Blah, Blah, Blah!!!: Music!

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Music!

Day Two for water aerobics and today we had...MUSIC!!! I wish you could all be silent witnesses to our exercise experience. It's hysterical! But at the same time, we are a very special group of diverse women at various ages and stages of our lives, all trying our best to keep fit. What made it so funny today was the music. Yesterday I told you about our 78 year old instructor who sang to us because her CD player didn't work. Well, today it worked and we all huffed and puffed to the music. What made it so surreal is the fact that here I was in a pool in Houston, Texas, with women in their 70's, dancing away to the lyrics of "Dirty White Boy"! If someone had told me 5 years ago that I would be writing that last sentence, I would have found it VERY difficult to believe!

It's miraculous, isn't it, the way that God directs the path of our lives??? Reminds me of one of my favorite verses in Jeremiah: "I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD."

Take a minute today and think of the things you have experienced that you would have never chosen for yourself. Can you see how God has turned it into something beautiful? Or is it something that creates distance between yourself and God?

For too many years I've wrestled with God. Far too often I've distrusted and questioned and blamed. But slowly, over the years, as I've grown closer in my relationship to God, I've become more confident in His love for me. I trust Him more. And what is so amazing to me is that this slow transformation has taken place because of pain and trial and gunky stuff that I would NEVER have selected for my life if I was the one in control.

Yup, God has plans for us! And more and more I'm thankful for those plans.

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One thing we may be sure of, however: For the believer all pain has meaning; all adversity is profitable. There is no question that adversity is difficult. It usually takes us by surprise and seems to strike where we are most vulnerable. To us it often appears completely senseless and irrational, but to God none of it is either senseless or irrational. He has a purpose in every pain He brings or allows in our lives. We can be sure that in some way He intends it for our profit and His glory.
--Jerry Bridges

God is doing a greater work in us, and that can only come as we learn to trust Him no matter how dark the days and sleepless the nights. And it is only as we have been through the darkness with Him that what we know with our heads slides down into our hearts, and our hearts no longer demand answers. The “Why?” becomes unimportant when we believe that God can and will redeem the pain for our good and his glory. . . . When I put the sovereignty of God beside His unfailing love, my heart can rest.
--Verdell Davis

Our circumstances are not an accurate reflection of God's goodness. Whether life is good or bad, God's goodness, rooted in His character, is the same.
--Helen Grace Lescheid

All of us have wondered at times why God doesn't do more to fix our problems. But our human eyes often fail to see that God isn't rushing to change our circumstances because he is concerned with a much more serious problem -- our character. While you struggle with the woes of this world, God's main occupation is preparing you for the world to come. The focus of what God is doing in your life takes place in you, not around you.
--Andy Stanley, in "Like A Rock"

There is no circumstance, no trouble, no testing, that can ever touch me until, first of all, it has gone past God and past Christ, right through to me. If it has come that far, it has come with a great purpose, which I may not understand at the moment. But I refuse to become panicky, as I lift up my eyes to Him and accept it as coming from the throne of God for some great purpose of blessing to my own heart.
--Alan Redpath

The most extraordinary thing about the oyster is this: irritations get into his shell . . . . and when he cannot get rid of them, he uses the irritations to do the loveliest thing an oyster ever has the chance to do. If there are irritations in our lives today, there is only prescription: make a pearl . . . . And it takes faith and love to do it.
--Harry Emerson Fosdick

What a difference it makes when a trial comes, to see in it not the hand of an avenger, but the loving discipline of a father and the gentle admonition of a mother! God would not have us feel even the shadow of His anger. Judgment hardens the spirit and God never wants to break the spirit of His obedient child, but to win us by His love and transform us by the gentleness. Beloved, let us ever look upon our trials in the tender light of the Father’s love. It is not the token of His displeasure, but the very pledge of His jealous love, a love so inexorable that it will not let us miss His holiest and best.
--A. B. Simpson

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