365 Days of Praise Challenge-Day 359

We watched the movie Brave last night. It is well worth your time to watch especially if you are a mother or a daughter since the plot is about the relationship between the mother-queen and daughter-princess. The thing I love most about this movie is how it shows the conflict within a person when it comes to facing their sins. The princess ultimately faced what she did and asked for forgiveness. This conflict within a person came up in my reading from a Tim LaHaye book called The Spirit-filled Temperaments. He told of a woman who asked him to tell her the truth about what she was doing that was making her ultimately be depressed. He was hesitant about it but she pushed more and so he told her the flat out truth, it is because you are selfish. The sin of selfishness was making her thought patterns turn negatively and so she ends up depressed. This lady obviously was having conflict within herself and finally was brave enough to ask someone who was going to give it to her straight. The main point in both of these stories is that we have a choice but in making that choice we have to be brave. We have to be able to see the truth of ourselves so that we can go on and ask for forgiveness and be cleansed. Facing our sins for what they are is the first hurdle in restoring our relationship to God that was ripped apart in the Garden of Eden. It is like the symbol in the movie of the tapestry that the princess cut in two with a sword. One side was her and the other side was her parents. One side is us and the other side is God.  Jesus came and he can stitch the tapestry back together when we bravely face our sins and ask for forgiveness. Thank you Lord for giving us the motivation and bravery to face our sins each day and ask your forgiveness.

Romans 14:11-12 If we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong.

365 Days of Praise Challenge-Day 212

My daughter and I went to see the new movie "Brave". It was a fantastic movie filled with good laughs, scary moments and a great message. The main theme of the message is about pride. I found myself curious about this word. It's one of those words that you know what it means but you don't have the words to actually define it. So, I did a little research and found pride to be considered the sin that started all sins. This is the sin that Lucifer had that led to the fall. Pride is the excessive belief in one's own abilities that interferes with the individuals recognition of the grace of God. I found a quote that says it very well: Medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas said of Pride "inordinate self-love is the cause of every sin (1,77) ... the root of pride is found to consist in man not being, in some way, subject to God and His rule." There is a very good article about pride that is well worth reading at http://www.allaboutgod.com/sin-of-pride.htm.  It says the opposite of pride is humility. It is like fighting fire with water. It gives two good examples of pride from the bible and talks about how to recognize pride which is very subtle and how to combat it. I am thanking God for the gift of this movie that shows how pride tears things apart and how humility mends them. I pray that others that watch this movie who are suffering from this sin of sins will finally come to recognize the truth. Take a look at your own life, as I will do myself, and exam your motives. That is a good start... 

1Peter 5:5 All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."