Prayer:
Thank you God for sending your Son to walk an earthly life, setting an example for a people in desperate need of someone perfect to follow. The selfless love through the cross and resurrection sets believers in a place of undeserved grace and salvation. I pray that we would never take that for granted but instead we’d walk in obedience, closer everyday, toward you. Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful Easter season.
He has risen indeed.
Amen.
If anyone gets to know me very well one of the first things they’d probably note is that I like things to be simple and make sense. And when something goes against that or I don’t understand, I’ll problem-solve to understand or fix it as best I can. (This is probably a good indicator of control-freak behavior.😅)
So let me explain what happened recently…
I was trying to simplify my phone—get rid of extra things I no longer needed on it. When I went into the phone settings and discovered (under my Apple ID) that there were several former phones of mine still listed from the past five or so years I decided I’d ‘simply’ delete them. To me it seemed reasonable to have only my current phone connected to my Apple ID. So off went two or three old phones and when I came to the listing that read IOS (and whatever else after it) I thought, “well I have no idea what this one is, don’t recognize the name, out it goes!!!”
Within seconds my current phone, as I held it in my hands, began progressively and ambitiously deleting. And there was not a thing I could do to stop it!!!!
My phone was almost instantly back to fresh, right out of the box, factory mode.
“Okay! Easy!” I thought to myself, “I’ll just reload it by inserting my Apple ID password and everything will flood back in.”
However, thinking I knew my password after three different tries, Apple locked me out! For security reasons! For two weeks!! Not even an Apple representative could override my issue even though I had backup verification methods.
I’d love to report that I dealt with this like a sweet, mature Christian gal—but far from it. I was so irritated, realizing I had none of my contacts, no email, or apps, no iCloud, and all 6,000 plus pics gone. Basically I had a working phone but with absolutely no personalized settings.
I did soon discover though that since I knew passwords to my email, WordPress and some other things I use, that I could still access them after bringing them up through Google. In the end it worked out fine but felt inconvenient and wasn’t my typical, simple style of doing things. First-world problems, I know.
I finally was offered to reset my Apple ID password on Wednesday (after the two weeks) and wasted no time in doing so and am happy to say all is back in working order on my phone.
I share this because I actually hadn’t realized how personalized my phone is until this happened. Over the years of having an iPhone I’ve been able to choose which apps to have or not have on my phone, which numbers to save with a name or not, and so on.
We’re ridiculously, nearly pathetically, spoiled when it comes to our phones. We personalize them in the way we best see fit. And most of us probably take this for granted until things go haywire.
I always try and pull a life lesson from my experiences—the good ones and the bad ones and here’s what I’ve reflected on through this particular one…
As a Christian, what I put into my faith journey is up to me. I can choose to draw closer to the Lord or on the flip side lazily trail behind. I decide if I’m going to read my Bible this day or let it sit on the table collecting dust. I pick if I’ll pray before a meal or let my “hanger” take over—with me plunging a fork into my meal before even considering a word of thanks. Reaching out to others with love and care, that’s also my own choice.
Just like I choose how I want to personalize my phone, every day I get to choose how I’m going to personalize my faith.
And if I’m honest sometimes I really stink at it. There are times when worry or fear overtake my thought patterns and prayer is far from my arsenal of choice. On numerous occasions, my impatience has resulted in un-concentrated Bible reading rather than soaking in the heartfelt words of Jesus. When I initially chatted with the Apple representative over my own phone foul-up, he experienced Raging Alicia rather than Compassionate Alicia.
These things mold my faith journey for better or worse. All of it matters and makes for how I’m choosing to personalize my faith.
Just like my phone went to factory reset settings so it will be when Jesus’ returns to call home those who have placed their faith in Him. For some, there will be a time when it’ll be too late to decide to follow Jesus. Personalizing our life with Him as Lord and Savior will have made an extraordinary difference. For the ones who haven’t chosen to place their faith in Him, their lives will be as useless as an old iPhone with no identity or personalization linked to Him.
I’m reminded of Jesus’ words regarding the servant in Matthew 25:21a, ‘well done, good and faithful servant!…’
As Christians we’re servants of God, and it’s absolutely our choice how we’ll personalize our faith. It doesn’t always look simple, the way I usually prefer, in fact it’s often times the opposite BUT through Jesus it will always make sense as we trust His leading.
Are we personalizing our faith and pressing into Jesus in a position where we’ll one day hear, ‘well done, good and faithful servant?!’
Surrounding our front patio are a variety of colorful flowers—and oftentimes, nestled snug within, are gobs of weeds…it depends on how busy I get with life as to how well my flowerbed fares. In fact the weeds had become such a distraction (recently) that any pleasure and beauty of the flowers could be easily overlooked. Thankfully the other morning I finally made time to get out there and pull those pesty weeds!
With every pull and tug the area began to shape up nicely. The irises stood taller in their purple splendor, the salvia seemed fuller with its many leaves being able to spread out, and the roses now look as if they’re bursting with the anticipation of revealing their soft, velvety petals before too long. And my favorite, mums, now have room to expand as they work on growing bigger so they can fully impress me come Autumn when their flowers finally bloom.
Y’all the pulling-weeds-part is tough work though!! I about landed on my bottom more than a handful of times! Goodness! Continue reading “Weeding With Purpose”
At our house we’ve adopted a great conversation starter when we gather around the table for dinner at the end of the day. Each of us verbally notes our high for the day, then our low, and lastly the funny of our day. It always amazes me how some days we’ve spent all day together yet each of us has something different to point out. Side note: sometimes when it’s my husband’s turn to state his high for the day he’ll keenly rattle off the “high temperature” for the day…before giving us his true answer.☺️
These table conversations are important because they cause us to know one another’s hearts, feelings, cares, and concerns a little more. Our kids enjoy the idea of being the only one in the “family spotlight” for a few moments during their turn, highlighting whatever it is for the day that stuck out most to them. Often times these smaller talks lead to larger discussions, taking it to a deeper level where we can really reflect, analyze, and engage with one another.
Since you and I most likely won’t be sharing dinner any time soon I thought I’d share my high, low, and funny over this past week (via the blog). Please feel free to do the same in the comment section below if you wish. Continue reading “A High, Low, and a Funny”
Just for the record as you read this post, I’m not referring to our foreign exchange student we hosted a few years ago. I’m a youth leader so I have a lot of interaction with jr high and high school kids and this post is in reference to one of the many.
I visited with a young girl who’d been in the United States temporarily. I asked her about her time here and if she’d enjoyed coming to church while she was here (something which was a new experience for her).
Her response: “I do like it, but I don’t believe.”
Me: “Really? Like you don’t believe in God?!”
Her: “No, I don’t.”
Me: (without any hesitation whatsoever, because I lack patience) “So what do you do??!! What do you do when you hurt, when you fear, when you worry, when the bottom drops out?! Where do you place your hope?”
She hesitated thoughtfully… but didn’t have an answer. Continue reading “Part 1: Too Incredible to Deny”
You may not want to read this if you’re an animal rights activist, particularly for snakes…
My little daughter let our puppy out for what seemed like that thousandth time and also what’s be coming more of the regular routine, thankfully! Potty-training a dog is never much fun, but I’ll take many trips outdoors over cleaning up puddles on the floor inside any day!
For His Purpose 