Thinker on overload...

My head is just reeling today. Lots of things milling about bumping into other things. Makes me want to play spider solitare until it all calms down. Had a great class last night at church. Challenging in many ways. One way was a challenge of how much time we spend pursuing things other than God. The other was a request as to what we as a church can do to help each other be more spiritual. That is a tough one. I even put it out on my church's forum, because, for the life of me, I just don't know. I know I crave it from my church, but I don't know how to suggest my church give it to me.

Then after church, I approached the teacher with a question. When you see a Christian slipping away from God, what can you do? He suggested prayer, check and confrontation, check. He also said after that, there is nothing to do except love them and leave the door open. He used the story of The Prodigal, the father had no choice but to let the son go. People can choose to walk away from the protection of God. We are allowed to be a prodigal and probably, most of us have been at one time or another. He said the most important thing is to let them know, that God is there and the door is open when they choose to come back.

My main freak outs in church occur when grace is preached. I love grace preaching. I also believe the devil sits on your shoulder and says, "See there, you can do whatever you want, grace not works. Have fun, live life, do what you want." I do believe there are Christians who are not in the Word who buy into this trap. It scares me to death. There are so many verses saying that you are a new person in Christ. Set apart from the world. Sin so that grace may abound, NO! I just can't hear a sermon on the wonderful mercy and grace of Christ, without shuddering a little at what Satan does with that. He loves to twist and skew the word. Plus our flesh loves to hear that we can just keep on doing what we have always done. Nothing can be further from the truth.

Okay, that is my sermon for the day.

Lilly spent last night and today with my sister. Toby spent the night at the vet. I celebrated by sleeping until 9 (since I went to bed at 1:15 is this considered sleeping in?) and easing into the day slowly. Laundry and blogging. At 11:30 ish, I will go and retrieve Toby. Really miss the little guy. It feels really good to come home to at least one person that wags their whole body and very sincerely missed you like crazy. I think I will wag my whole body and let him know we missed him when we see him.

***edited to add, I miss Lilly too. It is just good to get time apart in a family that spends as much time together as ours does, plus I guess sis will be dropping her off so I don't have to plan when to pick her up. ( ;