God is Good(ness)

If you were to ask me "What do you know about God?", I would say that I know God is good.

I was talking with my nieces yesterday.  I had taken them out on a pull-wagon ride around our 100-acre property.  We had stopped at the playground and had a fantastic time playing for about an hour.  On the way back to my house I couldn't help but mentioning it:
"Girls, did you know Ingathering is coming?"
Ingathering is like a church reunion for us.  Everyone gathers in from all the places God has taken us and we get together and have what I guess most would call a revival.  But basically, it's no different than what we do all the year long and that is praise God, talk about God and talk to one another about the ways we see God every day.  We eat together and sing and dance and most years we camp-out and sit around fire pits til morning.

I was so excited telling the girls about God and everything I had learned about Him came together in that conversation.
"God is good.  He loves everything that is good and He's inside all of us.  When we get together at Ingathering God will get bigger because He's in everyone who will be there."  I realized this probably sounded like people were going to get bloated so I said that you can't see God, He's a spirit, He's everything that's good.

"What is good?" I asked
"Obeying."  Jenna answered.
"And sharing, and joy and peace" I said.

The Bible says man without God is wicked, any good within man is from God.  Dignity, strength, compassion, gratefulness, all of this is from God and IS God.

I've heard people my whole life say that God is in us.  I wondered what that meant.  Now I know that the good in us is God.  When we all come together with that goodness in us, the goodness grows and that is God.

God is good and anything good is from Him.

What if we believed that God is love?

Who Holds the Power?

Things that hold power over us should be handled with care. Someone told me that around the world the three most powerful things are food, music and sex. I would add money as well. These things are powerful in the ways that they can change us spiritually and physically. They have the power to enrich us or destroy us. They are gifts from God and it pleases Him to see us being good stewards of His gifts.

 Here I am scarfing popcorn as I type. Food is powerful. It does things to you when you eat it. It does things in your brain and your stomach. Hormones and chemicals start reacting. It becomes apart of you. There's food that tastes good and food that tastes not so good. A lot of times the food that tastes good is not good for you and the food that is good for you tastes less than good.

It all depends on how you were raised too, and we can change towards food and learn to love the things that are good for us.  We can also fall into bad habits with food.  It has the potential to invigorate and empower us to do amazing things.  Good food can help us reach our goals and make us feel like gods.  It also has the power to give us headaches, and sour stomachs.  It can make us feel like a big nasty blob that can't move.

Food has power over us and if we're not careful, it can rule us.  Some of us have become slaves to food and it can make us do things we don't really want to do.

Music is powerful, it does things to you when you listen to it. It does things in your brain. Hormones and chemicals start reacting. It becomes apart of you. There's music that sounds good and music that sounds not so good. Sometimes listening to the wrong kind of music can be bad for you.  Our opinions on music can change depending on what is going on in our lives.

We can also fall into music that influences us to think a certain way.  It has the potential to invigorate and empower us to do amazing things.  Good music can help us reach our goals and make us feel like gods.  It also has the power to give us headaches, and sour stomachs.  It can make us feel like we don't want to do anything or see anyone.

Music has power over us and if we're not careful, it can rule us.  Some of us have become slaves to music and it can turn us into things we don't want to be.

Sex is powerful.  It does things to you when you take part in it. It does things in your brain. Hormones and chemicals start reacting.  It can be something beautiful and pure or it can be something terrible and wrong.  It has the potential to invigorate and empower us to do amazing things.  Good sex can help us reach our goals and make us feel like gods.  It also has the power to give us headaches, and sour stomachs.  It can make us feel guilty or empty or lost.

Sex has power over us and if we're not careful, it can rule us.  Some of us have become slaves to sex and it can lead us down to places we don't want to go.

Money is powerful.  It does things to you when you receive and use it. It does things in your brain. Hormones and chemicals start reacting. It can be spent wisely or foolishly.  A lot of times the things we have to spend our money on are not very fun things at all.  We often end up spending it on things we don't need but just want and the list of wants never ends.

