My husband, Kelly, has a favorite car wash.   It’s not the closest or the cheapest but it does the best job.  For a while, he tried the “touchless” car wash that has no brushes but it left globs of dirt and grime in the hard to reach areas.  He tells me that the brushes in his favorite car wash could scratch the paint but that’s why he keeps the car covered in a nice protective coat of wax.  With regular washes, his car’s always looking great.  But me?  I pathetically ignore washing my car leaving it a lack luster grey.  The real problem?  My car’s supposed to be white.

It’s amazing how easy it is to avoid the annoying things we’re suppose to do.  I’d say the number one thing most people avoid is fights.  This fear of fighting drives many couples to opt for the touchless car wash style of fighting.  They tell each other the little things that bug them just to take the top layer of grime off the marriage.  Unfortunately, this leaves globs of dirt and grime that may not have been removed in years. 

From time to time, what every marriage needs in a good fight.  What happened to the idea of a good fight?  A good fight airs the hurt and frustration that builds up when we love someone.  Somebody started the false impression that when we love someone we don’t fight.  That’s ridiculous.  The truth is that real intimacy is built through conflict resolution.  Really.  Two people that love each other share their hurt and frustrations and do you know what happens after they resolve the fight?  They still love each other.  It leaves the couple learning “You mean after I shared all my yucky stuff, they still love me?”  The resolution of a conflict removes a layer of fear from the marriage and brings a dose of intimacy.  Less fear of hurt = more intimacy. 

Now like my husband said about car washes, you don’t drive your nice paint job through all those massive brushes without a protective coat of wax.  But what’s the protective coating in marriage?  Romans 12:10 tells us to “Honor one another above yourselves.”  Can you picture two people fighting that honor the other person above themselves?  Suddenly the whole purpose of the fight changes.  The fighting is not intended to tear the other person down, but to lift up the hurts in the relationships.  When you honor one another above yourselves, you risk sharing your hurts to bring healing to the marriage which you cherish. 

Don’t settle for a marriage that’s become mundane.  Christ wants you to have more.  So go ahead, ask for more.  Ask to be hurt less and honored more all the while deciding that you will hurt them less and honor them more.

It’s still scary to open the grimy places in your marriage but it’s worth it.  Because like my car, your marriage is not suppose to be a dingy grey but a sparkling, vibrant white.

Have you ever been a Boat Potato?  I have.  John Ortberg in his book If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat, explains that Boat Potatoes are people that consider their Christian walk to be a spectator sport.  Remember when Jesus walked on the water and Peter stepped on the water to go to Him?  What where the other disciples doing?  They were sitting in the watching.  They were Boat Potatoes.

If you are feeling that you want to be more involved in the plans God has for His people but you don’t know where to start, give this book a try.  Ortberg writes on deeply profound concepts with the casualness of the guy up the street.  He’s witty, thoughtful and direct.  Give up that safe comfy Boat Potato seat.  Let Ortberg’s book  show you how.

Here’s more info:http://www.amazon.com/Want-Walk-Water-Youve-Boat/dp/0310228638/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_3

Nicole C. Mullens is one of those artists that sings from a place very deep inside them until it explodes out of them in song.  Her songs breaks through my calm veneer and awakens my yearning to draw closer to Christ.

Redeemer is definitely a love song to Christ.  If you are like me and too often get caught up in your daily life and loose site of what Christ means to you, plug a little Nicole C. Mullen into you day.  That deep place in you that wants to live each moment in praise will thank you.

Love this songs…. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpCaNBhK4S0

“I have come to the place in my life that, if the assignment that I sense God is giving me is something I know I can handle, I know it’s probably not from God.”

Ice cream cones don’t like me.  As a little girl I remember my dad taking the family to the Dairy Queen for tall cones of soft ice cream.  As everyone joyfully ate their cones, I’d get caught up in the excitement of the occasion and forget to eat mine.  So as the ice cream would begin to drip down my hand, my dad would tell me to “hurry up and eat.”  But I didn’t want to hurry up and eat, so I’d begin to cry.  As the ice cream began to creep down my arm, my dad would save the day by eating all the melting ice cream from the outside of my cone.  This would only make me cry more because I didn’t want anyone else to eat my ice cream cone.  By the end of this process, I was left with a dry cone topped with a little mound of ice cream.   If I had just eaten my cone like my dad said, everything would have been fine.  These days I get my ice cream in a cup.

I find I am often like this when things go wrong.  I don’t just want things to get fixed.  I want things to get fixed the way I want them to get fixed.  Now of course, the way I want them fixed may be impossible, like holding an ice cream cone without eating it and expecting it not to melt.  Sometimes to get what I want, I have to give up my insistence that everything must go my way. 

Unfortunately , this hunger for things to go my way is not just with people but with God.  In my prayer life, I find myself giving God directions of how I want Him to answer my prayer.  Do you know what I mean?  Some people desperately ask God to mend a terrible lie they have perpetuated but then ask God would He mind letting their sin stay a secret?  Others may pray for God to take away their drinking problem but then request God to let them still have a few glasses of wine on the weekend.  And then there are those that ask God to stop their adulterous relationship but think God should still arrange for them to see the person socially, just as a friend.  They want God’s help, but only on their own terms.

