No, I'm not thanking you for following us. (Although if you did, thank you for that too! ;) ) We ladies have never emphasized that much.... It might be because this is a private blog, and we're really not here just to have our posts read. We're here to encourage young ladies like ourselves to stand firm in your faith and defy our culture when it turns us away from God. (To know more about our purpose, you can look at our mission statement here or email us at ladiesforthelight@gmail.com.)
So why did I thank you? I thanked you because you made me do a double take one evening several, ahem, months ago (sorry for the delay in posting....). I'd just been on a website I really like, and they had a link to some things to print. (I'll call them printables). I thought I'd take a look, because although I try to conserve on printing in color, I do occasionally splurge. :) There were multiple links, and one of them took me to a website that was trying to sell me a printable. That's right, sell me. As in the printable was for sale. Meaning that you had to pay for the printable and then pay for the ink and stuff to actually print it. I'm getting off topic though. What I failed to say is that there was another link to a similar printable that was free.[:)] Instead of being happy that there was a really cool printable for free that I have the ability to print off because God has given me access to a printer, computer, and internet, I instead grumbled to myself about people trying to sell printables. Now, don't get me wrong. I wasn't really grumpy, just a little irked. My mom asked me to do a salad for dinner that night, though, so I got up started to work on it. And as I bustled around in the kitchen, I thought amusedly that if I had a blog, I would get on and rant about this. And then, as I laughed inwardly at the idea, I suddenly thought about all of you, and realized that I did have a blog. And I certainly shouldn't like to rant on here, where we like to talk about honoring God with our attitudes, words, and thoughts. Yet my attitude, however lighthearted, was not honoring God. Wow. This is where the rubber meets the road, you'd say.
Well, all that to say two things:
- We at Ladies of the Light are not perfect. Just in case you weren't sure before. ;) Just because we write articles on this blog in order to help other young ladies doesn't mean we think we have it all taken care of! Even the things we talk about being in our articles, we're not perfect at. In fact, we try to use our articles to encourage ourselves to look at things a little deeper. For example, do you remember way back when we did the Cornerstone articles? (You can find the first one here, the second one here. Can you believe that was two years ago? Wow! :O ) That study really helped me understand what God was saying more than just reading it or even thinking about it a little. The study encouraged me to find other references of cornerstones and consider how they relate to Psalm 118.
- We (meaning all Christian ladies, or rather all Christians in general) need to be constantly looking at ourselves and analyzing our thoughts and feelings to be making sure that they honor Christ. You see, it's not just because we have a blog. It's because the attitudes and thoughts that we have are reflected in our interaction with others.
In other words, if we just try to say and do all the right things, but aren't asking God for helping and rooting out sin in our hearts, then we are going to mess up BIG TIME.
So, basically, it's time for some self-reflection. ;) But analyzing ourselves isn't enough. We need to act on what we discover about ourselves, meaning we praise God for the good stuff we find--because it's only because of Him that we have any good traits at all--and repent before Him for the bad stuff.
Repentance=NOT as Dictionary.com says "Regret for any past action"; it IS not only being sorry, but also conforming and reforming our actions to fit those feelings.
And one more thing: We should never excuse our sin on the plea that we were "only joking." Proverbs 26:18-19 states, "As a mad man who casteth firebrands, arrows, and death, So is the man that deceiveth his neighbour, and saith, Am not I in sport?" That means those people are dangerous! I know that I have been guilty many times of saying things that shouldn't have been said even in jest. Says James 3:5, "And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell."
I have heard that verse many times before, but I think I should ponder it some more. Check back for Part Two tomorrow.
~Molly :)
P.S. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten our Lessons from the Fire series, but I have to dig out my notes for that. ;)
