DebyS's Xanga

Satan uses Turbo Tax

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 18:13:39 GMT

It's that time again... soon we will all be stressing about our taxes....

Here's a little comic relief about money (or NOT!)

http://www.youtube.com/lifechurchtv#p/search/1/0qGMkgc2AnQ

Control Freak?

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 10:42:48 GMT

Trust Me enough to let things happen without striving to predict or control them.
Relax and refresh yourself in the light of My everlasting love.
My love-light for you never dims, yet you are often unaware of My radiant presence.
When you project yourself into the future, rehearsing what you will say or do,
you are seeking to be self-sufficient, to be adequate without my help.
This is a subtle sin - so common that it usually slips by unnoticed.

The alternative is to live fully in the present, depending on Me each moment.
Rather than fearing your inadequacy, rejoice in My abundant supply.
Train your mind to seek My help continually,
even when you feel competent to handle something by yourself.
Don't divide your life into things you can do by yourself ad things that require My help.
Instead, learn to rely on Me in every situation.
This discipline will enable you to enjoy life more and to face each day with confidence.

Psalm 37:3-6 & Philippians 4:19

Do you know about ducks & swans?
They look so peaceful and calm gliding across the surface of the water.
What we can't see is the frantic paddling of their little webbed feet going on under the surface.
I was drawn to put this photo at the top, because it looked so peaceful and serene.
Then I remembered about all the striving that goes on under the surface,
behind the scenes to make that gliding SEEM effortless to the untrained eye.
Every moment the bird is striving to control the direction it is heading.
Then I understood - it is the perfect photo to remind us of the lesson above.
_____________________________________________________________________

TRUST - I think I do, but I don't!
My actions speak so much louder than my words and thoughts.
I am strong, I am capable, I am self-sufficient.
"Kan selv!" as my 2-year-old Brian used to say.
Your Word, Lord, says that this attitude proves that
I am poor, weak, wretched or worse; lukewarm.
Say it ain't so!
Help me to rely fully and ONLY on You.
To seek You, even though you have gifted me with confidence.
Let me come confidently before Your throne of grace
to receive help in time of need.

What's your greatest asset?

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 14:28:02 GMT

"Enthusiasm is the greatest asset in the
world. It beats money and power and
influence. It is no more or less
than faith in action."
- Henry Chester

Creating Contatious Compassion

Great video on this subject... check it out.

Nothing to Give?

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 10:53:14 GMT

Peter said, "I don't have a nickel to my name, but what I do have, I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk!" Acts 3:6

The Lord says:

What do you suppose blesses Me the most?

Do you know that without faith it is impossible to please Me?

Even more than your money, nice conversations with the needy, kindness to the downtrodden and wounded; more than your good deeds and tithes, I treasure your faith.

A dollar bill won't buy deliverance from evil spirits;
a smile and a bowl of soup won't make the lame to walk and the blind to see.
But, My dear one, your faith will move mountains.
It will heal the sick, give hope to the hopeless and courage to the feeble.
Your faith is your greatest gift and your most valuable asset.
From faith springs every good thing,
giving you power to overcome evil.

When your energy fails and your inspiration lags, remember that to do the work of God,
your greatest task is to believe.

Gal 6:9

So let's not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don't give up, or quit.

Heb 11:6

It's impossible to please God apart from faith. And why? Because anyone who wants to approach God must believe both that he exists [and] that he cares enough to respond to those who seek him.

1 John 5:4
Every child of God conquers the world's ways. The conquering power that brings the world to its knees is our faith.

John 6:28-29
They replied, "What does God want us to do?" Jesus told them, "This is what God wants you to do: Believe in the one he has sent."

Thought for the Day...

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 12:48:11 GMT

My children will either inherit God's promises or my fears.

Your thoughts?

Horror Story...

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:21:10 GMT

Are you a moderate, conservative Christian?

Do you know what people think about you? Check it out!

Man on the Streets - What do you think about Christians?

