Shoes

  Did you have a favorite pair of shoes growing up? You know the ones you wanted to wear every day, even if they didn't match your outfit, much to your Mama's dismay. I did, always have I guess. My favorites just gradually change and then change again over time.
  Life can be kind of like a pair of great shoes! (Ha!) The thing is sometimes I find myself looking back thinking, "Man, I wish I could wear my old favorites again. Man, I wish I could go back to that place where things seemed better/easier." God recently talked to me about this. He simply said to my heart, "Don't keep trying to put on the shoes that you've outgrown. It will hurt you." After all we can't run in shoes that are too small now can we?

Ewwwww..Gross right! Sorry. Just sayin' Don't do that!
Matthew 9:17
“And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the old skins would burst from the pressure, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine is stored in new wineskins so that both are preserved.”
  Of course, I've got to try to keep myself from wanting to jump to far ahead too. Planning and having vision,and goals while working hard to achieve them is awesome!!! It's just that wishing and getting discouraged or depressed because those things arn't happening RIGHT NOW is not awesome.You can't run in shoes that are to big either.

So enjoy the shoes your in! They weren't your favorites yesterday and they might be too small tomorrow :)

tootsie rolls

     A man that I look up to a lot, who is a missionary to Bolivia,  once told me a story about his desperate hunt for some tootsie rolls. One day he got a fierce craving for this hard/chewy/chocolatey treat (I'm actually not a fan). So he searched all day in every marketplace he could think of for them. The more he searched the more irritated he became. "Come on God", he thought "I do all this work for you, leave my family, give my free time, give my money, give my life, sacrifice sacrifice, sacrifice out the wazoo, do everything you tell me to do AND ALL I WANT ARE SOME DANGUM" TOOTSIE ROLLS!!!! By the time he got home that afternoon he was in quite a frenzy and quite candyless. Basically he was in one of those moods that everyone else knows to walk a safe distance around. His wife walked right up to him, though, gave him a hug and said "Hey babe, we got some mail today. There's a package for you." Still in a funk he opened it up and I'm sure you can guess what was inside...Tootsie rolls. Someone mailed him a whole heapin' box of them. Of course, he felt like a complete cotton headed ninny muggins and apologized.
   I thought of his story today as I had worked myself up into a cotton headed ninny muggins frenzy of my own. I was competely irritated over dumb stuff,small stuff. When I thought of this story I remembered I don't need to feel like I'm entitled to have God give me stuff because of the things I do for him. He's the one that's entitled to have me do stuff because of who He is and everything He's given to me. Instead of searching wildly for the things I'm after I'd rather just keep searching after him. I also know that  He's an amazingly generous God, who has a special way of giving out tootsie rolls.