My current Bible Study these days is Becoming a Woman of Purpose, by Cynthia Heald. It’s a journey of faith-filled scriptures about loving God and others, waiting on Him with hope, trusting Him when I’m suffering and serving Him with a reverent fear and ultimately, fulfilling His purposes. You would think my favorite chapter would have been the one on embracing suffering and glorifying God in my pain. We Melancholies thrive on emotional adversity because we know first hand it leads to our profit and God’s glory unlike the Sanguine who knows how to lead us to joy and laughter, or the Choleric who teaches us how to work hard or the Phlegmatic who never gets riled and remains peaceful. But no, my favorite chapter so far has been the one on waiting on God. The author cites Psalms to review that remind me of my own turbulent emotions when I can’t control a situation and how God steadies me. She teaches about the promises in God’s word in Genesis that foretell that one day Abraham and Sarah will, indeed, bare a child which they eventually did, but they messed up their lives and the lives of others with their unbelief before they got their promised infant. So what has changed from the days of Abe & Sarah? Nothing. We’re still impatient. This chapter hits home for us in our family right now. We eagerly await our first grandchild who is fashionably late in getting here. This birth is so suspenseful! My techie daughter and son-in-love have put aside all the gender revealing gadgets and I don’t even know the sex of this little one! That’s okay. I found a word from God to base all my hopes on…..Lamentations 3:22, 23. Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed. Because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. Today is a brand new day…maybe the baby will be born today.
What does minimizing look like? To the empty nester it may mean downsizing real estate. To the co-dependent, it may mean pitching some toxic friendships they tend to collect. I thought I had a handle on Biblical minimalism, but I wasn’t even close. Biblical minimalism is much more than cleaning out a drawer and discarding unwanted things into a box to take to the thrift store. In her book, Biblical Minimalism, Cheryl E. Smith defines Biblical minimalism as “a complete, whole person release of anything unlike Jesus, a letting go of everything that hinders us from following Him wholeheartedly and single- mindedly , and a relinquishing of all that brings us under bondage to this earthly, very temporary life.” The author gives us a visual of a whole pie that is divided into eight slices. Each slice describes our lives with areas to analyze to see if pruning or adjustment is needed. I won’t name them all, but one example is the “emotional ...
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