The way we were raised influences how we think about money.  Whether we were poor as kids or if we were rich growing up, can reflect onto how we look at money today.  We can fall into bad habits with money.  It has the potential to thrust us forward and empower us to do amazing things.  Money can help us reach our goals and make us feel like gods.  It also has the power to give us headaches, and sour stomachs.  Lack of money can get us down and cause us to make bad choices or the lack can inspire us to be creative or become more responsible.  We start to gain perspective and realize what's really important and what we really need.

Money has power over us and if we're not careful, it can rule us.  Some of us have become slaves to money and it can make us do things we don't really want to do.

All of these are gifts from God.  He has a certain way He wants us to use each.  It's challenging to be within His will.  That's why He asks us to follow Him and to seek Him.  He's in each of us so if we stick together we can help each other to see the will of our Master.  My prayer is that we can become so lost in Him, so in love with Him and in such communion with Him that all these things fall in their rightful place.  These things can control us if we don't let God be the one in control of them.  He has to hold the power - not us not the thing itself!

If we take it into our own hands to supply what we want, we'll mess it all up.  God is so wise and He knows more than we know,  I say let Him handle this stuff and I'll follow His lead.

Ugghhh.  Having a tough time today and this week.  I'm short on money and in some ways it's not my fault - in some ways it is.  I did travel for continuing education in my field of study and I did not prepare for that very well.  I made it through, though and I'm back to work but business is really slow.

 I have made unnecessary purchases - not major purchases:  a cheap dress and sweater, I went out a couple times on my trip.  I just had to have ice cream, and it was nice of me to go out with my new friends the classmates I had been with for 5 days.  I also spent money at a coffee shop that my friends worked at - which was nice of me to support them.  I bought cards for the people I stayed with for my trip and also one for mom and my co-worker.  That was nice of me. Yesterday I bought a birthday gift for my little friend who just turned 13.  That was nice of me too.

I can justify these things, easily.  I can even justify the big one:   I recently got a smartphone.  I'm working on transferring service providers.  I got one of the cheapest phones and I justified it when I said to myself,

"Self,  this is a good choice that will launch your business forward."

I will be able to accept credit and debit cards for my business now.  I will be able to spend time on learning-apps so I can get smarter for my business.

The problem is, I have to pay for the new service provider,  rent is due in the office and at home, and I'm only in the middle of the week.  I haven't earned a penny this week.

So I'm crying out to God today and feeling foolish again.  I spend so much time on the internet switching from Pinterest to Facebook to interesting links on Facebook to email and my bank account that seems to just keep going down, down.  I get emails from sites advertising sales they're having and tempting me to buy, buy, buy and all I do is look and cry, cry, cry.  I realize that even if I can say that I have not been THAT foolish with my spending, I surely have not been helping myself by looking online at all the things I want to buy.  If I want something bad enough, I'll find a way to get it.  Even if it means ignoring my other responsibilities.  I wait until it is on sale and then I wait some more and want and wait and want.

I go around in circles.  This is not the first time I have thought about all this.  This is not the first time I have felt the need to go and clean house in the cyber world and get more focused on what's important.

I'm praying to God and I know I can't do it alone.  I need to talk to my friends when I get home and ask them to pray for me.

I realized that in my heart I have built my own little kingdom.  It has butterflies, and pretty shoes and dresses and pretty calendars and books full of pictures of me.

I'm tired of building my imaginary kingdom.  A friend of mine told me that if I'm having money trouble then I need to tithe.  That if you don't give to God, He won't give to you.  It seems a little backwards but God a backwards kind of God.  My money needs to be invested in the things God wants it to be invested in:  furthering His kingdom.  I put so much energy into entertaining my fantasies when instead I could be working hard to make something happen for God's kingdom.

Later... I realized that a lot of what I spent my money on was others.  My intentions are good.
Good, but scattered and misdirected.  I need more focus on God and where He wants me to be and what He wants me to do.  That way I can be wiser and less flighty about it all.