Your comments, please!

When one door closes...

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:57:09 GMT

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying that, "When one door closes, another opens"

This saying is true, but it comes with a hidden catch …

The person in the picture above is faced with a closed door, but because he refuses to let go of the door in front of him, he cannot see that a new door has opened behind him. Alexander Graham Bell summed this idea up well when he said:

What this means in the real world is that when we dwell on things that did not work out, we can often miss out on new opportunities that are waiting for us.

For example, imagine that you worked hard on a business deal only to find that things didn’t work out the way you anticipated. If you continue to focus on the situation instead of letting it go, you may miss new business opportunities that are waiting for you.

Similarly, when a relationship ends, we can get so caught up in analysing what went wrong that we can miss the opportunity to develop new relationships.

Of course letting go is easier said than done. When a door closes on part of our life it is natural to feel upset and disappointed.

As you overcome these feelings it is important to find the courage to let go of the closed door in order to find the new door that is waiting for you.

This Week’s Action Steps:

The next time you are faced with a closed door:

Give yourself time to recover and find your feet.
Make the decision to let go of the closed door.
Begin to look for the new door that will lead to the future that is waiting for you.

Confession: I Was a Material Girl

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:42:37 GMT

We are living in a material world, and I am a material girl...

Do you remember that Madonna song? Has it REALLY been THAT long? Well, it's been long enough for me to cram more and more STUFF into my closets, garage, attic... well, you get the picture! I found a great article regarding Finding Freedom from Your Stuff and wanted to share it with you.

AND to let you know of a great way to rid yourself of some STUFF and provide a community service at the same time. POUR, Inc., a new, Georgia Non-profit created to address the poverty levels in the greater Athens area, is hosting a Community Wide Unwanted Treasure sale on Saturday, September 5th- and YOU can be part of it! You can either sell your stuff and take home some green, or donate your stuff and let POUR pour it back into the local community. The bulk of the proceeds will be used for a Mobile Food Pantry Event and a car clinic for single moms. We need volunteers for both September events, as well. So check out the website:www.pourathens.org and get involved today.

Together we can make a difference; we CAN make a change!

POUR, Inc.
Deby Sorensen, Director

www.pourathens.org

info@pourathens.org

Finding Freedom from Your Stuff
Written by Jason Boyett
This article is courtesy of Christian Single.

A friend of mine recently helped his retired parents move from a larger home into a smaller, two-bedroom house. A significant problem showed up quickly: limited closet space.

Both parents had accumulated a lifetime of clothing from department stores, catalogs, and garage sales. Several items had never been worn – and never would be. Still, they could not bear to get rid of anything. So they converted the spare bedroom into a massive walk-in closet. The upside? Plenty of space for their duds. The downside? Family visitors can’t stay in the spare bedroom – because it’s filled wall to wall.

Of course, the problem of accumulation isn’t limited to retirees with one too many pairs of pants. It’s a cultural epidemic. For proof, we need look no further than the self-storage industry, which is making money on the fact that we’re overflowing with possessions. According to the Self Storage Association, there are now more than 2 billion square feet of self-storage space in the country. That computes to 6.86 square feet of space for every person in the United States, which means you could physically shelter every man, woman, and child under the combined roofs of those units, all at the same time.

OK. We have a lot of stuff. So what?

What’s Mine Is … Whose?
Laurryn Trojanowski, an office manager in Illinois, recently asked herself why she had so many things. She had been reading Matthew 6, where Jesus tells His listeners not to store up treasures on earth but to focus on treasures in heaven. He concludes with the well-known verse 21: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

“I spent some time thinking about where my heart was and what I treasured,” she says. “I realized that I really liked things – stuff, material items – to an extent that I didn’t feel was appropriate for a Christian.”

Trojanowski spent a week cleaning out belongings that served no purpose other than taking up space. She donated bags of clothing and shoes to local charities and tossed a bunch of old VHS tapes. Then she took one important step beyond organizing and tidying up. She also rearranged her spending habits, resolving to consider what she buys – and keeps – very carefully.

