March 23rd, 2009 by Kristi Stephens

Our ABF has been joking a lot the last few weeks about how we’re getting old – we heard through the grapevine that a newly married couple had peeked in at our “young couples” group and didn’t come in because they thought we were too old! This has given us quite a few funny discussions but also serious talks – personally, it disturbs me that we all tend to be very segregated within our age groups and feel odd deviating from those generational lines in the slightest way! How can the older teach the younger when we are afraid to interact with anyone with an age difference of more than 5 or 10 years from our own? But, that’s not really what I’m writing about today… that was a freebie! ;)

This has been one of those times when it seems like God is trying to tell me something – ever have a day when the same topic keeps popping up in your head, in conversation, on the radio, in your Bible?

This morning I was grocery shopping and running errands before NP left for work. On my way to Aldi I was listning to Nancy Leigh Demoss speaking about “passing the baton” to the next generation. She was challenging the younger generation to step up and realize that God is calling them to act in our day, while reminding the older generation that they need to be training and teaching the future leaders in order to pass the baton off to an equipped Church.

Then on my way home, I had flipped to our local pop station and “100 Years” by Five for Fighting came on. I love the sound of this song, but I also find the lyrics to be so haunting – how quickly our lives fly by! I was thinking about a brief conversation I had a couple of Sundays ago with a very wise older woman and one of the pastors of our church about the urgency of discipleship, teaching the Truth, and reaching the lost – we only have so much time in our lives and it’s passing quickly!

Then this afternoon as I opened my Bible to study, what did I come across but Psalm 39:4-7 -
Show me, O LORD, my life’s end
and the number of my days;
let me know how fleeting is my life.
You have made my days a mere handbreadth;
the span of my years is as nothing before you.
Each man’s life is but a breath.
Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro:
He bustles about, but only in vain;
he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it.
But now, Lord, what do I look for?
My hope is in you.

This also brought to mind for me James 4:14 – Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

I will turn 29 this year; I am hardly “old,” and yet I also know that 1/3 of my life has already passed me by. I am not writing this to depress you or tell you that you’re old! However, I am feeling compelled to make my days count.

In this stage of life, so full of diapers and snot and reading picture books, it seems easy to somehow disconnect from the urgency of our mission. My children are young and I am still barely getting started with the job of training and teaching them. And yet, I know that in what will feel like the blink of an eye, they will be grown and on their own. Will I have taught them well? Will I have redeemed the time I had with them every single day to impress the Truth upon their hearts and teach them about our amazing Creator and Lord? While I know that ultimately only God can redeem their hearts and cause them to fear Him, the Bible makes clear the weighty responsibility of godly parenting.

What about outside my home? People cross my path each and every day who do not know my Savior. How much time do they have left? Add to that the growing urgency of seeing the “signs of the times” indicating that we don’t have much time left before His return, and this becomes a grave thought indeed.

It is so easy to waste minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, even years without doing anything with eternal significance. My day-to-day life does not seem that impressive, as I discussed in my post on Full-time Motherhood; and yet, this is a day I will never get back. Am I keeping that fully in my mind, or am I getting distracted by a bunch of vain nothings that will waste these precious years God has entrusted to me?

Paslm 90:12 says, Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. I want to encourage my fellow young mothers to number your days! Keeping the facts that our lives are fleeting, our time with our children is limited, and our mission is weighty with eternal significance will change our perspective on these days. To you women who are farther down the road of this journey, number your days! You have wisdom and Truth to share with those of us coming behind you, and we need you to do it! Please do not sit back and assume that you have been there, done that, and now you can take a step back. If anything, we need you to step up!

This reminds me of the parable of the talents. We have been entrusted with a certain number of gifts, talents, and relationships; we have an unknown number of years consisting of 365 24-hour days. When will our Master return? What will we have to give back to Him? What will He say to us?

Today is a new day of a new week. What will you do to redeem the time?

His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
Matthew 25:23

March 20th, 2009 by Kristi Stephens

Today begins the “ultimate blog party” over at www.5minutesformom.com. It’s a chance for bloggers to connect and interact, and a chance to find other blogs you might enjoy reading!

Welcome to those stopping by to check out Run the Earth, Watch the Sky! I am relatively new to the blogging scene, just having started in July 2008. This blog is an eclectic collection of things I am passionate about. My first and foremost passion in life is my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Much of the content on my blog is based on several Old Testament studies I teach, and my day-to-day reflections on the Christian faith lived out. Currently I have studies from Genesis through the Psalms posted – feel free to read from the beginning (Genesis) or jump in where we’re at!

I’m blessed to be the wife of a fantastic man and mommy of two precious little ones, and I am very passionate about Biblical womanhood and motherhood. So, I like to pass on some of my favorite recipes, homekeeping tips, and our latest adventures in homeschool preschool. I never invisioned myself being a stay-at-home mom, let alone a homeschooling mom, so what I share here is definitely a work of God’s grace in my life!

