Food for the Soul

My morning could not have started out any better.  All the kids and I snuggled and watched cartoons in bed....that is until they decided they were hungry.

So, I whipped up one of my most favorite morning delights....PEANUT BUTTER PANCAKES!!!

Several years ago...C introduced me to eating pancakes with peanut butter on them. When he was a child his grandma lived down the alley from his parents house, and when he would go down to her house she would make him peanut butter pancakes.  He urged me to try them...as he did with many other things (things that have become routine in my day-to-day life) during the five years we were together.  I'm thankful for that!  I'm trying to make a point every.single.day to say out loud something that I am thankful for.

Yesterday I mentioned that I have been struggling with perspective in my life lately...I've just felt overwhelmed.  My dad always tells me to just open my bible and start reading.  That He will tell me exactly what He wants me to hear.  So I did just that, and this is what I read.




1 John 1
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched-this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.
The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.
We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us.  And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.
We write this to make your joy complete.
This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.
If we claim to have fellowship with Him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.
But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim to have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.


The devotional written by Rebecca Pippert is so fitting.


"We can lose our perspective while we are dealing with what is wrong with us.  So we need to remember that it is not God's desire that we live in perpetual pain, morbidly focused on what is wrong.  That tactic is the enemy's, not God's.  God convicts us of sin only so we may be forgiven and enabled to walk in freedom.


Confession is not a list of pretty blemishes drawn up grudgingly for the sake of an overbearing God.  It is a facing up to those cancerous vices that sap vitality, cripple freedom and eventually kill.  We are the ones who suffer if we sin.


To work to see the victory of God's grace over sin is not something we can knock off in a weekend.  Though we live in a culture that is always in a hurry, and demands instant results, the Bible admonishes us to wait, to work at it and never to lose heart.  I have discovered no magic key that enables us to lock out suffering or the painful and often slow process of growth.  I have found no shortcuts, no gimmicks to becoming the person God desires. EVIL NEVER HAS THE LAST WORD!  God does.  But while we wait, we need to ask for grace for tenacity, so that we can hang on - and on and on - while He works His excellent purpose in us.


We shouldn't underestimate the pain that will be involved.  But neither must we forget what is happening to us: we are being changed into the likeness of God."