Our Father

At the start of this month I had a wonderful opportunity to go to the 9:38 conference with a whole group of Ministry Apprentices just like me, and spend three days looking at our prayer life and what the bible teaches us about prayer.

One of the highlights, for me, was hearing Richard Coekin speaking on the Lord's prayer, showing us how the prayer our Lord Jesus taught us can structure our devotional prayer time.

Now before I continue this post, I want to make sure you know my prayer life is a constant battle that I am trying to turn into a joy! And this is all stuff I'm trying to work on and want to share with you! But it's hard and I have by no means got an answer to making it easier, remember it's literally a spiritual battle, Satan will do literally anything to distract you while you pray. Did I put the Dog out? Did I turn the oven off? That was a lovely program I watched today. He tries anything, to stop you talking to your Heavenly Father.

So, why have I entitled this blog post, Our Father, well, the Lord's prayer begins with this and I was shown that it is the most wonderful reminder of the privilege of prayer and the power of the one we pray to. Just stop and think for a moment, how amazing is it that you get to call the creator of the universe Father. The King over everything, the most powerful one ever known, Dad. We get to come to Him in times of Joy, sorrow, weakness, strength, love, heartbreak, anger and compassion. He doesn't change at all, His love-o-meter is fixed at maximum love. 

Our phone-line to Him is never engaged, faulty, out of service, or in a queue. It's instant and always open.

So, next time you make an excuse to pray, just remember, your Heavenly Father is always listening. He delights to hear you pray to Him. He longs for us to find treasures in His word and ask Him for them. 

He longs for us to speak to Him as our Heavenly Father, to embrace the privilege of prayer. 

What is the ideal Woman?

What do we think about when we think of image? 

What we should look like?

We’re comparing ourselves to this illusion of the ideal woman aren’t we. 

Well the average woman is 5’4” and weighs 10 stone. The average model is 5’11” and weighs 8 stone. 

That is a truly scary and unhealthy statistic. Only 2% of women are models. And we’re expected to aspire to that?! That’s ridiculous. It's a false standard. 

So here's what I think:

I think we need to forget what the media says to us and focus on the real women around us for a start! That is the reality, not some magazine. We can’t aspire to be like 2% of the population when we have been made to all be beautifully different.

Just pause and think

What are some of the issues that we struggle with when we think about our image?

Most of these things happen because we are comparing ourselves to someone. But why are we comparing ourselves? Well I think there are three underlying reasons which have come from Sophie De Witt's book, Compared to her:

• o Significance: making sure you’re worthwhile
• o    Satisfaction: making sure life is as good as it can be
• o    Security: making sure we have what we need

I’ve been reading this book and Sophie talks about something called Compulsive Comparison Syndrome or CCS for short, and I honestly believe we all suffer from it, I’ve struggled with it all my life I know that. But for me it all came to a head in my first year of university when I tried to change me and having the “ideal” body and being the most like this unrealistic expectation l I could be became the most important thing in the world. 

I found myself hating the body God had given me and trying to achieve the false ideal. Thankfully I kept going along to church and summer camps and God slapped me in the face with Psalm 139 in my face over and over again.

READ PSALM 139

God made us and knows everything about us. The creator of the whole universe made you and me exactly how we are supposed to be. We are made in the image of God, when we look in the mirror we see the image of God!

How does that make us feel?

How does that change how we view ourselves?

He has made us all differently however we look, it’s how he made us.

He has created a temple in us.