Contentment with Discontentment

Please be patient with this one...it is long. It is somewhat of a snapshot of my heart and what I am currently dealing with...to God be the glory!!

Okay, so I tried out the Saturday night service at church. It was weird not getting up this morning for church, but the Sunday morning services are so packed and often visitors are turned away. For this reason alone, I am trying to go to a Saturday night service, so I can give my seat to someone who needs it. Anyway, we have had a guest pastor the past 2 weeks, and man has he "hit the nail on the head".
Last week, he talked about being content in where you are, what you have, and knowing the Truth in God. This week he talked about being discontent in our relationship with God, meaning that we are constantly pursuing after being more and more like Him without getting comfortable with where we already are in our relationship with Him.
I would have to say that both of these messages just broke my heart to pieces because it hit home in my heart so hard. This part of life is a really hard stage to be in; however, last week I was reminded to just let it all go and trust that God has a plan and a purpose for me being single right now. I feel in my heart that God wants me to be married one day, but daily I am striving to find contentment in the single years. If he calls me to a life of celibacy, fine, but I am going to have my heart open to wanting to be more and more like Him without the concern of what the next chapter might be. I talked to a special friend the other day and she was sharing the same thing with me. She was talking about how she never imagined that God's plan would be that she would still be single at the age of 26, either. She encouraged me so much to just strive after Him and not worry about what lies ahead in the marriage area of life. She was reminding me to find complete fulfillment in Him, and in time He will make known what it is that He wants from me. It was so neat that the sermon and this conversation all happened in the same week. God is all about perfect timing. It was nice to not only be challenged in the Word at church, but to be re-challenged by a dear friend.
This week's sermon just broke my heart. He was reminding us of last week's sermon, in that he was reminding us that we should be working to find contentment with where we are, what we have, and knowing the Truth lies in God's Word. This week, he went deeper to the root of where the contentment should be meeting the discontentment. Okay, here it goes. I hope I can describe this the way he explained it, as well as referencing the Scripture that truly makes this evident. He said that we should not be content in our relationship with God, but really searching to know Him more and to be more and more like Him. (1 Timothy 4)
I know that we all have our fall backs in life, but I feel like I have put so much into my job that I have let this part of my life slack off. I have stayed grounded in the sense that I have stayed involved in church and continued to turn from other non-Christian areas; however, the most important part, my relationship with Him, has suffered because I have become content in just knowing that He loves me and will take care of me. To pursue Godliness, I must nourish my life with the Word. (2 Timothy 3:16) This is an area I have not been doing for quite some time. I have become comfortable knowing what I know, but constantly knowing that I need to be digging in and learning even more. The second area is I need to put the Word into practice. (1 Timothy 4:12) This verse truly reminds us that we should not let others have any reason to think less of us because we are young because our actions should be examples to others in what we teach, the way you live, our love, our faith, and our purity. All this to say that others should be able to know Christ just by being around us and letting us speak the truth of God, as well as love on others as Christ would love on them. In doing all of this, we become the bold witness for Christ that we need to be.
I cannot get comfortable doing what I have always done, but striving to be more of who God has created me to be. So, we need to be living as Paul described about his own life in Philippians 3:12-16. We need to be forgetting what is behind us and start striving for what is ahead in Him. This does not mean that we focus all of our energy on getting more out of life or trying to gain stuff, but to strive to be more and more like Him. In this alone, God will reveal more and more of who He is in us being discontent in our relationship and pushing ourselves to know Him more.
Okay, wrapping up this long post...I had come to a point in life where all I wanted was to find someone to love me and spend my life with. What I have learned is that God wants to be that person. He wants me to long to spend time with Him, just as I have been longing to spend it with a man. Secondly, as I am seeking and searching more in my relationship with Him, I will find that the true fulfillment of God will only come when I find discontentment in that relationship--wanting to be more and more like Him. Obviously, I am not God and will never be Him, but that is the beauty in being a Christian...we can strain and cling on to being more like Him and never be content in that relationship.
I hope this shows you my heart. I know it was long, but I had to share with those of you I don't get to share much with, due to life's busy schedule. I love you all and hope that this is encouraging to you as well.

A Day with Mary Beth and Michael!!

Sunday was a fun day. After church, Kristy and I drove to Fort Worth to see Mary Beth and Michael. They invited us to their new apartment for a tasty lunch. Mary Beth cooked us a fantastic Pampered Chef recipe. I wish I had a picture of it to show you, but I will have to get a picture next time. Anyway, we ate lunch and then off on our journey to culturalize not only Mary Beth and Michael, but also me and Kristy. We went to the Fort Worth Stockyards. Okay, I have been to the Stockyards before, but have never seen the things we saw on this HOT day!!! We went to the Pawnee Bill's Wild West Show. Hmm...the description did not quite match the show. The description online was talking about how exciting and wild the show would be, showing the trick ropesters, riders, and shooters. Well, let me just say...it was not quite that wild. I am attaching a couple of pictures to let you see what we saw. Don't get blown away by the wildness in the photos...it was so intense. :)

After the "Wild" West Show, we went walking towards the Stockyard Station, and saw where the longhorns are herded twice a day. I tried to convince Michael to ride the mechanical bull, but no such luck. We then walked into one of the stores to get a refreshing drink. After that, hold your breath...we got to see the "stampede" of longhorns come down the road. It was fascinating that they just came down the road without veering off and getting mad at a innocent bystander. I will let you see that in action as well.

Lastly, we stumbled upon the "Gunfight Show". It was a small act that involved some really loud guns and an entertaining story. To our surprise, the downtown train came through. Mary Beth and Kristy were wondering which column the students would ram their carts into...that is for all of you Harry Potter fans out there. The train resembled the Harry Potter train so much, they just couldn't resist that picture. Hehe. :) Of course, we had to stop in at the ol' Candy Barrel for Michael. He had been longing to go in there all day. Once we got in there, we were disappointed because the barrels were not FULL of candy, in fact, they had a false bottom. Oh well, it was like $8.00 for a Laffy Taffy, but who's concerned with that. Mary Beth and I were concerned mainly with how long the candy had been sitting in the false bottom barrels.

Since we had already worked up a sweat out in the heat, it is only natural that we should now have a pretty good longing for a good meal. We left the Stockyards and went to Razzoo's. This is only one of the best restaurants out here. It is a Cajun restaurant with the best fried pickles you can get your hands on, not to mention it has sweet tea. It was Mary Beth and Michael's first time to experience the fun atmosphere and tasty dishes of Razzoo's. From what I could tell, it was a hit for them, too.

Finally, the night ended with some internet surfing for money saving tips and looking at the numerous wedding/honeymoon photo albums and scrapbooks of the happy pair. I look forward to more hang out time with these two familiar faces! :)

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