I mentioned before that the women’s bible study I attend bi-monthly had been going through the book, “Stepping Heavenward“, with the Study Guide. I jumped in partway through and only ended up working on two sections while we were going through it. Then I gave up, hoping that maybe some day I’d do it on my own. Knowing it was….well…not likely. Then Cheryl mentioned that if we HADN’T “done it”, she recommended we still do and perhaps do it during our devotional time. oh! Man! I recently had the realization that one of my biggest weaknesses is efficiency. I’ve known it all along but could never quite put my finger on the problem. It’s efficiency. If there’s something I need or want to do, I always go about it all wrong and take the long or hard (or impossible) way first and it takes MUCH trial & error to find a good streamlined system. Even then, it’s inevitable that if it’s something visible, when Ryan sees it he shakes his head at me and asks why I don’t do it XYZ way. Arg. Because that, VERY OBVIOUS (and…arg…correct) way NEVER STINKIN’ OCCURRED TO ME!

All that babble to say: Right. Devotional time. Ever since I finished the Hebrews study (studying Hebrews w/some gals in VA via a forum Ryan set up for us…just us, the bible and any commentary resources we found)…which took a year and by the end I was REALLY ready for something else (& no, I am no where near an expert on Hebrews much to my dismay)….I’ve been floundering more or less playing bible roulette in the mornings. Why it never occurred to me to use this resource for my bible study (the study guide has you go through all kinds of bible, applying it to the book….and have i mentioned the book is GREAT. It’s fiction, so very entertaining, yet insightful). I don’t know what’s wrong with my brain, but I guess it’s good insofar as it keeps me reliant on the Church (capital C)…others to push and pull me in the right direction. I NEED community. Thanks Cheryl for being my “Captain Obvious” on this. I love Captain Obvious….I rarely get to BE her.

Right. so the other weakness (because there’s only 2) is that whole “rambling, i can’t be brief” thing. The purpose of this post was to type out this quote that I read this morning in the study guide. Some Good ‘ole Watchman Nee (A pastor in College used to quote him incessantly..in fact i vaguely remember this story from him):

I put in bold what I underlined in my notebook.

Fact, Faith, and Experience were walking along the top of a wall. Fact walked steadily on, turning neither to right nor left and never looking behind. Faith followed, and all went well so long as he kept his eyes focused upon Fact; but as soon as he became concerned about Experience and turned to see how HE was getting on, he lost his balance and tumbled off the wall, and poor old Experience fell down after him.

All temptation is primarily to look within; to take our eyes off the Lord and to take account of appearances. Faith is always meeting a mountain, a mountain of evidence that seems to contradict God’s Word, a mountain of apparent contradiction in the realm of tangible fact – of failures in deed, as well as in the realm of feeling and suggestion – and either faith or the mountain has to go. They cannot both stand. But the trouble is that many a time the mountain stays and faith goes. That must not be. If we resort to our senses to discover truth, we shall find Satan’s lies are often enough true to our experience; but if we refuse to accept as binding anything that contradicts God’s Word and maintain an attitude of faith in Him alone, we shall find instead that Satan’s lies begin to dissolve and that our experience is coming progressively to tally with that Word (59-60)