Its a Hard Knock Life...

No, its not a musical review or a Jaz-Z album critique, its the greatest in knowing Who is in control! Before Mary and I got married we came up with a nice plan of shedding off debt and looking towards moving Mary into the home as fast as possible. Without even considering if this is what God wanted us to do, we thought it would honor Him. Our ideas and our actions were most of the time the focus and our life was striving toward making our life together make sense for us. We came up with a financial plan that would make sense if Mary and I continued with our job situations.

It is always good in reducing your debt and working towards a goal that you most likely think that it would glorify and praise your Creator. And then there are times, when your plans are not God's plans. Living a life of faith is knowing that the God who created you has promises and provisions for His children, walking and growing in knowledge and discernment of who He is and how there is hope in Him.

God most instantly showed Himself in our marriage in the early stages, by laying me off from my job. It was a great way of showing His love for us by taking our own plans and then revealing His current plan for us!

In Paul's letter to the Philippians Mary and I are reminded how we are supposed to be praying and what we are supposed to be praying for. To give a little history of the Church of Philippi, they were a transient city. Many people were coming in an out of that city from all over the place. A booming type of city with many different religions, but under they were under Roman control. The Roman government had no problem with religion and how it was practiced, just as long as you hold the Roman government higher than the God you worshipped. In Acts 16 Paul goes to Phillipi because it is one the main districts in Macedonia and God appeared in a dream to Paul telling him where he should be going.

The people in Philippi that believed in the Lord, were oppressed hard, but knew that their love for the Lord was growing every day. So Paul teaches us and the church of Philippi how to pray and what to pray for:

1:9-11
And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more,
in real knowledge and all discernment,
so that you may approve the things that are excellent in order to be sincere and blamless until the day of Christ,
having been filled with the fruit of righteeiousness which comes through Jesus Christ,
to the glory and praise of God.

Now this is a long prayer and Paul prays for firstly that love that we have for each other and others is abounding more and more. This is a united spirit, one that will show unity in like mindedness, that for those who put their faith in Jesus Christ and submit to Him as Lord, they come together knowing this Truth, walk in it daily and show the love that Father gave to them within the those that are called by the Father.

Our prayer for you that you would be united in Christ with us and in submission to His plan and His will for your life and to be together unity under Him. For there we find real joy, away from living for this world, instead living for the One who has full control. The easiest thing is to do is to give in to what the world would prescribe as "truth", but Mary and I guarantee that that "truth" will only be the truth for a short time and you will again be back to the drawing board.

Pray for us in our unity as a couple. For it becomes hard when it seems like our breaks are few and are far in between. We don't want to be like sails in the wind as Paul would put it. We would like to be stead firm in our walk with our Father and display our love and how it abounds to one another more and more each day.