Just a little niggling

Do you not know that your body is a house of God where the Holy Spirit lives? God gave you His Holy Spirit. Now you belong to God. You do not belong to yourselves. God bought you with a great price. So honor God with your body. You belong to Him. (I Corinthians 6:19-20)

Is there anybody out there other than me that struggles to treat their body right? You know what I mean - eating healthy, making wise choices with your physical activities so as to not stress out your body too much, and getting enough rest. If you struggle with any of these, then just know you are not alone. I constantly go back and forth between desiring to eat healthy, but also craving a luscious brownie! The two are incongruous, aren't they? I haven't met a 'healthy' brownie yet! We crave a whole lot of things in this lifetime that are incongruous with what God desires for our lives. If you don't really understand what that word means, then let me explain. Anything that is 'incongruous' is inappropriate, unbecoming, and not in harmony with the character we are to be exemplifying in our lives.

There are times I almost do the Eve thing and blame God for putting the brownies on this earth. After all, if God had not created brownies, I wouldn't have the desire to eat them, right? I don't think God created brownies. Actually, the first known 'creator' of brownies was Fanny Farmer - placing the first recipe for this delightful treat into her 1896 cookbook. It is also believed that a socialite by the name of Bertha Palmer commissioned her chef to create a luscious treat for the ladies who would be attending the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, so not sure who 'created' the brownie, but I am certain the creation came some time after God created the heavens and earth! Regardless, the treat isn't God's fault and the appeal it has is not his, either. I 'own' my response to the delightful craving.

All that aside, let me assure you of this one thing - God gave us his Holy Spirit to help us rise above all things that are inappropriate for us in this lifetime. He is there to help us spot the things that will not add goodness into our character. He is right alongside us when we are about to choose a response or action that would be unbecoming in some fashion. If that is the case, then how come we still act so 'wrong' at times? God doesn't send his Holy Spirit to negate our choice - he just sends him to help us make the right ones. We still do the choosing - he just helps remind us which ones will be the best for us. I know it would be a whole lot easier if God just gave us no choice in the matter, but then we'd be puppets.

Remembering that we don't belong to ourselves any longer, we need to be cognizant of every choice we make - the little ones and the bigger ones. Certainly we can be trusted to make a wise choice from time to time, but let me assure you, we don't do it consistently. This is where the Holy Spirit comes into action in our lives - reminding us which choice is the best - niggling our subconscious as well as our conscious minds. We need to heed the 'niggling', though. Just sayin!

What did obedience cost Mary and Joseph?

As we have looked at the birth of Christ, we have considered the fact he was born of a virgin, with an earthly father so willing to honor God with his life that he married a woman who was already pregnant. In that day and time, a very taboo thing. We also saw how the mother of Christ was chosen by God and given the dramatic news that she would carry the Son of God. Imagine her awe, but also see her tremendous amount of fear as she would have received this announcement, knowing all she knew about the time in which she lived about how a woman out of wedlock showing up pregnant would be treated. We also explored the lowly birth of Jesus in a stable of sorts, surrounded by animals, visited by shepherds, and then honored by magi from afar. The announcement of his birth was by angels - start to finish. Mary heard from an angel (a messenger from God), while Joseph was set at ease by a messenger from God on another occasion - assuring him the thing he was about to do in marrying Mary wa

A brilliant display indeed

Love from the center of who you are ; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply ; practice playing second fiddle. Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. (Romans 12:9-12) Integrity and Intensity don't seem to fit together all that well, but they are uniquely interwoven traits which actually complement each other. "Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it." God asks for us to have some intensity (fervor) in how we love (from the center of who we are), but he also expects us to have integrity in our love as he asks us to be real in our love (don't fake it). They are indeed integral to each other. At first, we may only think of integrity as honesty - some adherence to a moral code within. I believe there is a little more to integrity than meets the eye. In the most literal sense,

Do me a favor

If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care—then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. (Philippians 2:1-4) Has God's love made ANY difference in your life? What is that difference? Most of us will likely say that our lives were changed for the good, while others will say there was a dramatic change. Some left behind lifestyles marked by all manner of outward sin - like drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, or even thievery. There are many that will admit the things they left behind were just a bit subtler - what we can call inward sin - things like jealousy,

The Plumbline

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