What's Valuable? Focus

I think a wasted life

is one spent evaluating others

to see if they are living their's correctly.

I've done it. I am ashamed to say it.

But, it has become a life's ambition with some folks-- often fueling a lack of love, absense of unity, unforgiveness and failure to restore biblically---even encouraging comparison and spiritual ranking. It sends broken people to other movements where there is love instead of evaluation, forgiveness because of mercy and acceptance.

And we blame them for going! Ruin their reputations. What is that? It's not Jesus Christ's kind of Christianity.

Fire Is Required

It's tough when the fire is unleashed in my life! Sometimes though, I actually think it is tougher on those who hold me dear than on me! When I suddenly had seizures out of the blue when Mike went into evangelism, I was unconscious! Those around me in church when the first one happened were shocked and fearful that they were doing the right things to protect me. Mike was in Burma with Jeff and John and Josh. He could not come to me for 5 days.

Even though it was a shocking set of events, this fire was the first of a special refining which I am immensely thankful for. It was what the LORD used to expose the working of the flesh in my life in a destructive, covert, disguised sort of way. If the fire had not come to me in such a drastic way, I would never have known how much pride was keeping me from knowing the beauty of the victory Christ had attained for me on the cross.