Lindsay Willis

SOAP bubbles for Friday

Today's SOAP reading is Deuteronomy 32.  I really enjoy the book of Deuteronomy and chapter 32 has one of my favorite verses in it (that is another blog coming up).  But this morning, as I was reading in THE MESSAGE BIBLE, another verse popped out at me.  It reads differently in THE MESSAGE than it does in other translations.  It is verse 3.  In the New Living Translation it reads:  "How glorious is our God."

But in THE MESSAGE, it reads:

                                          "Respond to the greatness of our God!"

Now I LOVE that rendering of that verse!  That speaks so loudly to me in the days we are living in.  With all of the bad news that the media keeps pumping out, it becomes very easy to respond to that news.  And when we do, what the media says becomes our reality.

But this verse calls us as followers of Christ to respond to a higher reality, the real truth!  This verse calls us to respond to the greatness of our God!!  And how do we respond?  With faith, with courage and boldness, with love and compassion, with hope, with resilience, with confidence, with assurance, with trust, with giving, with worship,...with so many other positive things that can influence the world around us for God and His ways.

So today, let this verse inspire you and strengthen you.  In all you do, or see, or hear, respond to the greatness of our God!

He's baaaaaaacccckkkk!!

He's back!  Yes sirree!  And I am one happy person......

So who is he?  Tiger Woods!  For those who know me, you know I am a big golf fan...and there is a lot about the way Tiger plays golf that I really enjoy.  I have missed him on the tour since last June.  But he is back at it this week at the Match Play championship.  It starts on Wednesday.  It would be totally amazing to me to see him win this first tournament back from stress fractures in his leg and a repaired ACL.  The odds are against him, but then again he had defied the odds countless times in his career.  I would love to see him win it.  GO TIGER!!

The start of a small group

I am excited!  Tomorrow night we start a small group...ladies just getting together and living life with Jesus.  This is the first time I have been involved in a structured small group at River Valley so I am really looking forward to it.  I love hanging out with new people and getting to know them...and there are at least half of the group that I do not know by name.  Pretty cool!

I want to encourage you to get involved in a small group.  Being connected with other people who want to grow in God is so critical to living an authentic relationship with Jesus.  He wired us for connection...and small groups is where it happens.  Check the River Valley website (www.rivervalley.org) to find a group and get connected!

It was an amazing night!

I was at the Chick Night recording last night...And it was amazing!  I so enjoyed worshiping with so many other women who were there.  And it was so good to just spend that time singing from my heart to Jesus.  There is something so rewarding about investing that time in worship.

Hats off to all who were involved in the recording...the musicians, the singers, the tech guys, and all of the wonderful people who made Chick Night so special last night.  And a special shout out to Becca and Kristie who inspired us all to follow the dreams in our hearts!

Shalom

As part of our SOAP journey, we ran past a number of chapters in Leviticus and Numbers.  (Honestly, I am thankful for that.  I could get bogged down reading a lot of the stuff we ran past.)

But I did take the time to page through my Bible and read the notes of Eugene Peterson, who translated THE MESSAGE Bible.  Several of them were very thought provoking, but one really stood out for the time in which we are living.  It comes from Numbers 6:22-26, which reads: "God spoke to Moses: 'Tell Aaron and his sons, This is how you are to bless the People of Israel.  Say to them, "God bless you and keep you.  God smile on you and gift you. God look you full in the face and make you prosper."

Peterson writes the following in his notes on this passage:  "The word I translated "prosper" in verse 26 comes from the Hebrew word shalom.  In other versions, it is translated "peace."  The word basically means "wholeness"--the dynamic, vibrating, health of an individual or a society that pulses with divinely directed purpose and surges with transforming love.  The greetings and salutations of the apostle Paul's letters include the wish for "peace" in the lives of his readers.  As a Hebrew of Hebrews, Paul used the word in the sense it's used here.  Shalom. It's more than peace as we know it.  It's prosperity, in the fullest sense of the word.  It's life in al its abundance, which we have brimming over from Christ living inside us."

Shalom!  May you experience the abundance of Christ living inside of you!

Home and happy

I am back home!  And very happy about it.  I grew up in a small town...Brainerd.  And although it was a great town in which to grow up, I long since have learned that I was not designed to live in a small town.  The 30 hours I spent in Klamath Falls Tuesday and Wednesday of this week was more than enough for me.

I was with two clients on this trip...and everywhere we went, everyone knew we were strangers in the town.  I am not used to that.  I think I like the anonymity of living my own life in a big city.  I would not want to live in a place small enough that everyone recognized you and knew what was going on in your life.

Home is good...and even better when it is a big city!!

