Me: I see you are getting ready for Christmas!

Prodigal: Yes, the decorations have come out.

Me: May this help you along your way.

Lord of reality

make me real

not plastic

synthetic

pretend phony

an actor playing out his part

hypocrite.

I don’t want

to keep a prayer list

but to pray

nor agonize to find Your will

but to obey

what I already know

to argue

theories of inspiration

but submit to Your Word.

I don’t want

to explain the difference

between eros and philos

and agape

but to love.

I don’t want

to sing as if I mean it

I want to mean it.

I don’t want

to tell it like it is

but to be it

like you want it.

I don’t want to think another needs me

but I need him

else I’m not complete.

I don’t want

to tell others how to do it

but to do it

to have to be always right

but to admit it when I’m wrong.

I don’t want to be a census taker

but an obstetrician

nor an involved person, a professional

but a friend

I don’t want to be insensitive

but to hurt where other people hurt

nor to say I know how you feel

but to say God knows

and I’ll try

if you’ll be patient with me

and meanwhile I’ll be quiet.

I don’t want to scorn the cliches of others

but to mean everything I say

including this.

by Joe Bayly

Deuteronomy 8:17-18

Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth. You shall remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day.

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org

Prodigal: I wonder if that taffy is any good.

Me: It looks fresh.

Prodigal: Maybe I will get some while you share.

This is from Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I can go and sin as much as I like, and rely on this grace to forgive me, for after all the world is justified in principle by grace. I can therefore cling to my bourgeois secular existence, and remain as I was before, but with the added assurance that the grace of God will cover me….The upshot of it all is that my only duty as a Christian is to escape from the world for an hour or so on a Sunday morning and go to Church to be assured that my sins are all forgiven. I need no longer try to follow Christ, for cheap grace, the bitterest foe of all true discipleship, had freed me from that.

God as slowly been convicting me. This is a personal conviction. To keep things simple. We can over complicate our lives and focus to much on the things that do not matter. We focus on what others think or items we can own. I have to keep it more simple. I try to fill the seconds with technology when I need to fill those seconds with praising God and remember this day the Lord has given me. I need to work at keeping my life simple. Too many things will distract me. Lord thank you for the conviction, and help me to stay simple and not complicate matters.

Psalms 100:4-5

Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name! For the LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org

Me: Doesn’t look like he is too happy!

Prodigal: No, but my joy has not been stopped.

This is a quick video on proverbs

click here to watch the video

Proverbs 5:20

Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org

Me: Sometimes life throws us a curve ball.

Prodigal: Yes, and we have to struggle to catch up with it.

Me: Maybe this can help.

This is Orville Kelly’s Ten Suggestions to Help Live With a Terminal Illness

1. Talk about the illness. If it is cancer, call it cancer. You can’t make life normal again by trying to hide what is wrong.
2. Accept death as a part of life. It is.
3. Consider each day as another day of life, a gift from God to be enjoyed as fully as possible.
4. Realize that life is never going to be perfect. It wasn’t before and it won’t be now.
5. Pray. It isn’t a sign of weakness; it is your strength.
6. Learn to live with your illness instead of considering yourself dying from it. We are all dying in some manner.
7. Put your friends and relatives at ease yourself. If you don’t want pity, don’t ask for it.
8. Make all practical arrangements for funerals, wills, etc. and make certain your family understands them.
9. Set new goals; realize your limitations. Sometimes the simple things of life become the most enjoyable.
10. Discuss your problems with your family as they occur, Include the children if possible. After all, your problem is not an individual one.

James 5:13-14

Go to now, ye that say, Today or to-morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org

Prodigal: I don’t know, today I feel I need a little encouragement.

Me: Yes, sometimes we start the day and we don’t know why we are not as motivated.

Prodigal: That is exactly how I feel.

Me: I hope this will help then.

This is from the book Growing Deep in the Christian Life by Charles Swindoll

Again and again we find that Parakalein is the word of the rallying call; it is the word used of the speeches of leaders and of soldiers who urge each other on. It is the world used of words which send fearful and timorous and hesitant soldiers and sailors courageously into battle. A Parakletos is therefore an Encourager, one who puts courage into the faint-hearted, one who nerves the feeble arm for fight, one who makes a very ordinary man cope gallantly with a perilous and a dangerous situation…..

…The word Parakalein is the word for exhorting others to noble deeds and high thoughts; it is especially the word of courage before battle. Life is always calling us into battle and the one who makes us able to stand up to the opposing forces, to cope with life and to conquer life is the Parakletos, the Holy Spirit, who is none other than the presence and power of the risen Christ.

We are so easily distracted with feelings. We wake up. We notice our mood is off and we forget the promises of God. We have the truth in our spirit and yet, we want to trust in our feelings. Lord you who is always patient with us, we praise you! We always need you and your example of love.

James 5:12

There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy: who art thou that judgest another?

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org