Lessons

Happy August! :) How quickly the year has been going, and it has been so full of blessings and lessons.

I have shared what the Lord has been teaching me with several of my pen-pals, so I thought I would share it with the rest of you dear ladies who I haven't had the opportunity to correspond with.

Mom and I have been reading a book called The Family Daughter by Sarah Bryant, and most recently, we read about having joy (a quality I am still working on attaining!). The author challenged readers to choose to have a joyful, cheerful attitude, even when things are not going as you want them to, or when you feel like being disgruntled or frustrated. How a day can be spoiled because we choose to be grumpy! We are told in several passages in the Bible to rejoice, and give thanks in everything. In our family devotions this morning, Mom shared this passage: "As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him: Rooted and built up in Him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving." (Colossians 2:6-7) Dad was telling us about his grandmother (who the four of us older ones were privileged to know for a short time before she passed away several years ago) and her incredible testimony of how, even when her body was in great pain, she was always thinking of and doing things for others. What joy it brings when we serve others!

In closing, I would like to share one of my favorite Bible passages~Lamentations 3:22-26: "It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is Thy faithfulness. The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in Him. The LORD is good unto them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeketh Him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD."

Blessings,
Amanda