Tuesday, September 20, 2011

There's a Snake in my Coop!

There’s a Snake in my Coop!

We started raising hens this past Spring and they recently started laying eggs. One day, we went to gather eggs and saw a huge 5 foot black snake. Now, I know that there are some snake loving people out there, and had this snake been somewhere else other than my coop, we would have let him be. But he simply did not belong in my coop and he was not invited to have a dinner of fresh eggs! So, he had to go! Chris grabbed a rake, and persuaded the snake to leave.

There are many things in life that are good and can even serve a good purpose. The snake, in other parts of the shop, kills rodents that kills rodents that destroys stuff. Drinking wine is a good example. A small amount has been proven to have medical benefits. Too much wine, however, begins to hurt the body. 1 Corinthians 6:12 says All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything.

Like the snake in my coop eating my eggs, there are many things in our lives that just aren’t profitable, and they are mastering us. It may not be a specific sin, but you know it isn’t good for you...maybe it’s that show you watch, book you read, or music you listen to. Maybe you drink just a little too much. Maybe you ‘need’ a relationship that isn’t healthy. Whatever it is, God wants to help you not be mastered by anything. He wants you to have freedom and power to remember that while it might be lawful it just isn’t profitable. Is there a snake in your coop?

New Beginnings

Chris has accepted a position with Hartsell Psychological Services based in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. He will work with their school-age therapy programs as well as general counseling. This job will work right along side what we do with FreshWater, supplementing each other. Through Hartsell, Chris works as an independent contractor. He currently works with 30-40
students each week. Because of the school setting he works in, the availability of his clients are dictated by the school schedule. With FreshWater,Chris has been seeing clients 2-3 nights a week. Neither position could stand on it’s own. Both together provide powerful opportunities to shape many lives. We appreciate our FreshWater supporters and the vision they have to see people who need help and provide assistance for the fees they can’t fully pay. Thank you!

Updates, Thank You’s and Prayer needs
FaceTime
Have you heard of it? Through the iPhone 4, you can have face to face conversation using a wireless internet connection. We’ve been able to utilize this technology to provide counseling to someone across the nation from us!

Prayer Needs
Pre-marital counseling sessions are one our favorite types of sessions. Recently, 2 of ‘our’ grooms were deployed. Please pray for their safety, and their wives and families. Also, one of those young men became a Dad for the first time, while deployed.







Thank You’s

I want to thank Prairie Grove Christian Church for hosting the Men’s Encounter weekend that encouraged several men including me. FREEDOM! We also want to thank them for their support of FreshWater.

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What is Spiritual Direction?


We define Christian spiritual direction as help given by one Christian to another which enables that person to pay attention to God’s personal communication to him or her, to respond to this personally communicating God, to grow in intimacy with this God, and to live out the consequences of the relationship. (William A. Barry, SJ and William J. Connolly, SJ, Center for Religious Development, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA)

Is it the same as counseling?
Although very similar, spiritual direction provides a place to deal with issues that remain hidden and dark within a person’s soul, many times issues that have been suppressed for so long that the person doesn’t fully realize how much it is affecting them. Counseling’s primary focus is on a plan of action to deal with the effects of woundedness within a person’s life. We will sometimes refer to a counselor when a more clinical, psychological approach would be more beneficial. Spiritual direction’s primary focus is to teach people how to let God accompany them through all of their life, including their past pain. By companioning people in their pain, they will gain confidence from His presence and power.