The F of Faith

My mind has been overflowing with ideas on what to write about, but because of that, it has delayed my writing.  I am so overwhelmed with what I could write that I am not actually writing anything.  {Slap on the hand} "Bad blogger!".  Who wants to read a "dead blog" that never has any new posts?  I don't!  To help me get a jump start, I Googled "Blogging 101" last night and I came across this piece of advice that hit the spot "...the best advice anyone can give a writer is to just write.  Do it often and do it a lot.  The more you write, the more you'll establish your own voice." [Thanks for the advice Irvin].  So here we go...

My F's are in their order for a reason.  Faith-Family-Food-Football.  Faith comes first.  It hasn't always but it does now.  Actually it started to become first about a year into my husband and I's marriage (it'll be 5 years in July!).  We were going through some trials as individuals, but as anyone knows who is married, a trial can never really be kept individual for too long.  They were affecting our relationship and we knew it.  When we got married, our officiate (my husband's uncle), gave us the advice to pattern our relationship like a triangle.  My husband and I in the bottom corners of the triangle, and God on top at the highest point and between us.  For those of you who are visual people (like me), I've put a basic image below to show you what I mean.

Although we took his advice, we didn't put it into practice until that point.  We didn't know what to do exactly but we started with dedicating one night a week to reading the Bible together and praying together.  It wasn't much but as it says in Matthew 7:7, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you."  That's exactly what God did - He opened the door and we found Him in our marriage.  It's the best thing we could have done.  He immediately made all of those trials seem trivial and allowed us to see life through His perspective.

Our time as a couple with God has looked different over the years.  Some months we're better at dedicating that one night a week to Him.  Other times of the year (ex: football season), it's harder for us to find that time.  Right now we're in our first Bible study together at church with other couples.  As long as we are giving it our best effort to keep God at the top of that triangle and in the middle of our relationship then that's what counts.  Our motto is QUALITY time over QUANTITY.  If we're not spending quality time with God together, we feel it and we know we need to make a change.

As I mentioned in the first post, I have a goal to read through the entire Bible.  I'll dedicate a whole post as to why I want to and when I started, but in the meantime I am going to use you as my accountability partner. I plan to be done with the Old Testament by Lent season (Wednesday, March 5).  After today's reading, I am on Isaiah 7 which is page 603 in my Bible.   The Old Testament ends on page 843 so that means I need to read 240 pages (843-603=240) in 33 days.  That equates to 7.27 pages a day (240/33=7.27), but lets just call it 8 to be safe.  Did I mention that math is my favorite subject? :)  I promise I won't throw too many equations at you.