heard a quote once that said, “Men give love to get sex and women give sex to get love.” That was me. My life was spiraling out of control.

My then-boyfriend and I talked about getting married. One day he laughingly told me that he expected to be married and divorced six times. Six times? I wanted to be married once, and wanted that one to last. This made me take a long, hard look at my love life.

While this drama was going on, I graduated from college and was hired to teach high school English. The math teacher at the high school turned out to be a ‘Bible-thumper’ who would try to talk to the other teachers about their faith. I tried to avoid him, but he engaged me several times in conversation, asking me questions like, “Are you a Christian?” and “Do you know where you are going when you die?”   He drove me crazy, so I had to stop going into the Teachers’ Lounge.

All of this got me thinking about my life and my faith. I had been raised Catholic, and believed in God, but I abandoned my faith during high school. I wanted nothing to do with the church, or Jesus Christ, or being good.  When I was young, I believed I was good enough to go to heaven.  By the age of 23, I knew I was bad enough to go to hell. 

But God didn’t want me to go to hell. He used the math teacher to tell me about the love of Christ, by sharing the well-known Bible verse John 3:16: “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son [Jesus], so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”  I knew God loved people, but I never knew that He loved me personally. I didn’t realize that Jesus died on the cross for ME, to forgive all of MY sins.

Math teacher Les explained to me that I could ask Jesus for forgiveness and receive eternal life, just like one receives a gift: by accepting it. He explained that I could ask Jesus to come into my life, to make my life new. Since I was hating myself and what I had become, I decided to try it, and I asked Jesus to forgive my sins and come into my life. And it worked!  Immediately I knew I was forgiven and that He came into my life. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, ^“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” One pastor said, “When the Holy Spirit comes into your life, you become not just a better version of your old self, you become a new person altogether.”

Jesus Christ immediately started changing me from the inside out.  The things I wanted out of life, like peace, love and joy, came to me: not from external things like drugs, but from my new personal relationship with God. By God’s help, my marriage has LASTED over 30 years! I no longer crave the popularity, love, and acceptance that I used to so covet.  Instead, this prayer now expresses my life’s goal:  “God, your presence and your acceptance are all I need for everlasting joy.”  I am thrilled to have discovered that the “God-shaped vacuum” I was experiencing in my life, could only be filled with Jesus Christ.
If you have questions, or would like to talk more about this, call or text me at 952-895-5921, email me at: knobhill13@aol.com, or friend me on facebook.
I’d love to talk more, Mary Knox

My new testimony tracts

   Well, this is really pathetic, that I post here about once a year. But I hope to do it more. I have a new goal in life. To be more 'mission-minded' and devoted to sharing my faith more regularly. I just completed writing and publishing my personal gospel tract. And I came up with a goal, that I think I can accomplish, by God's grace. I hope to share my tract personally, every day for a year: 1. Either by hand 2. or online: via Email or Facebook.  Yesterday I gave it to Jim, the Office Max guy, who helped me print it. Today I gave it online to three "friends": a gal I met at a birthday party, and two of my Somali Muslim high school friends, that I tutor.

   I am so excited about doing this. Here is a passage that inspired me yesterday: Acts 22: 14-16: 

¹⁴ “Then he told me, ‘The God of our ancestors has chosen you to know his will and to see the Righteous One and hear him speak. ¹⁵ For you are to be his witness, telling everyone what you have seen and heard. ¹⁶ What are you waiting for? Get up and be baptized. Have your sins washed away by calling on the name of the Lord.’

Please pray for me, that I can be faithful and fruitful in this endeavor.

Obedience.

I'm doing the Faithful, Abundant, True Bible Study at Evergreen. Today I read the quote by Charles Spurgeon, 1861. "Surely, though we have had to mourn our disobedience with many tears and sighs, we now find joy in yielding ourselves as servants of the Lord. Our deepest desire is to do the Lord's will in all things. Oh, for obedience! It has been supposed by many ill-instructed people that the doctrine of justification by faith is opposed to the teaching of good works, or obedience. There is no truth in that supposition. We preach the obedience of faith."
A modern day version of that quote is by Bill Hybels, of Willow Creek Com. Church. "If you hear God's whisper...ACT! Or you may never hear from Him again."
Priscilla Schirer asks, "What does the expression 'delayed obedience is disobedience' mean to you?"
When God asks you to do something, change something, stop something, Priscilla calls it "A Holy Spirit-inspired action." I like that. It's like Mark Bowen's "a visceral movement: a movement of God inwardly."
Then Priscilla ends the day's study with, "Whatever God has asked you to pursue, He will accompany you to complete. You can move forward with confidence, since His ability will equip you to accomplish any task that He places before you. The time is NOW to pursue all that the Lord has for you."
Phil. 2: 15, NLT says, "God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases Him"
Have a great day, dear one, as you take your next steps of obedience.

Ps. If you have time to read the document in full that Spurgeon wrote, it's quite interesting: long, but interesting. The times are the same today, as then.