The problem with these prayers is that the person is not looking to participate in God’s plan to restore their life. They are only looking to participate in their plan to restore their life.  It’s tempting to think “I know God can fix this my way.”  The question is can you fix things God’s way?  James 4:10 says “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.”  It’s OK to let God be the one to lift you up.

Don’t miss out on the plan for restoration God has in store for you.  Remember: your humility and His love are an unbeatable mix.

“Why then did God give (people) free will?  Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.”

This is a little spooky.  Francesca Battistelli keeps writing songs about me.  The first evidence I had of this was her song Free To Be Me where she singsabout having dents in her fender and rips in her jeans.  Her newest song, This Is The Stuff, is about lost keys and missing cell phones.  Obviously, another song about me.  Check out the lyrics:

I lost my keys in the great unknown
And call me please
Cause I can’t find my phoneIt’s amazing that in the daily chaos of my disorganized life, God is still in charge.    What a relief!  Enjoy the song.  The song is so new the only video I could find was Francesca in concert.  It’s fun to watch her perform.

This is the stuff
That drives me crazy
This is the stuff
That’s getting to me lately
In the middle of my little mess
I forget how big I’m blessed
This is the stuff
That gets under my skin
But I’ve gotta trust
You know exactly what Your doing
Might not be what I would choose
But this is the stuff You use

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuD4PYNoOFc

Imagine that your job is to drum up business for your Arts and Antiquities Security company by breaking into the major museums around the globe to reveal the fallacies in their current security systems.  Makes you a good guy that can act like a bad guys…sometimes.  On top of that you have a mysterious father, a rowdy assistant and a handsome FBI agent trying to pin a few crimes on you.  That’s the predicament of Desiree Jacobs as she stumbles from one dangerous situation to the next.

Jill Elizabeth Nelson has managed to pack her books with so many bad guys, even the bad guys have bad guys.  This makes for a wonderful who-done-it trying to sift out the multiple mysteries from the multiple suspects.  The Reluctant Burglar is only the first in the To Catch a Thief series but each new installment seems to just keep getting better.  Nelson does a wonderful job of weaving the faith struggles of her characters with the high action situations leaving the reader with a thoughtful yet entertaining read.

Find out more: http://www.jillelizabethnelson.com/books.html

College can breed some peculiar survival techniques.  One technique I latched on to in college was the late night junk food run.  While many of my roommates preferred thick crust pizza or the candy aisle at the nearest gas station, I usually found myself at 1 AM in a car filled with starving girls headed to a drive through burger place.  Now I never ordered a burger, I was too broke for such a high-end delicacy.  I just got a large fry and a Diet Coke.   Many times my girlfriends would ask me why I bothered with a Diet Coke when I was digesting massive quantities of grease, carbohydrates and fat grams from the French fries.  My answer?  “The Diet Coke cancels out the fat in the fries.”  Now I did not REALLY believe that the fat was miraculously dissolved by the magical properties of a diet soda but saying it made the fries go down easier.

Junk food is not the only bad thing that goes down better with a good excuse.   At some point, washing down the bad with some good is something we all do.  It might sound like: “I know I yell at my kids but to be a good mom I have to get things through their heads.”  Or “I know I didn’t have any charitable contributions last year but isn’t it important to be a good provider?”  Maybe even “I know I lied.  I’m not really putting in over time but when I’m away from the house there’s less fighting.”   It’s too easy to find a good excuse to try and water down the bad things we’re doing.

This is not a new discovery.  The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 7:21 “When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.”  It’s creepy to think that evil is right there with you but it’s true.  Christians want to do good, try to do good and sometimes, things really do turn out good.  But more often than we’d like to admit, our good intentions are over shadowed by our bad behavior.

There’s lots of ways to hide the evil that’s right there with you.  You could ignore it saying something like “Giving to charities is not important.”  or you could justify the evil by saying  “It’s OK I lied because then no one would get hurt.” or you could even try some magical thinking like “My kids know I love them so it’s OK I yell.”

Good doesn’t dissolve evil just like Diet Coke doesn’t dissolve fat grams.  We must learn to live with both.  But how?  Later in Chapter 7, Paul asked the same thing by saying “Who will rescue me from this body of death?”  And his answer?  “Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Ask Jesus to show you the evil that is right beside you then don’t ignore it, justify it or wish it away.  Take it to your rescuer- Christ the Lord.

Bring me Rain by Mercy Me is one of those songs that you can enjoy just because it sounds wonderful and soothing.  But as you really look at the lyrics you come to see that it is a praise song that asks you to do more than worship your Lord to draw closer to Him.  It asks you to surrender to Him to draw closer to Him. 

It’s one thing to ask God to be there with you through the dark seasons of rain in your life, it’s another to ask him to BRING the rain.  Sounds a little nutty.  But this song comes from a place that you are willing to risk everything to be closer to your Lord. 

Look at these lyrics:

Bring me joy, bring me peace
Bring the chance to be free
Bring me anything that brings You glory
And I know there’ll be days
When this life brings me pain
But if that’s what it takes to praise You
Jesus, bring the rain

Tall words, powerful words, needed words.  Take a listen…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mat7YRISmv4