My Sunday

I thought last week was our last sermon on the One Month to Live series, but next week is. So today, we talked about how to build a legacy so that when we die, our lives won't be like sandcastles, meaning that when we die, our lives will have mattered and there will be evidence of us being here.

I want to ask y'all to please say a prayer for our church. We have a possible opportunity to lease a permanent space in our town, and we are praying for the deal to go through, for it to be affordable, and for it to work out. This would be awesome for our church! I know it has been hard on our church leaders to be a transient church. Every week, they pull the trailer up and unload everything that we need for our services.......speakers, audio equipment, the children's materials, literally everything. For us to have a space to make our own would mean so much for being able to reach the people of our town. It would be a much more visible place, and our Pastor has such an incredible gift for reaching people and helping them to understand God's word that I really believe this could be the turning point.

Okay, so back to our lesson today......there are several things that will help you to build a legacy. The first one is convictions. These are eternal core values, or values that come from God's word. They are more than beliefs. Beliefs are things you hold on to, but convictions hold on to you. I loved the analogy our Pastor used to help explain this verse: "But if you just use My words in Bible studies and don't work them into your life, you are like a stupid carpenter who built his house on the sandy beach. " Matt. 7:26 He said it's like if your friend gives you an exercise manual for your birthday and you study this manual, you know everything there is to know in it about how to get fit, but you never actually exercise, therefore your friend sees you six months later and asks you how come you haven't changed! Now, you know everything there is to know about how to get fit, you know all the lifts, you know how to eat right, but you haven't actually done anything, therefore nothing changes. It's the same way when we know about God's word, but we don't put it into action in our lives.

The second thing that helps build a legacy is our character. God's mission is to make us more like Jesus. He will chip away at us everything that doesn't look like Jesus. How does He build our character? Sometimes, problems will help build our character. We don't build character by everything being perfect all the time. Pressures will also help us develop character that we wouldn't otherwise develop. You will see if you have character if you remain Christlike under pressure. People also help us build character because they hold us accountable.

The last thing we talked about that will help us leave a legacy is community. The church's purpose is so that people who were blind will see, so that people who didn't believe will believe. Incredible things happen when we align ourselves with other believers.

We want our legacy to be that we head home with no regrets. We should live for Him and do what He wants us to do. You may not make a huge difference from a global perspective, but to the people that you help, you can make a huge difference. Our material possessions will wash away like sandcastles, but God's word, our character, and God's people will remain.

We went to my MIL's house for lunch after church, and guess who we got to see?

Zoey! She's changed so much since we kept her 2 months ago! Now, she's sitting up, holding her own bottle, crawling, and even trying to pull up! She's so cute! I didn't know they were going to be there, so I didn't have my camera with me. This blurry camera phone picture will have to do :)

I forgot to tell y'all that my Aunt Barbara came by on Thursday and gave me a great haircut and she was telling me how thankful her son was for the money that you all helped me raise for his baby Zach. Thank you so, so much for being so supportive. Zach is still on the very expensive formula, and combined with his really expensive medicines, this money will just help so much.

I'm also very excited to have already raised $21 for Amy's adoption fund to bring Elijah home. If you would like to help, but don't see anything you like in my shop, just keep checking back as I'll be working all week long to add new things to it. Remember, shipping is free and half will go to Amy's family. The other half will be used to help me pay for shipping and materials.

Hope you all had a great weekend!! I'll be back tomorrow to participate in Lynnette's blog party!