Eyes on the Prize

Bret and I often will read at night, our bibles often or sometimes another book or devotional. We will often find something that strikes a chord and read it out loud to each other. That has been happening a lot lately, the striking a chord part. I have this awesome bible that is the new testament only, New Living Translation version, "Traveler's Devotional Bible" It is full of great devotions through-out. I feel the need to share with you this....

"Eyes on the Prize"

We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding it's shame. Now He is seated in the place of honor beside God's throne Hebrews(12:2).

In today's world of lax promiscuity and a credit-driven economy, almost no one remembers what delayed gratification is. Previous generations understood that many of the things one wants most in life cannot be had easily or instantly. Mature adults know that attaining anything worthwhile takes time, toil, perseverance, and sometimes even suffering.

The writer of Hebrews describes our spiritual pilgrimage as an endurance race, a race so wearying that many times we feel like giving up and quitting. The only way to make it, to keep running all he way to the end, is to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, who runs before us setting the pace. Not only does He demonstrate that it is possible to complete this race and win it, He encourages us along because He knows how we feel. In order to be crowned victor, Jesus not only had to endure the normal difficulties of the race, but He also had to endure suffering, abuse from competitors, and shame on His way to crossing the finish line. That's when He was honored.

The Christian life is not easy (nothing worthwhile is); we do not attain instant perfection (as much as we might like it). Instead, we are in a long distance race that we run only against ourselves, always with our eye on Jesus, always moving toward the finish line. As we meditate on what He did for us, we are strengthened to keep going.


I hope this devotional will help you with something in your life. I know I can personally relate to it in so many ways; our financial decisions, the changes with our church, my friendships. Things may not be easy now or have been in the past, but I feel like we have and are still going through an endurance race, but I also feel like we are beginning to get closer to that prize! How glorious that is! I really love this verse and devotional and could read it many times over and have it help me with what I am struggling with. Please keep your eyes on the prize, and if you don't know how to attain that feel free to ask.

Unity

Unity ... this is something that I have been praying for our church for a while now. I never imagined it would come this Sunday with one unanimous vote! In fact I never imagined, even in the month preceding this vote that it would be unanimous. Some of you may be asking... what vote? A life changing, kingdom changing vote took place this Sunday. A vote to dissolve the church that we have known and loved for 5 years and unite together with LifePoint Church and share in their vision to further the Kingdom of God.

Ironically this Sunday Stonebrook church will be celebrating our 20 year anniversary! It will be a gathering of everyone new and old that have called Stonebrook home. The following Sunday we will be joining our new congregation at the Main LifePoint campus as our new campus LifePoint ___ (name to be determined) we be undergoing some improvements.

I sobbed as the vote was announced this Sunday and have been wrought with emotions lately! My tears were just a release, a mix of emotions ... happiness, sadness that just flowed out. I praise God for making it clear to me and to everyone that this was His plan that we were to follow. It was certainly in His timing... that is clear to me too!

We so love Stonebrook Church! So many people there that we love. We had our first child while members of Stonebrook... it is a church that Kyndal simply knows as "My Church". It is the only church she has known! We anticipate returning to the new campus with lots of improvements, that is unless God has other plans for us and we stay at the Main campus.

My faith and understanding has grown tremendously in the last couple of years. For those of you who don't know Stonebrook or Lifepoint for that matter but feel the need to discuss; this merger is not about worldly things I assure you, it is about the Kingdom and what we can do for God! It is an exciting time, bittersweet, but exciting. I can't wait to see what God has in store for us as a family, for our church family, for this area that we live in, for seekers, and for my daughter who has an opportunity in her young life that Bret and I never had as a young children!

LifePoint Church from LifePoint Church on Vimeo.

Confused

The only way I know to describe my emotions lately is confused? I am confused about so many things. I KNOW that God has a plan for me in HIS Kingdom. I am trying not to think about it as a plan for ME, but as a plan for Him. I wish I could just stop thinking and merely listen, but that is just hard for some of us, especially me. God has been speaking to me and I have been listening... so why all of this confusion. I think I need to start letting the spirit in me guide instead of the human. I have been learning some important lessons, unfortunately those are normally preceded by struggles... some big some small. Through everything I know that I am developing a deeper relationship with God which makes me grateful for this confusion and these struggles. One verse has been ringing through my head lately... I think of it several times a day.....

"Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths." Proverbs 3:5-6

I guess I need to rename my blog .... Deep thoughts by Kristin Aune

p.s. For those in my small group that may be reading this, I wrote this early in the day and failed to publish it. So the first part of our lesson spoke to me tonight, hope it spoke to you to ;)