100 Things: Simple Acts of Purpose

1-smile at someone

2-hold a door open for someone

3-tell someone “thank you”

4-tell someone “I love you”

5-tell someone what you like about them

6-let someone else talk first in the conversation

7-hug someone

8-hold someone's hand

9-compliment someone on their outfit

10-take your dog for a walk

11-let someone pet your dog

12-let someone else choose the movie

13-let someone else choose the meal

14-get someone a glass of water

15-pass the salt without being asked

16-let someone else go first in line

17-let someone beat you at a game

18-help cook dinner with your family

19-help clean the house

20-help do the laundry

21-take out the trash

22-dust the television

23-clear the table after the meal

24-do the dishes

25-shovel the sidewalk of snow

26-offer your seat on the bus/train to someone else

27-put your phone away when talking with people

28-help a child tie their shoes

29-keep someone company who is lonely

30-hold someone’s hand when they are sad

31-sit with someone when they are sad

32-forgive someone

33-donate some clothes to Salvation Army

34-donate your spare change to a kids sports team

35-let someone else have the last cookie

36-loan someone your earrings

37-loan someone a sweater

38-say hello to someone new at church

39-make coffee/tea for someone when they are cold

40-invite someone to eat with you

41-invite someone to sit next to you at church

42-introduce someone to your friends and family

43-share a funny video with someone

44-tell someone a joke

45-tell someone “Happy Birthday” on their birthday

46-listen to someone else tell a joke and laugh

47-show someone a picture of somewhere beautiful you’ve been

48-when you see something beautiful, say “thank you, God”

49-make a list of things you are thankful for

50-share the list

51-point out a beautiful sunset to a friend

52-point out beautiful architecture to a friend

53-share a verse from scripture with someone

54-make a list of things you like about someone

55-share that list with them

56-share the list with someone else

57-share your mistakes with others

58-share something personal with someone

59-tell someone the truth when they ask a question

60-apologize to someone you have hurt or upset

61-dance in public

62-tell someone a good thing that happened to you

63-share your successes with others

64-keep a promise

65-help clean the church

66-help with the church BBQs

67-color a coloring book with a kid in church

68-help set up for church on Sunday

69-help someone carry groceries

70-volunteer at the farm

71-cook a meal for someone

72-clean someone else's room

73-organize someone else’s messy closet

74-pick up trash on the street

75-shovel your neighbor’s snow

76-invite people to start a dance team

77-volunteer at the animal shelter

78-help someone move apartments

79-ask someone to tell you their life story

80-share your life story with someone

81-ask someone, “where will you be in 10 years?”

82-share a dream with someone

83-text someone a simple “thank you”

84-ask someone to teach you something you don’t know how to do

85-teach someone something you do know how to do

86-send someone a card

87-tell someone a story

88-let someone help you

89-play someone your favorite song

90-ask someone their favorite song

91-show someone your favorite picture from your childhood

92-write someone a letter

93-write someone a poem

94-invite someone over to watch your favorite movie

95-ask someone their favorite movie

96-walk to the store with someone

97-listen to someone who has something to say

98-pick some wildflowers and give them to someone

99-hide a secret note for someone where they will find it later

100-share this list with someone who thinks they have no purpose in life

Constancy

"The secret of success is constancy of purpose."

Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

What Do We Live For?

What is important to you? Why?

What takes up the bulk of your time? Why?

Are the things you call important, the things that take up the bulk of your time? Why, why not?

Who is your 'teacher,' where do you come up with your ideas of what is important and why they are?

Is that teacher trustworthy? Do they live the life you want for yourself? Is that why you trust them, or do you simply follow them because you've never thought about it?

Paper Pt XIII: The Purpose of the Church

In claiming justice as the mission of the Church, we are rethinking commonly held beliefs and practices. This does not negate the need for evangelism, and compassion ministry, but rather places these essential pieces in their proper, more comprehensive, context of ‘salting and lighting’ the earth. The purpose of the Church is to proclaim the Victory of the Cross to the powers,37 but also to participate in and implement that victory as both a manifestation of the presence of the Kingdom, and a sign of its future consummation.

The Importance of the Big Picture

"Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."
Sun Tzu (400 BC–330 BC)

Without Belief

"The abdication of belief makes the behavior small."
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

The Process Supersedes the Result

"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969)

