Dealing with Sin...

Since our church's Thirst conference there have been a few things that have been at the forefront of my thinking. One of the major things I've been focusing on is dealing with sin. I was convicted by the speaker's teaching about irrationaly or vainly dealing with our sin. I am definitely one of those people who takes the "vain" approach. I'm soft on myself, I make excuses and often blame others/circumstances for my shortcomings. I am usually justifying and other times ignoring my sins rather than confessing or repenting. I realized how dangerous this really is because, not only is God serious about sin, but it totally disregards the sacrifice that Christ made on the cross for me.

I have spent the past week and a half trying to focus more on this. I've quickly realized I have so much more sin in my life than I ever realized. Our speaker listed 78 sins...I circled close to 40 of them as things I've dealt with in the past couple of months! That's pretty sickening...even more sickening is that I can only recall confessing to the Lord about one of them! As I've made the decision to work on this, Satan has hit me in some areas of major weakness (jealousy, discontent, and second guessing some decisions that I believe God called Mark and me to make in the past).

I am choosing to live by I John 1:9 "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." So, if you don't hear much from me...I'm busy confessing...

On a lighter note
We had a conference with Ethan's Kindergarten teacher last night. It went well and I am encouraged that he will be a little more challenged when January rolls around. We struggled with the decision to send Ethan to kindergarten last year because he didn't turn 5 until after our district's cut-off date (we could have had him tested or sent him to MCS again), but decided it was best to hold off for social reasons, especially since we were told that Lexington's program was pretty challenging. Well, I'm not trying to brag, Ethan is not being really being challenged at all. The boy is reading chapter books and doing 4 digit addition problems for fun, so when they work on identifying numbers 1-10 and learning site words like "a" and "my", he comes home saying he's bored. The good thing is Ethan is a bright spot in his teacher's day. His class is a difficult one, but she can always count on him to be a good example and do what he's told.

Also, Karis brought home a certificate for a free meal at Burger King for her obedience in class. Her teacher says Karis is so obedient she does what she's told almost before the teacher asks :O).

I am so thankful that God has blessed us with four wonderful children!