In an email to a friend today, who thoughtfully asked what was new, I shared the below. Pray it's encouraging to you too :)
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Life is good, keeping busy with CYT NYC, the day job, time with roomies, three Bible studies and half marathon training. So.. yeah. Busy.
The Bible study that helped me be encouraged is the one in 1 Peter 2:11 the text is "abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul" and when I looked up the Greek word I found the expanded definition of "abstain" to be really intriguing:
568 apéxō (from 575 /apó, "away from" and 2192 /éxō, "have") – properly, to have one thing by separating from (letting go of) another.
568 /apéxō ("to have by separating from") includes what is gained by discarding something else (cf. Phm15). In each case, 568 /apéxō ("relate from") retains its root-meaning, "to have something, because far away from something else" (J. Thayer).
The idea that I have separated from something in order to have something else is a really powerful one for me, somehow the idea that saying no to one thing makes it possible, or even is the cause for, saying yes to another more valuable thing.It's been very helpful in how I think about my time. Which isn't really "mine" at all.. but that's for another day :-)
