How does it make you feel?

Last Sunday, there was a video that was played during worship. Basically, the video made you think about what a huge deal worship music is in church today. People often leave or join churches based on how the worship sounds. When we hear the songs we like in church we say that the "worship was good today" and when it's bad we wonder "what went wrong." We focus a lot on how the worship sounds and how it makes us FEEL. I'm currently reading a book that paralleled with this thought.

"Many of us tend to approach Christian living as a self-improvement program. We may desire spiritual growth, or we may have one or more fairly serious problems from which we desperately want to be delivered. While there is certainly nothing wrong with spiritual growth or desiring to be rid of a besetting problem, what is our motivation in wanting to achieve goals like these."

While we have a "genuine desire to honor the Lord, it's also possible that deep within us is a primary desire to glorify ourselves. When self-improvement, rather than Christ becomes the center of our focus, our focus is displaced. It is important to understand that fruitfulness and growth are the results of focusing on Christ and desiring to honor Him. When growth and change are our primary goals, we tend to be preoccupied with ourselves instead of with Christ: Am I growing? Am I getting any better? Am I more like Christ today? What am I learning?"

"This inordinate preoccupation with self-improvement parallels our culture's self-help and personal-enhancement movement in many ways. Personal development is certainly not wrong, but it is misleading and can be very disappointing if we make it our preeminent goal. If it is our goal at all, it should be secondary. As we grasp the unconditional love, grace, and power of God, then honoring Christ will increasingly be our consuming passion."

We do love worship and the way it makes us feel. We do feel good when we are honoring to God and follow what he asks of us. We do benefit from spiritual growth, self-improvement, and learning from mistakes. These aren't bad things, but we have to make sure our focus and motivation are in the right place. 

While "God wants us to have a healthy self-awareness and to analyze our lives periodically, He does not want us to be preoccupied with ourselves. The only one worthy of our preoccupation is Christ."

We should not be focused on how worshiping God makes us feel or doing all the right "Christian things." While we may benefit, the focus needs to be not on what we get out of it, but on just being passionately and wholly devoted to Him in our hearts, minds, and souls.

-The Search For Significance by Robert S. McGee

Ms. Sadie Lady

Just wanted to announce the newest member of our family... Ms. Sadie! She is a golden retriever and is 7 weeks and 5 days old today. We bought her from a breeder on Friday night and she is most definitely the cutest thing I have ever seen. Scott and I are absolutely smitten and head over heels in love!! We intended to shop around a bit and go to a couple different breeders but it didn't really work out that way! I fell in love with her adorable little face and wasn't able to leave her at the breeder's house. She has a dark red retriever dad named Tango and a lighter tan retriever mom named Molly making her a beautiful golden brown. The breeder owned both the parents and Molly (her mother) had 15 little golden retriever pups! Sadie is the runt of the liter and also the cutest and the sweetest! She is enjoying adjusting to her new home and her favorite things to do are snuggling and giving kisses. We are having so much fun with her and are very proud new parents!

Good morning!

We're new to this whole blog thing and I know a lot of our friends/family are new too!  Just wanted to let you know that anyone can post comments below our entries even if you don't have a blog or google account.  You just click on "comments" and then you can write anything your heart desires!  Just a clarification because someone told me that they didn't suggest a puppy name below because they didn't have a blog.  No excuses, people!!!:)

Also wanted to ask... where do you guys get your cool blog templates?