Desire

“I want deliberately to encourage this mighty longing after God. The lack of it has brought us to our present low estate. The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits for long, so very long, in vain.”
~A.W.Tozer~

Wow this is a fantastic quote – you can just about feel the intensity and fire in Tozer’s voice!

Tozer doesn’t just want to encourage this longing for God but to go out of his way to create opportunities to long after him – it is a deliberate act.

I want two things -
1. to have this “mighty longing after God”
2. and to “deliberately encourage this mighty longing after God”

This is my prayer for my church, for my husband and for my children – that they will have an acute desire for God.

Yes Lord let it be!!

My Secret For Achieving The Best Year Yet!

I hope that the Christmas and New Year break has been a relaxing and a rewarding one, spending time with family. Apparently we have had the driest summer on record! The grass is proof of that – brown as.

Today, I want to stir you up to expect and dream for this coming year. We all have dreams, some of them are unspoken, some have been discarded, and some we are yet to imagine. Without a dream or vision, we are just getting through life; basically surviving. God doesn’t want us to JUST survive – He wants us to dream and move towards an aim or goal in our lives.

What are your aims this year?
What would you like to achieve?

I usually have loads of aims and things that I would like to do. BUT I never seemed to get around to doing anything or maybe life just got in the way. Every year I would sit down and review my past efforts and become very discouraged. What is the point in even writing down goals? I never seem to achieve even a portion of what I dream about.

Over the past few weeks, I have spent quite a lot of time talking to God about this. He has shown me a SECRET to achieving my dreams. I will get to the SECRET in a moment. But first I want to share with you what I was doing wrong. God revealed it to me while I was reading James 1 v 6b – 8

For the one who wavers (hesitates, doubts) is like the billowing surge out at sea that is blown hither and thither and tossed by the wind. For truly, let not such a person imagine that he will receive anything [he asks for] from the Lord,[For being as he is] a man of two minds (hesitating, dubious, irresolute), [he is] unstable and unreliable and uncertain about everything [he thinks, feels, decides]. Amp

Two words literally jumped off the page. “Dubious” and “irresolute”. They aren’t words that we use freely these days are they? So I took the time to look them up-

Dubious: hesitant, uncertain, doubtful, sceptical, unsure, undecided, irresolute.

Was I sceptical about achieving my goals? Was I so full of doubt that I didn’t really believe that I had it in me to gain the victory? It started to look like sabotage – I was sabotaging my own dreams! Let’s move onto the word “irresolute” -

Irresolute: unable to make up your mind.

Well, I thought – that is strange, I thought I HAD decided to accomplish certain things. Hadn’t I wanted to lose weight? Hadn’t I wanted to write? Hadn’t I wanted a closer relationship with my husband? Wasn’t that making up your mind? But this was only half the meaning – the negative side. I then looked up the flip side –the meaning of resolute.

Resolute: unshakeable, unwavering, unswerving, determined, single-minded, firm

Ah! Now the lights were turning on! If I had made up my mind on a goal or made a decision to do something then I would have been UNSHAKEABLE – nothing could change MY course of action. I would be so determined to achieve -it would be inconceivable that I would fail. If my “mind was made up” then I wouldn’t be in “two minds” that James is talking about. Being in “two minds” is disastrous. You can not achieve anything in “two minds”.

Now here comes the secret – this is what God wanted me to know, the reason why some people achieve and others don’t. It comes down to …DETERMINATION!

Wishing and wanting just doesn’t cut it. Desires and dreams just stay a “what if?”, when there is no determination behind it. Here’s a great verse which has great imagery –

“Never lag in zeal and in earnest endeavour, be aglow and burning with the Spirit serving the Lord” Romans 12 v 11

That sure sound determined to me! Okay so what does “determine” mean?

Determine: to settle ultimately, to fix on, to settle or establish, and to resolve

Now there is no argument here, this meaning is pretty clear – to determine is to SETTLE FOR GOOD on what you want to have happen. That is determination! You have made up your mind to inject love into your marriage relationship and nothing is going to get in your way. That is determination! You have resolved that you will lose x amount of pounds this year and that chocolate calling your name is not going to get you. (Now for some reason, yummy fattening food like chocolate is my biggest downfall and I can get determined about most things …but losing weight and giving up chocolate is hard but with God’s help nothing, NOTHING is impossible – watch this space!)

You (and I – I so need this as well) MUST get so determined about the dreams that God has placed in your heart that you decide once and for all and then set your mind on it – you get so fixated on making it happen. God talks about this in Colossians 3 v 2 “Set your minds and keep them set on what is above (the higher things) not on the things that are on earth”

You are not in this alone, God has promised to help you and inject determination into your hearts and strengthen your minds so they can be set upon achieving your goals.

So stir yourself up, sharpen those pencils, and write down those dreams and goals. Pick ONE DREAM, ONE GOAL and become completely determined to achieve it!

To give you a head start,YOU are INVITED to type in your one DREAM or GOAL in the comments area below. I would LOVE to hear what you all are aiming for! Let’s encourage each other towards achieving at least one dream or goal in 2008.

Here’s to the best year ever!
Rachel Larkin

Looking For A Healthly Master Salad Recipe?

2008 is the year for me to transform my eating habits! I am determined to adopt a permanent healthy lifestyle!

To tell you the truth about salad eating – I am so lazy that most of the time my salads are just sliced lettuce, grated carrot, chopped cucumber and tomato chunks! In fact that is what we have had with every meal this week.

The thing that I have to watch with my salad eating is the cheese. It is so easy to grate a whole pile of cheese and smother the top of the salad with it. I can’t trust myself with the cheese so I have to omit it from my salads.

Here is a Master Salad Recipe that you can adjust to your likes and dislikes.

For ONE serving (adjust for how many people you have to cook for)

100 grams cooked chicken cut into chunks (this is the protein bit – you can choose anything really – feta cheese, cottage cheese, salmon etc)

Vegetables – like 1 sliced spring onion, 1/4 cucumber cut into chunks, small wedge of cabbage thinly shredded goes nicely with the chicken – but you can choose whatever you have in the fridge

Herbs – roughly chopped mint goes great with chicken – but you could do anything like parsley with salmon or tuna.

DRESSING – this is where we can get into trouble and pour on heaps but this dressing is low in fat and you still get that creamy flavour.

For ONE serving

1/4 cup natural yogurt
1 tsp mayonaise
condiment – like 1/2 tsp grated root ginger OR 1/2 tsp seed mustard OR 1/4 -1/2 tsp curry powder etc according to your taste and what protein you used in your salad.

Mix the dressing through your salad ingredients.

To make this into a full meal (you already have the greens and the protein) all you need is a carbohydrate. Maybe you could have hot crusty bread OR hot potato (or kumara) chunks OR couscous OR rice OR pasta and mix them through (well maybe don’t mix the bread through the salad!)

Enjoy!!
p.s. The inspiration for this master recipe came from Carolyn Gibbson from Kiwi Kiss weight loss program and other health recipe books.

Rachel Larkin