1 John 2:17

I love to read and learn from what I am reading. Many times, I find myself reading multiple books and trying to retain countless new information, only to forget about all the lovely things I learned weeks later. I take notes, I read books again, and I journal, but still I always forget something that I wanted to remember. I am especially terrible at this when the books are divided up into selections of reading for each day. The current book I am reading is such a book. I've taken notes, I've read parts again, and I've journaled, but I am only on day 4 and have forgotten days 1 through 3 already. I want to change that. I don't want to read a book, love what it says and then forget about it. I want to let it influence my life.

The chapter I read about today was centered around this verse: "This world is fading away, along with everything it craves. But if you do the will of God, you will live forever"- 1 John 2:17. It talked about how when you live with eternity in mind, values are changed because you realize that materialistic things don't matter as much anymore. I'd like to think that materialistic things don't matter much to me, but more often than not, they do. I loose sight of the fact that the things I crave are only worldly things and will fade away. It's a realization that I am probably going to have to keep coming back to. I don't think owning or having materialistic things is wrong. In fact, in some situations, I find it necessary. It is a problem though when our possessions are where we find our worth and when what we have gets in the way of God's will.

I think that I will be learning this for the rest of my life, especially because we live in a materialistic world, but I'm happy to have thought about it today. As I mentioned earlier, even though, I underline, journal, and reread, I forget the things that I have read. I think I learn best by doing so today I logged onto http://www.worldvision.org/, looked through their gift catalog, and donated to a child's education. I don't have much to give, but the money I did probably would have been spent on something that I didn't really need without a second thought. I could have bought a new pair of jeans or a DVD with that money, but those things wear out and fade away. There will probably be many times in my life, where I do choose the materialistic thing even though I don't really need it at the time, but today, this is my choice and I have to say knowing somewhere that a little kid is now getting to go to school completely trumps watching a DVD a couple times.


week 6: House church members risk arrest and imprisionment by Chinese officials every time they meet. Pray for God's protections