Thank you, Lord,...

...for a friend who pours her heart out and teaches me so much (and she doesn't even know it)!

My friend, Jess, posted a message to her blog today that really hit home for me. I praise God for laying things on Jess's heart to write about, and I am thankful that she is soooo brave and forthcoming to post her feelings and her heart.

Her post today was regarding how she is dealing with a tragedy that occurred in her life. Although I am NOT dealing with anything near compared to what Jess is dealing with in her life, I am having to live life like everyone in this world. Lately, I have found myself saying that "if my house is messy then my life, my mind, and my heart is messy." I have allowed myself to let my circumstances that surround me define who I am. Although deep down in my heart I knew that this logic was soooooo wrong, Jess's words in her blog so beautifully taught me that the way I have been acting and living my life does not reflect who matters the most...not myself, not even my husband and my kids, but CHRIST. I needed a friend to say it plain and simple to open my eyes and allow me to turn away from my selfishness and turn to Christ. Don't you just love how the Lord uses our friends (and even foes) to teach us?

LORD, MAY MY LIFE BE DEFINED BY CHRIST AND BE A REFLECTION OF YOU.

"Lie not one to another, seeing that you have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him..." ~Colossians 3:9-10 (KJV)

"But that is not the way you learned Christ! - assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." ~Ephesians 4:20-24 (ESV)