Goodness

I'm not sure that the food I just ate was supposed to go together. I was never allowed to eat sweet cereal growing up unless it was a special occasion and it had to be mixed with something healthy like Wheaties. I wanted corn-pops for a midnight snack, actually an 11:00 snack but I mixed it with Trader Joes Fiber Flakes out of habit and it isn’t settling very well. I don't recommend it.
College group was so good tonight! I asked a lot of questions and got a lot of answers and it was inspiring. It changed the way that I see everything, including my relationship with Patrick so I wrote to him about it, but I think I'll post an excerpt here because it is such a neat concept:

I am fallen, I do sin, and something that I learned is that as Christians we have the Holy Spirit inside of us, which is God. If God is glorious and magnificent and powerful and mighty as He says He is, then when we are living with the pure motive to bring Glory and honor to Him, we should shine. The world should know that we are different by our love. It’s funny, people like Oprah and Donald Trump give millions to charity in the name of goodness, but goodness is an act with the pure motive to bring glory to God. We don’t have to out give them, but give with a motive of goodness and it should knock the world over with its display of God’s glory. I don’t want to just live my life trying to do things, trying to be good by reading my bible and praying or tithing, or being faithful by trusting that God will help me to get a job, trying to stay healthy or be kind, but to live goodness and faith and health and kindness in an extraordinary way that expresses God’s goodness so that the world is able to know through my life.

It's funny to walk in a big city on the sidewalk. You can see a person's hair color, whether or not they're smiling. Are they taller than you, wider, do they smell or are they dirty? We can know so much about the details but if we were on top of a skyscraper observing the same scene everything would be so small it wouldn't matter, we couldn't differentiate the details. I think that analogy from my workbook helps to depict God's standard if he were on the skyscraper looking down at us. We are so quick to compare ourselves with others based on church attendance or race, weight, health, intellect etc. we see ourselves as better than someone else, more worthy, not as much of a sinner, but I wonder if God really details each sin or rather his standard of goodness is just so high and we are hopelessly small that it just requires a life of humility and a pure motive to bring honor to His name that will spark any difference in this world.

God, I have faith that you can use me. Please help me to find ways that bring glory to your name so that I will shine . Please help me to be humble and continue to see how much I need you. Amen.