input

I'm sitting in the car, writing this post in my phone before I go into the house because when I do...I may simply collapse.

It has been a LONG day.

I wear a lot of hats.

One of those hats at the mission is that of data and stats guru. This is somewhat hilarious but it's true. I have never fancied myself good at either but the Lord works in mysterious ways and I find myself doing things that I don't feel capable of every single day.

Tonight I did a little "data clean up." We have recently adapted to a new system for data tracking. It's very new to our staff and we are all still in a learning process. It's a process that has consumed me as I have, for MONTHS lives and breathed this system.

Tonight as I poke some holes in our early data entry efforts and discovered some areas of training that will need a little clarity, it occurred to me.

A data tracking system is only as good as the data we put into it.

I know that's not earth shattering but it occurred to me beyond that. Most things are only as good as what you put in. Even our walk with the Lord.

He will always work harder than us and do the bigger thing, but there usually has to be some motion on our part. Pray. Obedience. Something.

Sometimes I deal with people who say things like, "well God never did anything for me" or "I just am not hearing from Him."

I have to wonder, well what are you putting in. If you want Him to move, are you moving in obedience to Him? If you want to hear His voice are you spending time in His words?

Praise God His works are NOT contingent on us BUT He loves when we pursue Him. When we choose obedience or spend time with Him He is glorified.

On the other hand, if we want good thing to flow out of us, we have to put them in.

Just like data...

So ask yourself this...what did I input today?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

my broken

Image
This weekend, my little peanut Daniel broke his thumb. Now he gets to spend the next several weeks in a cast. Saturday morning I had gone to spend the day with him. He and his sister were playing contentedly in the play room and he come to me with a forlorn look on his little face. "It's not fair." He declared in his 5 year old sensibility. "What's not fair?" I asked. "I can't play like I want to because my arm broken." My heart hurt for him. He just wanted to be...normal again. I pulled in up in my lap and cradled him like I did when he was a much smaller boy. Then I told him this: "No pal, it's not fair and I know it stinks that you will have to wear a cast for a while. But you know what? I bet none of the other kids in your class have a cast like yours do they?" He shook his head. "So that's actually pretty cool. You're the ONLY kid with a cast like yours. And you can still play it will just be ...
Read more

reconnect

As I grow older and continue to seek after the Lord, I am amazed how I, how am much an extravert, crave stillness. I crave solitude. I crave silence. This weekend, I turned off much of the noise, put my phone on do not disturb and spent time in stillness and living a simpler form of life. It was lovely. It was necessary. On Saturday afternoon I hung in my hammock in my brothers back yard and read to my nephew from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. As I read, I was stricken by the imagery. It was beautiful and eloquent yet simple.  I crave simple, more than I ever realized. In disconnecting for much of the weekend, yes, I missed chatting with my friends, but that was all I missed.  As I reconnected today and stepped back into all the pressures of regular life, I couldn't help wishing I were in my hammock in the woods reading CS Lewis or LM Montgomery. I think this has all been a lesson in balance. In order to connect well, I need to balance that conne...
Read more

whatever

This week has been ridiculously, unseasonably hot. I have spent way too much time complaining about and avoiding the heat. This morning as I was leading worship for church we sang the old stand by 10,000 Reasons. As we sang the first verse it struck me once again. The sun comes up it’s a new day dawning,  It’s time to sing your song again. Whatever may pass and whatever lies before me, Let me be singing when the evening comes. That word, whatever.  That’s a word that is said flippantly all the time but when you put it in the context that song is saying it in, it’s huge. Whatever. Not just a few things that may come into our days. WHATEVER may pass and WHATEVER lies before. After that I taught my Sunday school class a song. This song talks about following Jesus under any circumstance. There is a verse in it that really tugs at my heart. It says, When I find myself so far from home And You lead me somewhere I don't wanna go Even in my d...
Read more