"I don't feel like it!"

Terri and I worked at the Soup Kitchen today. It was the biggest turnout since we started working there on Friday's. Today, I DID NOT want to go to the Soup Kitchen. Adam and his wife are here this weekend and we were up until 2 AM planning Element stuff. It was a blast. Consequently today I was draggin'. I set my alarm for 7 AM cause I knew I wouldn't want to get up this morning. Got up and did my morning routine. Downed about a gallon of coffee and had my quiet time with God. It was in my quiet time I came to the conclusion that if any day I shouldn't have to go to the soup kitchen it was today. And as that thought entered my mind God planted another one. The thought(s) He gave came from the book Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis which I'm reading. I went back to my book to find the underlined thought God was blasting me with. "Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor, act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him." WOW Just do what you are supposed to do REGARDLESS of whether you feel like it or not. "The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of." and "Ask yourself, 'If I were sure that I loved God, what would I do?' When you have found the answer, go and do it." MAN! I went. I didn't feel like it, but I went. And like always, I was glad I did. Sometimes we just have to do something because we are supposed to, not because we feel like it. When we do those things captures a strategic point from which, a few months later, you might go on to a victory you never thought possible. How can God give us victories in the "big" stuff, if we won't simply do what we are supposed to do even when we don't feel like it. My heart was stirred at the soup kitchen. Stirred to compassion, gratefulness (MY how much we have when we see it compared to other people). We only want to compare ourselves to those who have more. why? It gives us an excuse to want more. I prayed for those people as we handed them their tray. Prayed that they may know God even in the smallest of ways, because when we touch God, we are changed. What do you need to do, even though you don't feel like it?

Following Christ, (and being stretched)

Jeff