Food for Thought

 I have a couple different thoughts running through my mind on this delightfully rainy Friday morning. 

The first thought is that I'm SO VERY EXCITED for this upcoming week! Family Camp!!! I try to explain it to my friends that it's where my Dad's side of the family gets together for this little reunion that takes place just this one time every year.

People seem a little shocked that we would want to all see  for a WHOLE week. But here's the deal, it's my dad's parents and siblings and their children. COUSINS!! Of course not everyone can make it out there and those that can can't always come for the whole week. But it is a delicious privilege that I think everyone else in the world could envy. As it is, it's like a week long retreat filled with sessions and worship and adventure and fun and lots and lots of coffee.

How many other families get to spend a week digging into the Word together, teaching each other what the Lord has taught them and then encouraging each other in the ways they need?
Our mornings start with breakfast, than a whole family devotional, which is followed by coffee consumption and then a worship session. Then it is two hours back to back of sessions on life lessons with a 10 minute coffee break in between. 

 Most of us cousins are adults now and have begun taking our turns speaking for an hour or so for a sessions. I love this! There are talks on relationships, biblical manhood and womanhood, politics, creation, resolving conflict, and sharings of missions trips where the Lord did great things. We are filled and fed every day of the week and equipped by our grandparents, aunts, uncles, parents, siblings and cousins with the tools of the scripture and prayer and then built up and encouraged in our faith as well.

Of course my heart is just dancing in anticipation at the thought of ONE WHOLE WEEK spent focused on growing in my walk with the Lord and, of course, closer to my family.
I love that I have such a family of strong believers! I count myself overwhelmingly blessed. I LOVE that my cousins and aunts and uncles are my brothers and sisters in the Lord as well. Love ABOUNDS when our family is together. This could be my last year that I can attend the full week. I could be the last year for any of us and we just don't know it. But it'll be great. The Lord is already there and I'm excited to come and join him!

I like to illustrate the things I learn in session. This was our lesson on the family tree. This was when I illustrated the "substantial" aunts... :D hehehehe

My other thoughts are maybe a little bit deeper. Perhaps as I sort them out I'll find that the Lord actually tied them together even though they come from two different places.

The first thought is that I'm starting to hate facebook a lot. Well, I think I do. I'm beginning to question how.. good it is. 

The Bible tells us not to gossip and to avoid discord and jealousy and selfish ambition and slander... among other things. And I KNOW facebook can be used for good things like posting Bible verses on your status in case one of your non-believing friends reads it and is inspired to start walking with the Lord. (There was a little sarcasm in that sentence.. mostly because I think this thought in the back of my mind sometimes). 
And facebook can be used to build people up and all that. 

But as I was wasting time scrolling through my mini-feed, I couldn't help but notice there are a lot of people who post all of their dirty laundry on facebook. It's personal stuff that no one needs to know apart from their close confidants  And as I'm glancing through it I wonder, "Is it gossip for me to even READ this?" After all, it's a bit like reading a gossip column out of People magazine just reading some people's statuses.  I've asked my friends what they think of this, too. Is it gossip? Afterall.. the person put that out there for the world to know. They announced it and made it public. And then there's this issue:
If I'm friends with person X and we are both mutually facebook friends with person Z and we both see the same facebook status posted by person X for the world to see, and then either I or person Z says something like, "Did you see Z's status?" and then we discuss it a little.... isn't that gossip? Even though it's out there?

So as a girl easily caught up in that, wouldn't it be more wise of me if I avoid facebook on account it can easily ensnare? Wouldn't the Bible support that?
And I'm not saying my own convictions are to be the convictions of all believers on facebook, but I thought I'd share a little warning anyways.

Another thought I have is on freedom. Drew talked about freedom last night at Salt (Student ministry I attend). It was a good one. He was speaking on Titus 3 where it talks about if you are free, you do X, Y and Z and before you were free you did a different X, Y, and Z.
As he described being enslaved to sin,The Lord gave me a delightful vision and I saw it was like living with a ball and chain on one's ankle. And then the ball at the end of the chain became the world, and then the chain got longer. The chain had more than the world ball and chain, the chain was also dragging every body of every person we wouldn't forgive. It drug along every worldly possession and relationship. It had alcohol and money and entertainment. That was a lot of stuff to be dragging around and obviously was nearly impossible to walk. And then the path was narrow with deep caverns on both sides. And then the chain of worldly things slipped over the edge, dangling above the fires of hell. But the weight of what was on the chain pulled at the person it was attached to and the person was about to slip over the edge as well.

And then Jesus came and cut off the chain and set the person free. :) How great is that. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Free so we can run. Free so we can dance. Free so we can jump over life's potholes and climb out of the pits we fall into. We have been set free so we can walk in the way of Truth and be light on our feet when we encounter a battle with the evil one. We have been set free so Christ may scoop us into his arms when He needs to carry us rather than him having to carrying along all of junk too. Why would that be fair to him? When he tells us to let go of our stuff and let him take the burden from us, why do we get all upset when we still fill like we're in the pit? Why should he have to pull you AND all your junk out? If the pit is deep enough, the nice thing to do for our rescuer is to leave everything behind except for ourselves.Good luck getting out of that pit with 1000lbs of chain and crud on your ankle.

And then on facebook I see people trying to solve their own life problems and making bold claims like, "I'm trusting God now" or "God will fix this for me" but nothing else changes. Who am I to judge, right? Okay, yeah, I judge people. I judge people who claim to be believers.
Judge not lest you be judged? Well, I want to be judge, honestly. If you're a believer and find something wrong with how I live, PLEASE judge me. Call me out. Set me straight. I would LOVE that!

So, here's what I don't like, people taking God's name in vain. not just, "OH my g**" it's when they tack him onto whatever they wanna say just to sound deep or spiritual. "I'm trusting God and I'm gonna fix this and no one's gonna tell me what to do but me. My self. My life. " blah blah blah.

My heart is just screaming, "Don't talk about my Jesus that way! You don't know Him like I do!" And if they're actually trusting God, I'm happy. I like that. Please do that. But don't SAY you're gonna and than live a different way. God isn't a puppet. He's not a genie. He's not an obedient puppy that comes and goes and answers to "Here boy!" Don't say you're gonna be praying if you're not. Don't say "God's in control" for the sake of saying that because you don't know what else to say. Those are special words. They're precious and wholesome. That's good bread right there, don't throw it around like crumbs or left over pizza crust.