Day 9: NEW (+ The Power to Get or to Give?)

Day 9: NEW (+ The Power to Get or to Give?)

Each day during The PURSE-onality Challenge: "A Holiday-Ready Heart" in October, Untangling Christmas by Karen Ehman and LeAnn Rice, will be our give-away prize!  

Enter via the Rafflecopter at the end of the blog post or click here to enter!

How It Works (via Bullet Points & Videos!)

Day 1: LOVED (+ 2 Vital Questions to Ask NOW)

Day 2: CHOSEN - Making Right Holiday Choices

Day 3: COMPLETE (+ 5 Gift-Giving Questions)

Day 4: PURE (+ Goodbye, Ghosts of Christmas Past)

Day 5: RIGHTEOUS (+ Rituals vs. Relationships)

Day 6: FORGIVEN (+ The Story I Choose to Tell) 

Day 7: FREE (+ 14+ Ways to Enjoy "Free" Holy-Days!)
Day 8: VICTORIOUS (+ Heading Off Holiday Hurts)

If I were to write a memoir, I’d title it All That’s Left.

I’d write it in three parts.

All That’s Left: Part 1

Here, I’d tell the sad stories of all the people who have left me by 

• physically moving away to other parts of the state, the country. 

• breaking up with me. 

• deciding they hate me.

Poor abandoned, rejected, left behind me.

All That’s Left: Part 2

Here, I’d share my struggles of living with a scarcity mentality.  

• Convinced that I had so little while others had so much.

• My many “baditudes” holding me captive to conviction that I was missing out. 

• That God was holding out on me. 

He hadn’t given me the abundant life I’d expected on a silver platter. 

So I decided that for everything else, there’s my platinum MasterCard.

My garage still bears witness to how fully I bought into

All That’s Left: Part 3

Here, two key words are utterly re-defined.

All now means 

• abundance. 

• overflowing. 

• above-and-beyond. 

Left now means 

• remaining. 

• still here. 

• enduring.

This means that anyone who belongs to Christ

has become a new person. 

The old life is gone; a new life has begun! 

2 Corinthians 5:17 (NLT)

All That's Left: Parts 1 and 2 are the old life.

It's gone.

All That's Left: Part 3 is the new life. 

It's evidence that Jesus means exactly what He says when he offers:

And I will give you a new heart, 

and I will put a new spirit in you. 

I will take out your stony, stubborn heart 

and give you a tender, responsive heart.

Ezekiel 36:26 (NLT)

New Holiday Story

One of the issues we’ve struggled with the most is the commercialization of Christmas. 

We’ve felt 

• surrounded by it. 

• sucked in by it. 

• overwhelmed by it. 

We’ve even found ourselves buying in to “the power to get” without meaning to.

But God is the Author and finisher of our faith.

If He can give us new life…

If He can give us new hearts…

...then He can certainly re-new a right holiday spirit within us this year!

A spirit that exalts the power to give far above the power to get.

I suspect this will look different for each of us.

Our family is going to try spending-free, shopping-free Christmas gift-giving. 

But this is how the Holy Spirit is moving us, in this particular season of our empty-nester kids-in-college lives. 

The point isn’t the exact details of what we do.

The point is that He is recreating us anew!

Your Turn!

• How have you bought into “the power to get” in past holidays?

• In what ways has the “for everything else there’s MasterCard” mentality been master of your life?

• What is something you sense God doing new in your life?

• Anything else on your heart!

http://purseonalitychallenge.blogspot.com/2012/10/day-9-new-power-to-get-or-to-give.html