Songs on a Sunday - I Know Who Holds Tomorrow

I haven't done a Songs on a Sunday post in a while because I hadn't had any new songs just jump out and squeeze my heart lately. But even though it wasn't sung in church today, my sister was randomly singing this song today and it caught my attention. Read the words; they are very encouraging!

I Know Who Holds Tomorrow

by Ira Stanphill in 1950

Verse 1

I don't know about tomorrow,
I just live from day to day.
I don't borrow from it's sunshine,
For it's skies may turn to gray.
I don't worry o'er the future,
For I know what Jesus said,
And today I'll walk beside Him,
For He knows what is ahead.

Refrain
Many things about tomorrow,
I don't seem to understand;
But I know Who holds tomorrow,
And I know Who holds my hand.

Verse 2

Ev'ry step is getting brighter,
As the golden stairs I climb;
Ev'ry burden's getting lighter;
Ev'ry cloud is silver lined.
There the sun is always shining,
There no tear will dim the eyes,
At the ending of the rainbow,
Where the mountains touch the sky.

Refrain
Many things about tomorrow,
I don't seem to understand;
But I know Who holds tomorrow,
And I know Who holds my hand.

Verse 3

I don't know about tomorrow,
It may bring me poverty;
But the One Who feeds the sparrow,
Is the One Who stands by me.
And the path that be my portion,
May be through the flame or flood,
But His presence goes before me,
And I'm covered with His blood. 

Refrain
Many things about tomorrow,
I don't seem to understand;
But I know Who holds tomorrow,
And I know Who holds my hand.

Once Upon a Dream

Some of my earliest and fondest memories are being read to by my parents and then reading to myself when I grew old enough. I have always loved reading because of the stories. There's something almost magical about reading that transports you out of your own bedroom and deposits you in the middle of your story. A good author has the power to make you forget, even if for a short while, who you are and sets you free on the seas of imagination. Oh the freedom! The possibilities!

I am not sure when that love for reading began to translate into a love for writing, but I do distinctly remember as early as 3rd grade that I loved creative writing! My favorite school assignment was having my spelling words for the week turned into a list that I had to somehow incorporate into a story. My little diary was also a staple most every day. My sister and I would take our toys and build up scenes in the stories I would write, so we could see what I imagined visually. I fancied myself to be a writer just like Anne Shirley in the "Anne of Green Gables" series. My imagination then was fresh, dramatic, vivid. I dreamed of one day being an author.

As a teenager I still wrote in my journal. When I felt like I would burst, it would relieve the pressure built up inside me. Countless times when I was wide awake at night, I would open my journal and write until I was relaxed enough to fall asleep. During my teens years, I also discovered that it was easier for me to open up and share my heart through written rather than spoken word. I could expresses myself far more through a letter than I could ever say aloud. I could be bolder through writing than I would be otherwise.

Then college came along and I grew more focused on editing, perfecting, and polishing. Writing evolved into more function than fun; it was a necessity rather than enjoyable. Writing for me became solely a matter of proper punctuation, good grammar, and the correct research documentation. I convinced myself that I was not a writer but an editor. After all I had become a Yearbook editor in 8th grade and spent 10 years immersed in that world.

While I never lost my love for reading, somewhere along the way I lost my enjoyment of writing. I think it was about the same time that I lost the ability to dream. My dreams were lost as the real world crowded out the imaginary. Life became all about necessity and the need for practicality; it left little room for dreaming. I had to "grow up" and face reality. Practicality numbed my imagination and lacking imagination my love for writing was temporarily erased. I forgot writing could be fun. Even my journal became more about finding relief or recording facts than about having fun.

When I told my dad that several of my friends had started blogs, his immediate response was that I should too. Perhaps he remembered better than I did my childhood love for writing or perhaps he just thought it would be a good outlet for me. Either way, my response was a complete rejection of the idea. I was an editor, better at polish than creativity. But the idea stuck. I found myself thinking that blogging looked like so much fun!

