Can You Hear?

The technology of the day is so available. As Christians, so we hear the Lord well and readily? Are our habits making it harder to hear Him? We have to have quiet. I'm convinced the enemy is using the ease of shutting out quiet against the body of Christ. We are distracted and half focusing. We justify it in many ways, but the voice of Lord in our minds and hearts comes in the quiet. It's hard enough to discipline ourselves to be in His presence. How much the more when we have music in our ears continually? 

Seven Steps to Spiritual Stability

When free time is available, we often want to relax...but does that really build us up as we need? Sometimes it does, but sometimes the time is just wasted looking at useless things, or engaging in fruitless ventures. Here's a rich series to listen to, or you can read the transcript :). 

The great pastor and teacher, John MacArthur, brings Seven Steps to Spiritual Stability. 

Pray for John MacArthur and his dear wife. Here is an aged man who has been committed to truth for decades. He's encouraged thousands and thousands to follow closer to the Lord.  He has such a clear, organized method of communicating--I have learned a lot from him over the past 28 years or so. Teaching and preaching, and demonstrating his profound love for the church, he is an inspiration. When I heard him preach on his profound love for the church, it really got in my mind and I've thought about it many times throughout the years since. Do I love the church?? Really love it? So that I'm all-in even if there are problems? Because there always will be problems. Do I guard the church, build it up, serve in it, keep it undefiled by who I am and what I do? I think that lesson from John is one that will stick with me and help me through hard times more than anything else he's said that I've heard. 

Here's some good teaching, friends.... 

Series by John MacArthur 

No Refined Sugar Sourdough Discard Blueberry Bread

With all the baking, I'm working toward less sugar in the recipes. 

These are this week's Sunday bake.

Finishing Well: Quotes

"The only guarantee for failure is to stop trying." - Unknown

"It's not how you start, but how you finish that matters." - Michael Phelps

"Finishing strong is the only respectable way to finish." - Gary Ryan Blair

"Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go." - William Feather

"The last mile is always the hardest." - Joseph Chamberlain

Sourdough Journey

Calzone... Sourdough pizza dough

Freshly milled flour sourdough loaves

Chocolate chip sourdough discard bake 

Banana bread, sourdough discard 

Sourdough discard coffee cake

Best FMF Sourdough To Date

Need to work on my scoring being deeper. This is 950 g

Great Teaching to Spend Time On

https://subsplash.com/fbcnet/sermons/ms/+7tnyzqb

Faith Baptist in Fredericksburg, VA has very good teaching available to anyone who cares to listen. Everyday Truth with Pastor Kurt Skelly is something I've enjoyed since Sept 2024, and I highly recommend it. 

https://subsplash.com/fbcnet/sermons

Just 15 minutes a pop, you can get insightful teaching and will make what you've read more meaningful. 

Things to Ask God For

I recently heard this as part of a message on Matthew 7, and I think it is worth sharing. 

As I've focused afresh on the importance of growing where I am planted, and using the time God has given me carefully, this fits in well. The reason it fits in well is that both of those things just mentioned require living intentionally where God has physically has us, doing the work He has set before us to do. 

For me, it includes interacting the most with people in my actual town, rather than strangers in Facebook groups who have similar hobbies. It involves managing my home and time with things outside my 4 walls carefully, paying attention to how my life impacts those who live with me here. I've recently deleted all of the social apps on my phone, and am leaving my phone out of ear shot a lot more often. I'm tired of it interrupting my thoughts and daily flow; something I've unfortunately grown very accustomed to. It is a hard habit to break. Likewise, I've hibernated/closed the couple of social accounts I've had now that my work schedule is sufficiently full. Finally, I've cut out a bartering arrangement I had for the foreseeable future, realizing while it is something I really enjoy, it can't rise to the "most important thing right now" list. 

Whenever it seems we do not have enough time to do the things we'd like to do or need to do, it is a wise to see how much screen time we're allowing and how much things outside our daily life we're giving time to. I think it steals so much value adding time to read tons on the Internet, or glaze over and scroll, scroll, scroll.....and life goes too fast, and we get used to passively using the Internet/phones so easily. It numbs us and wastes hours we will never recover. Youth goes too fast...take it from someone past the half-century mark. One day you are saying you don't want to do an activity and the next, you are afraid to do it so you don't hurt yourself....

My suggestion is to pray for God to show you what and who to prioritize each day. Look around and pour into those God has laid on your heart, that you can manage well with the responsibilities He's made clear are yours alone. Read books more than what is online...one day your eyes will be tired faster, vision will not just be short or far-sighted, there will be other factors that make reading more difficult. It is like writing letters by hand. If you don't do it, you lose the skill quickly. I digress...

Things to ask God for.....

(Reflection: How is your prayer life? Ask God to improve it and to show you to pray for the right things if it is less than stellar.)

Here's the list that God surely wants to answer for His beloved children:

1. For courage confronting critical attitudes. Judgments we make should come only from spiritual intentions. We are not the standard bearer of Christianity. We should let our standards motivate us to be more holy, not to measure others. 

2. Ask God to help us be more authentic, and show us our hypocrisy. 

3. Pray that God will show us who we genuinely are. 

4. Pray for God to give us humility, and to see Him as our loving Father. 

Remember, the Holy Spirit is a good gift. God says He will give us every good and perfect gift. Ask God to help you be sensitive to the Holy Spirit and really listen to Him. May we remove the log from our own eye so we can see clearly to remove the splinter from the eyes of those He's burdened us to lovingly correct.