At Work and Play

Prayer: Heavenly Father, thank you for this gorgeous day today. I pray for my pastor, that you would guide his words tomorrow as he speaks your word. I also pray for the worship team, that they would be an example of true worship, not just tomorrow but also in their every day life. Thank you as always for the sacrifice your son Jesus gave us on the cross. In his name I pray. Amen

Verse of the Day: "You are the LORD, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you."  Nehemiah 9:6

Worship Song of the Day: Your Love Never Fails by Jesus Culture

So first things first, how did everyone do with the prayer challenge today? I just finished by 10th prayer above. I will say it was harder to do than I anticipated. It requires that you are quite frequently thinking about God. The greatest thing I got out of it today was that I noticed and thanked God more for the beauty of his creation. I found myself several times today while I was out at the stables just silently praising God for so many things. This morning started out like I thought it would. With me asking God to give me a heart for the yard work I did. I still have weed eating to do tomorrow but praise the Lord I got the mowing done today. The yard work didn't seem as bad today. Maybe that was because of the fact that the last few times Ive done it with a weed eater and this time I borrowed dad's mower and so it wasn't a half a day adventure.

After getting the yard done, I got a little worship time in with my guitar and God. Oh and my dog Bret joined in too. As I was worshiping I felt so alive. I had just accomplished something and now I was getting to spend time doing one of my favorite activities. One thing I have always said to my wife is that I never feel as close to God as I do when I am singing in worship. Part of the point of this Blog is my journey to discovering ways to always feel that close to him. All too often I fell into the trap most of us are guilty of and that is only focusing on God for a couple of hours on Sunday morning or when I have some down time with nothing to fill it with. In reality our real focus should be God and everything else should just be the time we are filling between worship sessions or prayer sessions.

So between working in the yard and playing at the stables I felt a closeness with God today that I can hardly describe. On top of all that Rags(my horse I ride) and I got to swim together for the first time. What an exhilarating experience that was. I was laughing and having a great time, even when Rags got a bit scared and I sort of fell off in the water. Also as a disclaimer please kids never ever try to swim or go through water on a horse without adult supervision and preferably with an experienced horse person. So today showed me that worship can happen at work and play. All the time I was spending with Ragzilla today I was praising God for the bond between horse and rider and that he saw fit to give man dominion over the animals and saw fit to give us such beautiful creatures as horses to be our companions.

Well I believe we shall leave it there for tonight. Church in the morning. I can't wait. Then going to see Avengers and doing the weed eating. Remember this is the day that the Lord has made. Rejoice and be glad in it. Blessings to you and yours. All praise to the Prince of Peace.

Your Brother in Christ,
Brian