Father’s Day Fun

Happy Father’s Day!

Since it was father’s day and we were heading to my grandmother’s for lunch, we skipped our Sunday morning long run and caught an earlier than usual church service. This week was the third week of our study on Ephesians. We looked at the second half of chapter 2 today. Here are a few of my takeaways from the sermon:

• Finding our identity in Christ is crucial. If not, we will elevate distinguishing characteristics about ourselves to the state of an identity. I don’t know about y’all, but this one hit home for me. It is so easy to think of our identities in worldly terms, “I am a wife, a runner, an accountant, etc.” and forget that our true identity is found only in Jesus.
• Ephesians 2:13 says “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” In the Old Testament, the act of making sacrifices brought you nearer to God, but in the New Testament, one sacrifice brings you completely to God.
• When Jesus died on the cross for us, the ultimate sacrifice was made, our debts were paid and our atonement was sealed, forever signifying that there was no more division between God and man. Not only was there no more division between God and man, but not longer any division among men. This is the unity of the body of Christ. When you are in Christ, you are not separated from other men by “distinguishing characteristics,” not by social status, culture, skin color, etc., but rather the color of red, signifying the blood of Christ, is what binds us all together.
• Jesus is our access to the Father. An access is the position of someone who brings something to someone else, similar to a representative. John 14:6 says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” We have total access to the Father in Christ. Total access. Complete, not partial. Forever, not temporary.
• 2 Corinthians 5:18 says, “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.” We are called to be Jesus to those who don’t know Him.

We all have scars, wounds and brokenness that we need God to heal. Once we are healed, we use our story to bring others to Christ. We should embrace our brokenness and go find others that are broken. Let your story be a story of reconciliation, redemption, hope, love and grace.

After church, we headed down to my grandmother’s for lunch. Family selfie headed to lunch 🙂

It was really nice to hang out with the family for a few hours. After lunch, we hit the water again. First up on the agenda was a little father’s day project I had been scheming in my ‘lil brain for a while. I always love seeing those then and now pictures that are retaken years later. For some reason they all crack. me. up.

I had the perfect picture in mind for me and my dad. I love how it turned out! The top picture was taken in 1987 and the bottom picture was today. And yes, I have on swimmies and yes, I did a major belly buster.

After that we loaded up the dog and the paddleboards and headed up Fly Creek. The creek was beautiful today.

I am so thankful that I was able to spend the day with my dad. He is an amazing dad and I am very blessed to be his daughter. He truly lives His life like Jesus and is a wonderful witness to everyone that he meets. He is selfless and fun-loving. We have had a lot of fun over the years. He taught me to do so many things and taught me to never be scared to try anything. That is such an important life lesson to learn and truly put into practice.

Our own experiences can lead us to believe that the world is somewhat of a danger zone and that it would be best to just live a simple, safe, “protected” life. Our instincts tell us that there is safety in a life that is lived without taking chances or stepping outside of our comfort zone. That message, reinforced through experiences, can trigger changes to our anatomy and brain chemistry that is called encoded memory. This coding, can raise our baseline sensitivity so that it takes progressively less and less stress to trigger feelings of anxiety. Eventually you are in a constant state of high alert. I can tell you first-hand that this is a miserable place to live. I have really been thinking about this a lot lately and I am doing my best to live life to the fullest, knowing who I am and whose I am.

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! See ya later 🙂