Sam I Am ...spiritual adventures of a Christ-follower.

You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do - Anne Lamott

I don't agree with Anne on everything, but she nails that one. God is the lover of souls. He has this insatiable craziness about people. That's why sometimes I sing to Him:


Your love is amazing
Steady and unchanging
Your love is a mountain
Firm beneath my feet
Your love is a mystery
How You gently lift me
When I am surrounded
Your love carries me
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Your love makes me sing

God, I wish I loved like you love. My love is partial; yours isn't. My love is incomplete; your's is eternal.

I love you. Help me love others like you love others.

Merry Christmas. Today represents the day that love came down and the greatest gift was given. Peace on earth begins today and hearts that know Him are filled with peace and tranquility. Joy fills the eart as the angel's sing and herald Messiah's birth!

Today, all of our children are together and that is a great gift beyond what money can buy. Love to all.

"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." --The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis

A friend of mine shared with me the words to a song named "Legacy" by Nichole Nordeman. She nails it.

I don’t mind if you’ve got something nice to say about me.
And I enjoy and accolade, like the rest
You could take my picture and hang it in a gallery
Of all the who’s who and so-and-so’s that used to be
The best as such and such…
It wouldn’t matter much.

I won’t lie, it’s alright to see your name in lights
We all need and atta-boy or atta-girl
But in the end I’d like to hang my hat on more besides
The temporary trappings of this world

I want to leave a legacy. How will they remember me?
Did I choose to love? Did I point to You enough to make a mark on things?
I want to leave an offering.
A child of mercy and grace who blessed Your name unapologetically.
And leave that kind of legacy.

I don’t have to look too far or too long a while
To make a lengthy list of all that I enjoy
It’s an accumulating trinket and treasure pile
Where moth and rust, thieves and such will soon destroy

Not well-traveled, not well-read, not well-to-do or well-bred
Just want to hear instead, “good and faithful one….”

I want to leave a legacy. How will they remember me?
Did I choose to love? Did I point to You enough to make a mark on things?
I want to leave an offering.
I a child of mercy and grace who blessed Your name unapologetically.
And leave that kind of legacy.
____________________________________________________________________

I don't want to have to say "I wish I'd spent one more hour at the office". Living life with intentionality is my goal. To glorify Christ. To leave a legacy. To touch lives with mercy and grace.

Each day it seems that I'd like to learn more about life and "know more" but I do better to abandon myself into God's loving arms and let Him teach me what to do next. I have to remember that I am not worthy but be very thankful.

Teresa of Avila once said, The soul must forget about understanding, and abandon itself into the arms of love, and His Majesty will teach it what to do next; almost its whole work is to realize its unworthiness to receive such great good and to occupy itself in thanksgiving.

Teresa learned this, I discovered, by experience. In reading about her life, I discovered this gal from the 15th century sought to follow God in her youth but it was later that she fell into a coma so profound that she apeared to be dead. After 4 days she revived, but she remained paralyzed in her legs for 3 years. After her cure she entered a period of mediocrity in her spiritual life, but she did not at any time give up praying. She came to realize that she could stop using her imagination and she could give herself to contemplating God.

For about 18 years, she had various spiritual experiences. She discovered in herself a strong desire to have others appreicate her - which was finally overcome in an experience with the presence of an image of "the sorely wounded Christ" The ego was dislodged that hindered her spiritually. At age 39, she started enjoying vivid spiritual experiences of God's presence in her.This conversion dislodged the egoism that had hindered her spiritual development.

So I guess the key is to stay humbly in God's hand and rather than seek knowledge, seek Him.

The devil is not terribly frightened of our human efforts and credentials. But he knows his kingdom will be damaged when we begin to lift up our hearts to God. says Jim Cymbala.

Doing God's work must be in the work of the Spirit, not the flesh. I want to pray more.

I talked to my daughter this morning. Jen read yesterday's thought. She asked me Can you say hello to me today - on the website?

I like to get words from my heavenly Father.

I love to talk with Jen. God loves to to talk with me. That's why He calls it family.

There is a difference in trying to serve the Lord out of your own strength and doing His work in His power. I've experienced both. It's foolish to set out to serve God and do so in the flesh. It's like a private who decides to run the battle and then tell the commander in chief what the plan is.

Corrie ten Boom said
Trying to do the Lord's work in your own strength is the most confusing, exhausting, and tedious of all work. But when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, then the ministry of Jesus just flows out of you.

I get tired easily when the ministry is challanging spiritually...but I get exhausted when I attempt to do my will in accompishing His Work. Dear Lord, save me from human effort.

Galatians 1:3 Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. If you weren't smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you could perfect it? Did you go through this whole painful learning process for nothing? It is not yet a total loss, but it certainly will be if you keep this up!
(The Message)

Life is short. As I told the fellowship of believers yesterday, one of my greatest fears is that I will live a mundane life of insignificance, not making the difference I could make.

Lewis Smedes underscored this in a profound way before his death with the following thought.

I bought a brand new date book yesterday, the kind I use every year - spiral-bound, black imitation leather covers wrapped around pages and pages of blank squares. Every square has a number to tell me which day of the month I’m in at the moment. Every square is a frame for one episode of my life. Before I’m through with the book, I will fill the squares with classes I teach, people with whom I ate lunch, everlasting committee meetings I sit through, and these are only the things I cannot afford to forget. I fill the squares too with things I do not write down for me to remember: thousands of cups of coffee, some lovemaking, some praying, and, I hope, gestures of help to my neighbors. Whatever I do, it has to fit inside one of those squares on my date book. I live one square at a time. The four lines that make up the square are the walls of time that organize my life. Everything I do has to fit into one square. Each square has an invisible door that leads to the next square. As if by a silent stroke, the door opens and I am pulled through, as if by a magnet, sucked into the next square in line. There I will again fill the time frame that seals me - fill it with my business just as I did the square before. As I get older, the squares seem to get smaller. One day, I will walk into a square that has no door. There will be no mysterious opening and no walking into an adjoining square. One of the squares will be terminal. I do not know which square it will be.

I would like to make some difference today with the square I'm on. Wouldn't you?

Ps 90:5-6 You sweep men away in the sleep of death;
they are like the new grass of the morning- though in the morning it springs up new, by evening it is dry and withered.