Eventually I broke down and this blog was born. Through it I have begun to fall in love with writing all over again. I think the biggest change is that writing is teaching me once again to dream, that life doesn't always have to be practical. That a life without dreams, imaginations, and what-ifs, is far too dull a life to live. That someone along the way I had lost the childlike ability to dream and that it's OK to reach back into the past and pull it up with me into the present.

So this coming November, I am going to dream. I am going to dream big! My imagination cap will be firmly placed on my head and even though practicality screams at me that I might not be capable, I will plug my ears and have fun writing!

NaNoWriMo

Hello to all my readers!

I am thinking about trying my hand at a bit more writing. Since you, my brave readers, have already been reading what I write I thought I would share the idea with you. Basically NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. The concept is simple. Write a 50,000 word novel beginning November 1st and ending November 30th. It must all be written that month, must all be fiction, and must be your individual writing. You can get plot ideas and character sketches down ahead of time, but no actual story writing.

I am not sure that I have the talent or skills to actually accomplish it, but it sounds fun. I am not sure that I am going to be super intense about it, but I think I might just see how far I can get in a month. I have loved reading my whole life and even as a child dreamed about writing books. (What can I say? With a name like Anne I have always loved red hair and wanted to be an author?) As I got older I thought my skills were better suited to editing than writing, but as I have been writing on here I have rediscovered my love for writing too.

I guess I will just see how it goes. I may even post excerpts on here throughout November, just to give y'all a taste and to get your feedback as I am going. As I told a friend, I don't really know if I can do this, but if I am going to try, I am going to try to write something worthy of being published, something with quality and content. Not that my first try would probably actually be worth publishing, but that would be my goal. If I am going to spend my time doing it, I would want it to be readable, something that I would pick up and read if I were to see it in a bookstore. I want to draw on personal experiences and try to write something that will be both entertaining AND encouraging.

So what do y'all think? Should I go for it? Should I step out of my comfort zone and attempt something that I have never tried before and don't know if I can actually do? Should I open myself up to possible failure?

I think I just might.

*If you think my might want to join my journey and write a novel yourself, here is the website where you can learn more.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/whatisnano

A Loving Relationship, Not a Daunting Checklist

God has been working in my life for the past two years to teach me that I really knew nothing about what it means to be spiritual. It's been a process that began with me meeting people who didn't have my same standards and therefore should have been "worldly" people. Yet I came to realize that my definition of what made a person Godly and spiritual must be skewed. You see, these people I met I now consider to be among the most Godly, spiritual people that I know.

I began to see how my list of standards had become a checklist for spirituality. I could see that I would look down on and judge other people as not being as Godly as myself because they didn't follow my list. I began to see pride, arrogance, hypocrisy, self-righteousness in myself. I felt like I had become a modern-day Pharisee. And Jesus was clear in how He felt about them; He didn't count them as spiritual, but as hindrances to the spiritual walk of others.

That started me on a journey. I began to re-evaluate my life, my standards, my beliefs. I knew how to defend what I had grown up believing and living, but I had come to the point where I needed to decide for myself what I believed. I knew that taking another human's word for it was not going to be enough for me, even if that person was my Pastor or my parents. I knew that I couldn't continue to live it if I didn't concretely believe it for myself. I realized that if it wasn't stated out and out in the Bible as a sin then it was a man-made rule. I began to sort through those man-made rules that I had grown up with to see which ones I could trace back to a Biblical basis, not personal preference.

When I moved back to OKC, Pastor Gaddis was preaching about some of the same things I had been learning. He preached about how judging another person's spiritual life based on human standards was wrong. This was exactly what I had been realizing for the past year. He also talked about how God sets a standard that is black and white; He draws the line clearly on an issue. Then he talked about how the Pharisees added to those laws by creating man-made standards. The intention was to prevent them from even getting close to breaking God's laws. Sounds good, sound zealous, sounds spiritual, sounds like us Independent Baptists, right? The motive may have started out right, but the practice went wrong. They began to treat their added standards as the law themselves. They began to believe that a person could not be spiritual unless he followed all of their man-made additions to the law too.

Throughout this time, there still remained one question in my works-oriented mind... If your personal standards are not the basis for evaluating a person's spirituality, then what does make a personal spiritual? This past Wednesday night Pastor's message finally answered that question. The answer is to remember that the spiritual walk is a relationship, not a checklist. I have heard this before many times, but this time it struck me differently.

