Thank you...

A blessed day to you! Our challenge hostess this week at Stampin' Sisters in Christ is my dear friend Patti J Gilliam. Patti and I have been blog friends for a long time and she is very dear to me. I was so happy when she agreed to join us at SSIC. She's part of the family now; it's as if she's always been there!

Patti picked as her inspiration scripture 1 Timothy 4:4 "For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving..." The challenge is to create a thank you card. Easy peasy!

My card features an adorable image that I've had for awhile but hadn't inked up... it's called Thinking of You by Penny Black. I removed the tulips from her pitcher and replaced them with a sunflower button I dug out of my stash, along with the sunflowers which I clipped off of an inexpensive bunch I picked up at Michael's ages ago. (*wink*) I followed the sketch from Challenge #4 at 7Kids College Fund. It's too late to enter the challenge, but I still love the sketch! The DP is from the Autumn Spice collection by Stampin' Up, and the greeting is by SRM.

In today's scripture, Paul is advising Timothy, who he had instructed to care for the church at Ephesus while he (Paul) went on to Macedonia. Paul wrote this letter to develop the charge he had given to his young assistant. A major problem in the Ephesian church was heresy that included false asceticism (self-denial and self-mortification for religious reasons). This was addressed in 1 Timothy 4:1-5. Paul is exhorting Timothy to remember that all things created by God are good and should not be rejected but received with thanksgiving, as opposed to strict denial by "hypocritical liars"; i.e., the false ascetics.

Our design team recently had a discussion about what Rebekka called "the fine lines" of religious belief... the do's and don'ts. There are many schools of thought and interpretation of what is okay and not okay to do as a Christian. And a fine line it is. Who's to say except God? And even His word is construed differently by various religious denominations. But it's the zealot that Paul is addressing in this verse... the ones whose intent is evil and not for the glory of God. We must always remember that all good things come from God, like the food we eat, and should not be rejected but received with thanksgiving.

So what was the consensus of our discussion? Generally, it was that we should not talk about the do's and don'ts when witnessing as Christians to others. That is very off-putting and often the reason cited by others as to why they don't go to church. They view Christians as hypocrites and religious belief as a huge guilt trip and denial of the fun in life. Little do they know that it is quite the opposite! But to reach them we must, as Rebekka said, love people right where they are at and let God take care of the rest.

Have a wonderful day my friends!