“Jesus didn’t die so that I could buy another pair of shoes at Target,” she adds.

Louie Rudin has built his life around a similar conviction. A YoungLife college minister living near Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., he shares a “ministry house” with six male college students. Not only does he live in community, but he wears thrift-shop clothing, walks more than he drives, and seldom purchases anything new. Why? Rudin cites Jesus’ words in Luke 9: “If anyone wants to come with Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” He says that he finds it hard to justify Christian self-denial with a mindset that emphasizes the pursuit of gaining more things for himself.

“The simple life of Christ and His followers should be plain examples to us that we’re to value relationships and experiences over money and items,” adds Maarten Jacobs, a young professional also committed to living with less. He works with a Christian organization to revitalize the impoverished North Side of Syracuse, N.Y. Jacobs views simplicity as deliberately taking time to reflect on our habits and compulsions in order to assess which things are truly important. Then, he says, pursue those things.

Living in a Material World
“There are more and more people today who really resonate with the idea that the more we own, the less we have,” says Shane Claiborne, author of “The Irresistible Revolution” and co-founder of The Simple Way, a faith community in inner-city Philadelphia. He points out how owning more leads to more worries about pursuing and keeping up with our stuff, which means less time for God. Less time for people. Less time for the virtues of a well-lived life.

Rudin details his experience with this example: “Two cars generally require twice as much maintenance as one, which in turn requires more time and money, which in turn requires more income, which generally requires more time spent at work.”

In other words, we become slaves to our work so we can pay for stuff we’re too busy to actually enjoy due to our heavy workload. It’s a vicious, familiar cycle. How often do we feel like our possessions and everything connected to them – from finances to careers – bring stress into our lives? Who hasn’t had a day ruined by a glitchy computer or a broken-down car? When that happens, we have to ask ourselves: Do I really own my things, or do they own me?

“We get held down by our possessions,” says Trojanowski, who has tried to make a new habit of giving things away, like a book she’s already read or a purse she knows a friend admires. When she does this, she says, “I feel a little lift. It reminds me that I’m not chained to those things.”

The “lift” doesn’t just apply to small items either. Jacobs recently bought a modest home in Syracuse. He could have afforded something larger, he says, but he wanted to make sure each room was necessary and would be used every day. He takes the money he saved on a lower mortgage and puts it toward things he cares about: hospitality and trips to visit friends. And the things he does own, he loans out frequently – without worrying whether they’ll be returned.

“Changing my mindset about possessions has freed me from the bondage of desiring to hold on to them,” he says.

Slaves. Chains. Bondage. Most of those who advocate a simpler lifestyle agree that freedom is a definite theme when it comes to living with less. The question that follows, then, becomes this: What do you do with all that freedom?

Give It Away, Give It Away, Give It Away Now
“When we talk of materialism and simplicity, we have to begin with love for God and neighbor,” Claiborne says. He laments that the idea of living with less often becomes too inwardly focused and negative – it becomes about not having things or about personal piety. Claiborne prefers to paint simplicity in a more outward-facing light: Living simply means freeing yourself up to help people.

“The best thing to do with good food or clothes is to share them,” he adds.

Claiborne says that he once bought an ice cream cone as a birthday present for a young boy in India. The boy tasted the ice cream, then started running around to give each of his friends a lick. “The gifts of God are so good we can’t keep them to ourselves,” Claiborne explains.

Loosening our hold on stuff makes it easier to give it away. De-cluttering our lives frees up space or money or time we can devote to more important things. To God. To people. To service. To ministries we believe in.

Yes, it’s idealistic. Yes, it’s extremely hopeful. Most people in our culture would probably brush off that kind of thinking as a sentiment more suited to a peaced-out hippie than a modern-day American. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. If I’m so influenced by our “have it your way” culture that I can dismiss a clearly biblical concept as being naïve … well, that’s a pretty strong indictment of the world in which I work, live, and even worship.

