Brokenness Aside

"I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind: I am like a broken vessel" (Psalm 31:12).

I guess I don't understand how Your grace never runs out when all I do is make mistakes. You teach me how to face each new day when all I've ever really known is how to run away. Will You still call me child when I stumble? Will you still call me friend when I fall? I am a sinner, nothing more, nothing less, yet through all the lies I've created, through the brokenness of my life, You continue to shine. You make the worst in me beautiful. You put my brokenness aside.

This Morning as I was studying I looked at David. He was perhaps the most broken man in the bible.  

Men who refuse to be broken become nothing but miserable shipwrecks.  The more broken we are, the more God can do with us.  God's ways with us and through us have little or nothing to do with our education, our finances, our institutions, and our blood-lines.  It is all a matter of brokenness. To lay aside our pride and humble ourselves before God and allow God to use our broken vessel and poured out wine to become something great. What is brokenness?  The Hebrew word of Psalm 31:12 is abad: "to lose oneself, by implication to perish!"  Jesus said, "…whosoever will lose his life…, the same shall save it" (Lu. 9:24).  Almost every person tries to save himself.  Jesus says: It must all be surrendered. God let me always be Broken before you.

30 Day Challenge

Tonight we challenged our students to carry their Bibles everywhere they go for the next 30 days. Not a smart phone bible or an electronic Bible but a real Bible with pages and words and such. Not carrying it in their backpacks but in their hand. Several students accepted the challenge and I am excited to see what is going to happen in the lives of our students as they carry their Bibles and read them. 

Wow, What a busy day.

This morning I had to get tires on Rachel's car. $600 and an hour later I was on my way to work. Tomorrow night is Wednesday so today was spent prepping for the service. At 5:00 I needed to be at Owl Stadium in Joshua for the Loflin Middle School Game then I needed to be in Corsicana for Michaels game at 7:00. I stayed until half way through the third quarter then drove to Corsicana High School. I made it 1 minute before Michael's game started. Got home time to study because I have an exam in the morning. Rangers are playing baseball on my wall and I am studying for this exam. 

Moved blog and lost everything

As you can probably tell, I have moved my blog to Blogger from serendipity. The reason for this is simply cohesion. All of my calendars, notes, well everything I do is managed from my gmail account, johnstout@acousticallyspeaking.net. I thought it would be better for me if everything were managed from that same google account. In the move I lost all of my previous posts. I am not sure why that happened. I was very careful to try to move everything just so but in the process the formatting between the two blog sites are not compatible and I lost previous posts. There was some good stuff in there too. I am going to spend a few hours this afternoon trying to locate and convert those files. wish me luck