I love to find new creative and easy things to do with my kids, and I wanted to pool the creative juices of some of you gifted ladies out in the blogosphere! So, one of my new blog ventures is “Free Fun Fridays,” a new blog carnival to allow people to share their favorite kid activities and crafts together. I am excited to gather some ideas of things to do with my own kids and share ideas with other people, too!

By the way, “Run the Earth, Watch the Sky, Playing hard and waiting for the Day” comes from a song by Christian artist Chris Rice. I love this phrase and think it suits my life and my blog well – I’m playing hard and enjoying this wonderful life God has given me, and at the same time I’m watching the sky! I can’t wait to see our beloved Jesus come back for us!

If you’re so inclined I would love to have you become a follower of Run the Earth, Watch the Sky, subscribe to my RSS feed, or follow me on Twitter! Thanks for stopping by! I hope we can get to know one another better!
-Kristi

March 19th, 2009 by Kristi Stephens

In “Firmly planted, fruitful, and flourishing” we looked at the righteous man who is blessed; he does not embrace his sin or those who do so, rather he delights in God and His Word. The result? He is like a tree firmly planting, yielding fruit, and flourishing as He abides in Christ.

Today we’re looking at the other side of the coin.

Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. Psalm 1:4-5

I love this contrasting picture: the thriving tree rooted firmly on the bank of the stream versus dry chaff being blown in the wind. The idea of the wicked being blown away like chaff is seen in many places in the Old Testament. Notice Isaiah 40:23-24 -

He brings princes to naught
and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing.
No sooner are they planted,
no sooner are they sown,
no sooner do they take root in the ground,
than he blows on them and they wither,
and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff.

One theme that occurs in the Psalms is that though the wicked appear to be prospering for a time, their end is clear – they are like chaff before the Lord, and they will not stand in the end.

Verse 6 of Psalm 1 says,

“For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.”

The Hebrew word for “perish” carries the idea of a fading away of strength, hope, wisdom, knowledge, and wealth. It also can imply aimless wandering without orientation, or being lost either literally or morally.

In a world where right is seen as wrong and wrong as right, isn’t it comforting to know that our God has never lost control? I’m sure that we have all personally interacted with wicked people who appear to be flourishing in contrast with our own lives; add in what we see on the news and from a distance in our culture, and it can be downright discouraging! Our God is just, and one day everything will be set right.

The real treasure is not temporal “success” or comfort – the real treasure is knowing the God of the universe, the Savior of our souls! We will look at this treasure of knowing God more in the next post on the Psalms. However, before we move on I want to come back to the idea of the definition of the “wicked” and the “sinners” one more time. Quoting from the last post:

The “wicked” are people who are described throughout the Bible as those who oppress, exploit, and murder others. The wicked are dishonest, violent, pervert justice, and hate the Lord and His people; they have done wrong, are still living in their sin, and intend to continue in it. The word for “sinners” carries the idea of one who sins habitually.

The Bible is clear that we are either wicked or redeemed! All of us are sinners (Romans 3:23), and because of that, what each and every one of us has earned on our own is death and eternal separation from God. (Romans 6:23) No matter how good you may think you are, in comparison with God’s holiness, our best attempts just don’t cut it! (Isaiah 64:6)

Our sin broke our relationship with God – we could not work our way back to Him; He is holy, and the smallest speck of sin in our lives bars us from His presence. The solution to that problem was Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, taking the punishment for our sin upon Himself and dying in our place upon the cross. He was the only perfect sacrifice that could pay our penalty in full. When we place our trust in Him as our only hope of salvation (John 3:16-18), we are saved from our sin and justified – God looks at me “just as if I’d” never sinned!

1 Corinthians 6:9-11 says:

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

On our own, we are all wicked. We are lost in our sin and deserve only death and hell and punishment. But through Jesus Christ, we can be washed free of our sin, sanctified and set apart for God, and considered holy through the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf! And as we studied in the last Psalms post, people who truly know Jesus Christ and are being sanctified will bear fruit.

So, where are you today? Are you trying to be good on your own, or have you trusted in Jesus Christ as the only way to be declared righteous in God’s sight? It is my prayer that God would use His Word to reveal to you the condition of your heart; may you be firmly planted in Him, and not blown like chaff! And for those of you who know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, I end with the words of Paul-

So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
Colossians 2:6-7

*Image from wikipedia.org

March 19th, 2009 by Kristi Stephens

Check out this very interesting post from Joel Rosenberg about talk of moving to a single world currency…

Here are other articles about this topic:
Reuters – “U.N. Panel Says World Should Ditch Dollar“
www.behindbluelines.com – “The UN Currency” and “The UN Currency II“
WorldNetDaily – “One-world currency emerges … again“

Stuff like this is almost hard to believe! I’ve heard students of prophecy discuss a future move like this my whole life, but it seemed far-off. Come quickly, Lord Jesus!