In his definitive book “Freedom of Simplicity,” Richard Foster writes that living with less “brings sanity to our compulsive extravagance and peace to our frantic spirit.” The thing about people like Shane Claiborne or Louie Rudin is that they seem genuinely sane and peaceful. They seem content. They’re happy, despite walking more than the rest of us and despite doing it with fewer pairs of shoes.

So go ahead and call them idealists. Dismiss their counter-cultural convictions by calling them radicals. They won’t mind because it’s true.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go clean out my closet.

Hungry-Girl.com

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 15:50:52 GMT

A new "FUN" Find!

Check out the website for lots of recipes!

www.hungry-girl.com


	HG's Awesome Whopper Stopper
	A WHOPPING SUCCESS
	When it comes to burgers, forget The King. After all, who needs HIM when you've got the Burger Queen (that would be HG, of course!) ready to hook you up with a diet-friendly recipe for BK's famous (and fatty) Whopper? This easy-to-throw-together meal tastes great, and has just a fraction of the fat and calories of the original. So ditch that stupid 760 calorie burger blunder, and try one of these instead: *Ingredients:* -Wonder Light (or other light) Hamburger Bun -Boca Burger Patty, Original Vegan -1 slice Kraft Singles Fat Free Cheese -1 Tbsp. Miracle Whip Light -3 pickle slices -tomato slice -lettuce -onion slice -1 Tbsp. ketchup *Directions:* Cook Boca Burger as per instructions on box. Toast bun (optional). Lay burger on the bun’s bottom half, followed by the cheese, tomato, onion, and lettuce. On the top half, slap on the mayo, ketchup, and pickles. Put two halves together and enjoy!
	Serving Size: 1 burger Calories: 240 Fat: 3g Sodium: 1360mg Carbs: 34g Fiber: 8g Sugars: 9g Protein: 21g * 4 Points


	Burger King's Whopper w/ cheese
	REIGN OF TERROR
	Thinking of caving in to your craving for a cheeseburger and ordering a Whopper at your local BK? Uhhh...just say no. Biting into one of these diet-disasters-on-a-bun would be a whopping mistake. Sure, you'd experience a few minutes of burger bliss, but those fleeting moments of enjoyment are so not worth the 47 insane grams of fat you'd be swallowing. Besides, HG's Whopper Stopper recipe can easily satisfy your burger urges (would those be "burges"?). If you do happen to find yourself at Burger King with a growling stomach and a pocket full of singles, order one of HG's BK picks.
	Calories: 760 Fat: 47g Sodium: 1450g Carbs: 52g Fiber: 3g Sugars: 11g Protein: 33g * 19 Points


	CHEW ON THIS: July is National Ice Cream Month. Celebrate with some of HG's fave frozen finds!

Programs vs. Operating Systems

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:57:39 GMT

Dear Tech Support:

Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a slowdown in the overall performance, particularly in the flower and jewelry applications that had operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0. In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5, but installed undesirable programs such as NFL 5.0 and NBA 3.0. And now Conversation 8.0 no longer runs and House Cleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. I've tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail.

What can I do?

Signed,

Desperate

-------

Dear Desperate:

First keep in mind; Boyfriend 5.0 is an entertainment package, while Husband 1.0 is an operating system. Try entering the command

C:// I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME

and download Tears 6.2 to install Guilt 3.0. If all works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewelry 2.0 and Flowers 3.5.

But remember, overuse can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0 or Beer 6.1. Beer 6.1 is a very bad program that will create Snoring Loudly.wav files.

Whatever you do, DO NOT install Mother-in-Law 1.0 or reinstall another Boyfriend program. These are not supported applications and will crash Husband 1.0.

In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have a limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider additional software to improve memory and performance. I personally recommend Hot Food 3.0 and Lingerie 6.9.

Good Luck,

Joyce at Tech Support