Life in Klamath Falls Oregon

Yep...here I am in Klamath Falls Oregon.  Never heard of it?  Me neither, until a client asked me to do some consulting work for one of their locations here.

It is a town of about 30,000 people in a valley in the mountains of Oregon.  It is snowy and sleepy. 

The biggest challenge is that my business Blackberry is not picking up my emails.  I have to admit...my first reaction to not getting emails was a tad of frustration.  But then I thought about it and I realized that being out of touch makes life a bit easier for a day.  I think I like that!

Off to work...I will check in later!

The last few days of Exodus

Can I be honest with you?  I have struggled with the last few days of reading our SOAP devotional about the plagues in Egypt.  I struggled because I know God as a merciful, loving God...but He "seems" so uncaring in sending all of these plagues on the people of Egypt and Israel.  I spent time each day wondering what it would have been like living through those days of frogs and flies and blood and locusts and hail and the other stuff.  It could not have been fun.

I know at an intellectual level that God was dealing the Pharaoh's stubbornness, but gosh there were a lot of people that wound up suffering because of Pharaoh's stubbornness...and that hardly seemed fair to me. 

I sat and talked with God about it this morning...and then a Scripture jumped out at me.  It was Exodus 11:2-3 in THE MESSAGE BIBLE.  It reads:  "Tell the people to ask, each man from his neighbor and each woman from her neighbor, for things made of silver and gold.  God saw to it that the Egyptians like the people. Also Moses was greatly admired by the Egyptians, a respected public figure among both Pharaoh's servants and the people at large."

I was stunned by that.  How could these people like Moses...when it was because of him (and God of course) that they were all suffering these horrendous plagues? 

I am not sure I have this all sorted out...but let me share how I processed it.  Pharaoh was a tyrant. Life wasn't very good for most of the people unless they were close to Pharaoh.  No one stood up to Pharaoh--instead they feared him and so they just took whatever Pharaoh dished out to them. 

Moses on the other hand stood up to Pharaoh.  He wasn't afraid or intimidated by Pharaoh.  I now believe that is why the people respected him...both in Egypt and Israel.  They saw a man ofstrength and courage and faith who would not bow to a tyrant.  In Moses, they saw a way out of their bondage.  And even though in the short term it cost them a lot, they believed that in the long term, Moses could end Pharaoh's tyranny and set them free. 

How does that apply to me?  I know that God will ask me at times to sacrifice in the short term so that He can fulfill His purpose for many people in the long term.  If I focus only on the short term sacrifice, I will never see the long-term reward.

To put it another way:  IT AIN"T ABOUT THE HERE AND NOW!!!

 

A thought for the day

In a time when the news all around us seems so negative, it is easy to lose perspective.  Here is a thought to keep a positive atmosphere in the part of the world you influence:

• Be thankful!  No matter what is happening around you, there are things for which you can be thankful!  Focus on those and express your appreciation for those things to someone.

• Be encouraging!  Discouragement saps strength and creativity.  Counteract it by being an encourager.  Find something that someone did today and encourage them.  It will have a positive effect on you and on them.

• Believe in others! 

The greatest thing you can give someone you live with or work with is the belief that they can do what they need to do.  Express that to them and watch them not only do what they need to, but in most cases they will go the extra mile!

 

 

In times like this, we all need to keep our attitudes positive.  Staying positive is easier than riding the roller coaster of emotion!

 

Have a productive day!

SOAP Thought for Exodus 7

Exodus 7 is the start of the plagues.  Everything in Egypt was against Moses.  He had told the Israelites, based on God’s instructions, that God was going to deliver them.  (Keep in mind, this was 430 years after Joseph, and nothing too terribly Godly had happened in that amount of time.  I wonder if people were even aware of or sensitive to God’s leading when Moses came to them?)  And ever since Moses had first spoken with Pharaoh about Israel, Pharaoh had made things harder on Israel

to the point that Israelwas now ticked off at Moses.  He had to feel pretty much alone in trying to follow God's instructions.  When he looked at what was happening around him, he did not see to many promising signs.

In the first line of Exodus 7, in THE MESSAGE BIBLE (the translation I am reading this year), the text says, "Then God told Moses, "Look at Me."  That jumped off the page at me.  So many times, we can get instructions from God to proceed in an area of life and we go confidently into the journey expecting everything to go smoothly.  Then it seems like all hell breaks loose around us.  What do we do in those times?  That phrase is our answer:  Look at Me. 

Our tendency is to look at what is happening around us, what is going wrong, and to begin to worry or become fearful.  God wants us to look at Him, to keep our thoughts focused on Him, His nature, and His promises.  It is from Him that we take our direction when life does not seem to be working out the way we had expected.  Such a good reminder to take our eyes off the bad news and everything else that is going on around us and to simply, Look at Him.