Pastor's Wives

I am submitting my thoughts and ideas in humility because I have not been a pastors wife very long and we have a very small little church and really I know nothing!!
But this article did stir a passion and so many thoughts inside of me!! One of my first reactions was sorrow that so many pastors wives felt that pastoring was their "husbands calling". How can it be his calling when we are joined as one flesh through marriage? I also felt such sorrow that they referred to the church as their husbands "mistress" and of the divorce rate. I was not a woman who saw myself marrying a pastor or ever becoming a pastor's wife, in fact on my wedding day I joked about how I would never be a pastors wife (God does have a sense of humor). But for my husband and I this call of God was ours, not because we both do equal amounts of "pastoring, teaching and preaching" but because we are one, joined by God and so whatever he is called to do I am as well. Although for us I believe us to be more of a ministry team due to some of our feelings about what pastoring does and doesn't look like for us. Pastoring is not my husbands profession, it is our life lived out day to day, Steve can not choose a different profession because we do what we do because Jesus asked us too not because someone hired us and we can not live our lives any differently and feel like we are fulfulling what we were placed on this earth to do. I am glad that pastors wives have found a place to help with lonliness and isolation, I have also felt very lonely at times after arriving in the city to plant a church and leaving so many friends and family at home, but this feeling drove me more into Jesus and allowed me to realize that as lonely as I can possibly be I will never exerience what some on this world will. I will always have someone in my corner. Through these feelings of lonliness and isolation I have become more aware of why Steve and I live the way we do and why we will continue to, because our neighbors, co-workers, cashiers and waitresses experience a lonliness that I no longer know, they live through the same things I do in my life only without the one hope I have. for me thus far it is an honor to be a pastors wife, God chose me to participate in peoples lives to the degree he will allow me, he chose me to be a bringer of hope, love and life. I know that these same people he has called me to will be the ones that cause me the deepest pains, but I don't love them so that they will love me, I love them because God loved me and in this I am given the ability to love them. A wise woman I know told me that as a pasors wife I can not hide from pain, or run away from the hurts you will encounter but instead charge head first into it with the banner of forgiveness over you. I am not judging this article or other pastors wives, it started my head spinning and my passions stirring and these are my thoughts on the subject. I am not a pastors wife because I married one, I am because Jesus asked me to and for him I would do anything. A book that has definatley influenced my perspective and caused me thoughts to ponder is "The Pastors Wife" by Sabina Wurmbrand. Great book and some challenging moments. I know that I am married to an incredible man who passionately loves Jesus with all his heart and I am very blessed in this, so I know that my circumstance is not the same as other women's so please hear my heart of excitment and encouragement and not a criticism or judgement. I am young and idealistic and some day I will get old and then I hope that I will be old and idealistic because I will always believe in the impossible and dream the dreams of God, he came to change the world and I have enlisted myself to him in any way shape or form he asks.

Ephesians

Ephesians 3
The Secret Plan of God
1This is why I, Paul, am in jail for Christ, having taken up the cause of you outsiders, so-called. 2I take it that you're familiar with the part I was given in God's plan for including everybody. 3I got the inside story on this from God himself, as I just wrote you in brief.
4As you read over what I have written to you, you'll be able to see for yourselves into the mystery of Christ. 5None of our ancestors understood this. Only in our time has it been made clear by God's Spirit through his holy apostles and prophets of this new order. 6The mystery is that people who have never heard of God and those who have heard of him all their lives (what I've been calling outsiders and insiders) stand on the same ground before God. They get the same offer, same help, same promises in Christ Jesus. The Message is accessible and welcoming to everyone, across the board.
7This is my life work: helping people understand and respond to this Message. It came as a sheer gift to me, a real surprise, God handling all the details. 8When it came to presenting the Message to people who had no background in God's way, I was the least qualified of any of the available Christians. God saw to it that I was equipped, but you can be sure that it had nothing to do with my natural abilities.
And so here I am, preaching and writing about things that are way over my head, the inexhaustible riches and generosity of Christ. 9My task is to bring out in the open and make plain what God, who created all this in the first place, has been doing in secret and behind the scenes all along. 10Through Christians like yourselves gathered in churches, this extraordinary plan of God is becoming known and talked about even among the angels!
11All this is proceeding along lines planned all along by God and then executed in Christ Jesus. 12When we trust in him, we're free to say whatever needs to be said, bold to go wherever we need to go. 13So don't let my present trouble on your behalf get you down. Be proud! 14My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, 15this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. 16I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit--not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength-- 17that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, 18you'll be able to take in with all Christians the extravagant dimensions of Christ's love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! 19Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.
20God can do anything, you know--far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.

21Glory to God in the church!
Glory to God in the Messiah, in Jesus!
Glory down all the generations!
Glory through all millennia! Oh, yes!


This is what I think about this chapter, If any Christian is wanting to know what God’s will is for their life, this is it! Read in Verse , “ 7This is my life work: helping people understand and respond to this Message. It came as a sheer gift to me, a real surprise, God handling all the details.” God takes all the details of telling people about him! If you are faithful to make Jesus your life’s work then he, God, will give you everything that you need to do it. It says the same thing in 2 Peter.
2 Peter 1: ? “Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God has been given to us by getting to know, personally and intimately, the one who invited us to God.” I believe that this is the will of God in our lives, to grow his church! I believe that Jesus and bringing people into his church and loving his people is all God’s will for our lives. You want to know God’s will read the great commission, you want to know the things that God has for you, then submit yourself him and make Him your life’s work. If you want to know God’s will for your life then read the book of Ephesians, read specifically chapter 3. Don’t have any details, then just chase after this and God will bring you the details you need in the opportune time! Make Jesus your life’s work in your workplace, in your home at the grocery store! JESUS is God’s will for our lives!


I don't know what copy right laws are or anything but I got this section of scripture from the Message by Eugene Petersen