I had been reading a book about the 5 "love languages" that people "speak." The book is all about relationships and how different people communicate love differently. It talks about how some people do things for each other to show their love. But for it to be an actual expression of love, the action cannot be demanded. If action is demanded then you are required to do a certain thing. You do what is demanded because you fear losing who you love. The book says that action out of fear doesn't show love; you must go beyond what is expected, out of the realm of fear, in order to express love by your actions.

Maybe those things seem completely unrelated, but in my mind they came together and clicked. That was how I had been viewing my relationship with God. I viewed Him as demanding this list of required actions. (I am not going to make a list, because it is different for every person. You will know what you believe is expected of you.) I believed that I had to do these things in order to not displease Him. I did them out of fear, fear that He would not be satisfied or pleased with me, like I had to earn His pleasure and approval.

When Pastor Gaddis talked about the spiritual life not being a checklist, but a relationship it began to click. He even made a comment similar to the one in the book about how action demanded cannot express love. To express love you must be free to choose not to perform those actions. It must be a free choice. God says over and over that salvation freed us. God doesn't demand that we fulfill His commandments any longer.

It doesn't mean that we are justified in going and living however we please. We are free, freed from sin not freed to sin. Even though God doesn't demand that we live a certain way, His standards of right and wrong are still there. But now we have a choice! We are free from His demands to freely express our love to Him of our own free will by choosing to live according to His standards because we know it will please Him.

The difference is subtle...

Instance 1) God demands that we fulfill His laws. We attempt to out of fear of His displeasure. When we fail, we always feel as though we have failed Him. We take our list and fearfully try to check it off, hoping He won't be displeased. We never make it to victory, but struggle with defeat constantly. We think of God as a harsh task master who is demanding and impossible to please.

Instance 2) We realize that God no longer demands that we fulfill His laws. We understand that right is still right and wrong is still wrong and we know that doing right still pleases God; it brings Him pleasure. So as an expression of our love to Him, we choose to do what will bring Him pleasure. We freely choose to do the things on our list, not out of fear of rejection, but because we know we are loved and accepted by God and we desire to show that we love Him too by doing what makes Him happy. We evaluate our lives and actions by how they will please God, not out of fear, but out of eagerness to please Him.

In the end, I may be doing the exact same things as I was before, but now I can do them wholeheartedly with joy. I can do them because I love Him and am grateful for what He has done for me. I can do them because I know that they will make Him happy, not out of fear of displeasing Him.

Courageous

In my last post I talked about the effect that divorce has on kids because it had been heavy on my heart. Pastor's message this Sunday morning was also about family life. He pointed out the mistakes made in the family of Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, and Esau and the results of those mistakes. It seems like it just keeps coming up lately. This week I also got to see the movie "Courageous." It too talks about the needs that kids have and the effects on their lives when those needs aren't met.

Without giving too much of the story away, I can tell you that it's about 4 policemen who are doing what policemen do. In the course of their job they are battling with some gang members. Throughout the movie the men come to realize what a vital need kids have for a strong, Goldy father in their lives and how the gang members they are fighting are the result of that need being left unfulfilled.

The movie calls for Christian men to stand up and be the true leaders, fathers, and husbands that God desires and designed them to be. It reminds all of us that being a good father means that a man does more than just provide for his family, but he also guides them, spends time with them, and sets the example for them to follow by being a Godly man of integrity himself. It reminds us that this will take a lot of time, thought, purpose, and even more... courage. It will take determination that comes from the knowledge that how a man lives his life has permanent and life-altering affect on the lives of his kids, grandkids, etc.

In the end the movie made me laugh, made me cry, made me laugh, made me cry again, and made me want to call my Daddy. It also made me even more determined to wait for the right person to marry and have a family with. The world has far too many children growing up in broken homes or with distant dads. I refuse to add to their numbers. I want my children to have the kind of father these men determined to be because that's what they will need. I won't settle for less. I will wait for such a man of courage and in doing so, hopefully I will be doing my part to be "Courageous" for my future family too.