The Spirit Gives... self discipline??

I have been struggling with my diet and exercise plan.  It is simple enough to follow, I just lack self discipline.

Today I logged into YouVersion to read Colossians (I'm reading Colossians every day this month) and this was the verse of the day:

2 Timothy 1:7 NIV
For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.

I don't know how many times I have read the book of Timothy, but it is safe to assume I have read this verse more than 5 times.  At least.

So how did I miss it?  The Spirit God gave me gives me self dicipline.

So I must have self discipline.

Leaving the question, why do I not see self discipline in my life?  Why am I not using what God has given me?  How can I better tap into this resource in my life? 

I suspect the answer is that I will need to practice it. The more I use it, the easier it will become, and the better I will get with it.

A greek cheeseburger

From the Main Street Grill in Muncy. These are sooooo good!

Homiletics Worksheet

One of my favorite seminars at BSF was on Homiletics.  I love the process of studying the bible through Homiletics.  Recently my friend Natalie taught our Sunday School class how to do homiletics, and again I found I really enjoyed the process, and I decided I wanted to use it more frequently.

There is a great "Crash Course In Homiletics" here - http://www.christinakline.com/homiletics-crash-course/

Earlier this summer our Pastors wife suggested, in our Womens Sunday School Class, that we choose one epistle and read it every day, for a month.  I love this bible reading plan.  I have used many plans over the years, and have read the bible cover to cover a few times now, so the idea of really learning one epistle at a time felt like a good next step for me.

For the month of August, I am reading Colossians every day.  It is only 4 chapters, a quick, easy read every morning.  I decided the 4 chapters made it perfect to use homiletics for my weekly study, doing one chapter each week of August, as well.  

All of that lead to the creation of this worksheet.  I am very digitally minded - I like to be paperless as much as possible.  I do keep a notebook by my bed for some studies, but often I am not in the same place each day, and carrying one more thing around just does not work for me.  The more I can do on my phone, the better.  This worksheet, created in Google Drive, I can type right into from wherever I am - in bed, on the front porch, on the recliner in my living room..  in the parking lot of the school waiting to pick up children from sports.  It's always with me.  Some day I will most likely have a serene, set schedule where I can do my bible study in the same spot, at the same time, every day..  but that will most likely be in my empty nest years, not in my "4 teenagers with insane schedules" stage.  Then again, with the farm, I probably shouldn't count on my empty nest years being completely serene either.

To see the worksheet, go here: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dpTshGapqBdePUL4WJt3Qawl4nig7mtH2PLG_xohRPk/edit?usp=sharing

When I am using this worksheet, I choose file/make a copy and then I rename the copy.  I do not always work from this digital copy - sometimes i use this just as my outline to follow, and I write in my notebook - it truly depends on the week.  I prefer to use a notebook, it's just not always convenient to do so, I do not always have one with me.  Sometimes I work on scrap paper, then add the scrap paper to my notebook..  it all depends.  The worksheet just gives me the format - how I use it varies.

One of the things Natalie taught me was that this does not have to be done all at once!  There are 5 steps, and 5 week days.  Breaking it down to one step a day really works for me.

When I finish up Colossians Chapter One I will post my work here, so you can see an example.  There is no right or wrong - I could do homiletics on the same chapter 5 times in one year, and end up with 5 different aims, learning something different each time!

Watching Aryiana (Goat) give birth

I took these photos this spring when the babies were born - they have been sitting on my camera waiting to be uploaded.  The twins have done great, and are big now!

We knew Aryiana was in labor by the way she was acting..  she was pawing the ground, and kept going into the shelter and trying to get comfortable.  Right before the babies were born she cried a bit, we could hear her, and by the time I got around the fence and into the shelter the first baby was already here.

Here's To Not Catching Our Hair On Fire

From the title (I have caught my hair on fire! And I've been distracted by a chicken too!) I thought this would be a fun read.

It was not. I'm really not sure why I finished it. I would not spend that much time listening to a person in real life who could not go 6 sentences without a string of swear words. It's even less endearing in a book. Her stories of abuse, being drugged, drinking too much, flitting from job to job, and drug use were just not funny. Her life wasn't funny. Her book isn't funny. The author thinks her life is a riot.

This book is like sitting down with a person you vaguely know, only to get their entire torrid life story, all with the attitude that none of what happens to them is in their control. Life just happens, and all the scatterbrained inability to keep a job is from a medical diagnosis, NOT from the weed they smoke. Or all the times they get drunk. Getting arrested is great fun, an adventure! (Yes, she really says this - in great detail. She also thought getting drugged was a laugh fest too, since nothing bad happened while she was drugged.)

Her inability to make a list is just how her brain works, nothing can be done about it.. and yet the same person can write an entire book.

There were parts of this book I could honestly relate to. Many of the symptoms of her ADHD, or "how her brain works", were achingly familiar to me. But those tidbits were hidden in so much junk and disaster (not funny disaster - more like "grow up already" disaster) that I found myself trying to distance myself even from the parts I could relate to. It's her life, her story, and she has a right to tell it.. I just really wish I had not wasted my time reading it.

The Dirty Life

"In my experience, tranquil and simple are two things farming is not.  Nor is it lucrative, stable, safe, or easy. Sometimes the work is enough to make you weep.  But most days I wake up grateful that I found it - tripped over it, really - and that I'm married to someone who feels the same way."

This book had been on my to read list for awhile, but when Walden Effect chose it as the book club selection, I finally bought it and read it.

There is a lot about this book that makes me nuts.  The decision to put 18,000  (their entire savings) into a farm they didn't even own, nor have any guarantee they would be able to use beyond the first year, baffled me.   The constant surge of people giving them things, loaning them things, and in general helping them was so unreal, I couldn't imagine it.  We've always known our local farmers to be generous, but the amount of help they received was just mind boggling.  I was puzzled by all the friends that came to visit - where did they stay, in a house with no furniture?  I was also inspired by that too - we have so much drop in company around here, I should put them to work when they drop in... 

Then there were parts of the book that I just related to so much.  A few of my favorite quotes:

"A farm is a manipulative creature.  There is no such thing as finished.  Work comes in a stream and has no end.  There are only the things that must be done now and the things that can be done later.  The threat the farm has got on you, the one that keeps you running from can until can't is this: do it now, or some living thing will wilt or suffer or die.  It's blackmail really."


"Farmers toil.  Nature laughs.  Farmers weep. there's your history of agriculture in a nutshell."


"It's never the way you think it will be, Mark used to tell me.  Not as perfect as you hope or as scary as you fear."



"A man we know bought up a big piece of good land nearby, a second home, and once, at dinner, I heard him say, 'In my retirement I want to be a simple farmer.  I want..  tranquility.'  What you really want is a garden, I thought to myself.  A very, very small one."


It's a great book.  Parts of it drove me nuts, it was just so irrational!  (and yet they made it work!)  Parts of it made me cry, having experienced dead calves, and the death of my horse, too.  Parts of it made me laugh.  All of it made me feel lazy, I do not work anywhere near that hard on our farm, and I have to wonder what I could do if I worked just 1/4 as hard around here.


I was disappointed to see that I cannot loan this book out through Amazon.  :-(  I don't like paying full price for ebooks and then not being able to share them when I am done.

Hawk w/ his dinner

As I drove into our lane last week, we startled this hawk, who was carrying off his dinner: