Please, please take the time to visit her blog. It is one of my favorite blogs, due to Erin's transparency and deep spiritual insights she shares on there. I'm always touched and/or challenged when I read one of her posts.
If you are interested in writing a guest post on here, feel free to contact me at mamabzz@yahoo.com.
And now, from Erin:
Happy New Year! Yes. It’s a week late and I’m sorry. I haven’t blogged in a week but I have been reading all of your fabulous New Year’s Resolutions. I wish you all the best of luck as you reach whatever goal you have set for 2010.
If you read this blog regularly, then you know how much I love music. Sometimes, I hear a song and its words perfectly describe a feeling that I cannot adequately express. It warms my heart and it speaks to my soul. Musical worship, in my opinion, is the closest that we can get to Heaven here on Earth.
So it is probably no surprise that my New Year’s Resolution is based music.
Leeland’s “Follow You” (with special guest Brandon Heath) from the Love Is on the Move album sums it up. My goal is to live in a way that would be more pleasing to God. More specifically, to look outside the four walls of my life and reach out to people who need a helping-hand.
Here are some of the lyrics from “Follow You:”
“Use my hands, use my feet
To make your kingdom come
Through the corners of the earth
Until your work is done
'Cause Faith without works is dead
And on the cross your blood was she'd
So how could I not give it away so freely?
And I'll follow you into the homes that are broken.
Follow you into the world.
Meet the needs for the poor and the needy God.
Follow you into the World.”
Matthew 25:45 says that whatever we don’t do for strangers, for the sick or for prisoners is also what we don’t do for Christ.
And all this time I thought I was doing pretty good...
God gives us talents and it is up to us to use them in a way that pleases Him. If you think that you don’t have a talent, volunteer at your local food bank one Saturday. Or offer to start a game night at the nursing home and take some of your friends. Or eat lunch with the one person in the office who usually eats alone. It doesn’t take money and sometimes, it doesn’t even take much time.
It takes observation and effort. I am not very good at this. I get very wrapped up in the routine of my life and I miss opportunities to do His work. I get tired. I get frustrated because I had a bad day at work. I still have to do laundry. And cook dinner. And clean the kitchen. And then do it all again tomorrow. It’s exhausting.
The truth is that even my worst days are filled with blessings. I have a job. I have a family. We have food. We have clean water. We have electricity. We have so much to be thankful for and I want to do a better job of remembering.
I want to do a better job of really seeing the people around me and anticipating what their needs might be. This reminds me of the song “Hosanna” by Selah from the album, You Deliver Me. The words from the bridge of this song speak to me in way that I feel like have to answer. It’s almost like God is telling me that THIS is what he wants for me. Read these words:
“Heal my heart and make it clean
Open up my eyes to the things unseen
Show me how to love like you have loved me
Break my heart from what breaks yours
Everything I am for your kingdoms cause
As I go from nothing to
Eternity”
So my New Year’s Resolution is really my New Life's Resolution and it will be a continuing progression as I learn more about Him and what He wants for me. I don’t want to look back at my life and wish that I had done more. Erma Bombeck said it best when she said:
“When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me.”
What exactly am I going to do? I don't have a great plan. I think I am going to start tomorrow by speaking to someone at church who I don't know or to someone who may be sitting alone. I could pay for someone's lunch or suprise Kelsey's teachers with something yummy. Or maybe the next time I see someone who is upset I will speak to them and not avoid them like the plague. Or maybe I will simply stop criticizing people so easily when I think they have made a bad decision. Or maybe, I will just start with a prayer.
Heavenly Father,
Thank you for all that you have given to me. I am sorry that I don’t say it enough. You deserve more than a simple prayer and so it is my heart’s desire to walk closer to you every day that you allow me to be here. Please use me as Your hands and feet in this broken world. Allow me to be an ambassador for Your love. Show me where to go and what to say. Lord, help me not to me so busy in my everyday life that I cannot sense Your guidance. After all that You have done for me, how can I NOT do this for You? I want to see with Your eyes and hear with Your ears and feel with Your heart. I ask all of these things in Your Son’s most precious and Holy name; Your Son who chose to be born knowing that He would live under the shadow of the cross and that the redemption of the world rested on his shoulders.
Thank you.
~ © Erin Brady 2009-2010 All Rights Reserved ~
