His Light in the Darkness

Seasonal teaching
Dec 302010

Greetings from the Alaska Region,

Tomorrow marks four years that my family and I have lived in Alaska and we all are really enjoying our time here.  One of the things I find absolutely amazing here is the dramatic difference between summer and winter.  This time of year is the darkest – the least amount of daylight in the northern hemisphere, and here in the Anchorage area that equates to about four hours of daylight.   To some this actually causes a physical issue and I can see why.   When you can’t see where you are going it is hard to go anywhere, it is easy to focus on how dark it is.  The reverse side of this is we are actually gaining sunlight daily now, as much as 5-10 minutes a day.  Living in this environment has forced me to have a tangible meaning to what God being the Light of the world really looks like.  Psalm 119:105 states “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path (NIV).”

We just celebrated Advent; a time of Hope, Love, Joy and Peace.  A time of preparation for Christ.  We spend many hours getting ready for Christmas, telling the story to children, watching the plays, really immersing in what this time of year means, and then it is over.  The time after Christmas can be such a let down after the amazing build up it is.  The tree is still up and the smells are still in the air but the day has come and gone.  Is this actually a dark time for you?

God’s word is the light and the more time we spend in it the more Light we have in our lives.  If I turn towards the Son I will not look so much at the darkness.  As this season draws to a close we can continue to be immersed in His Light if we choose to be and let the true Light of Christmas continue to shine all year long.

Submitted by Alicia Mayer, Alaska Region President

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Beholding the Beauty of the Lord

Devotions
May 312010

Since January the Lord has directed me to change the way I study the Bible each day. I learned that the goal of reading God’s word is to behold the beauty of the Lord. What I learned came from a study I participated in at PWOC a couple of years ago by Tim Keller; which is a series of studies on prayer.

Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the deeper truths and as you listen to God’s word write down the answers to the following five questions. The first three ask questions of the text.

1. What does the passage say about God/Christ?
2. What does it say about yourself/mankind?
3. What is the most compelling truth you learned?

The last 2 questions are the reflection portion of God’s word where you allow the verses to ask questions of you. This helps what you learned drop down from your mind into your heart.

4. How would you be different if this truth were explosively alive in your inmost being?
5. Why is God showing you these things today?

The key to reading scripture and meditating properly on God’s word is to keep Christ central. When you read a verse such as “the Lord watches over the way of the righteous” it can be very discouraging because realistically who is righteous enough for God? Constantly pointing to Christ and saying “He did it!” brings the fire of God’s love to bear on every word. Jesus made it so our sins are credited to His account and His perfect righteousness lived for us is credited to ours. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

As time goes by, I have seen God’s beauty and I praise Him for the lessons I learned about Him during my prayer time. As you get used to studying the Bible this way, the amount of time it takes to do this process can be decreased by 5 or 10 minutes. Try it out on Psalm 1. You’ll be amazed at how the Holy Spirit can make even one verse explode truth and God’s beauty before you. Especially in light of what He’s done for you in Christ.

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Mt. Fuji: Just a Snow Covered Mountain?

Devotions
Feb 082010

On a clear winter day I can see Mount Fuji from Yokota Air Force Base. The snow covered mountain juts high above all the surrounding mountains. It is a beautiful sight of God’s creation! I know what lies beneath the snow because I climbed Mt. Fuji last summer. Mt. Fuji is classified as an active volcano and there is a big hole or crater at the top. The mountain is covered with volcanic rock and residue that gets stuck in the shoes when trekking down the ash-covered paths. These small pieces of hardened cinder cause your feet to hurt and you have to remove them from your shoes to be able to walk comfortably. The mountain is barren; few signs of life along the path.

Buddhists named the mountain after the fire goddess, Fuchi. Located at the top of the mountain is a Shinto shrine dedicated to another goddess. Living in Japan opened my eyes to false religions. God warns His people in the Ten Commandments, Exodus 20:3 “You shall have no other gods before me”. Deut 4:39 says, “Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other.”

Mt. Fuji inspires me to reflect upon some truths: There is only one God. Our hearts have big holes or craters that only Jesus can fill. No other religion or false goddess can do that. God makes us a new beautiful creation when we trust in the shed blood of Jesus and His work on the cross. Jesus removes the sin (cinders) from our hearts and makes us white as snow. God gives us His Word that is a lamp to our feet and a light for our path to show us how to live (Psalm 119:105). He warns us to stay on the narrow path that leads to life, and not trek down ash-covered paths that will lead us astray.

Do you have a crater in your heart and need Jesus to fill it? Have you asked and trusted Jesus to forgive you and remove the cinders and give you life? As a believer, are you trekking down an ash-covered path or are you on the narrow path?

Dear God, open the eyes of people deceived by false religions to see and know the Truth. Impress upon the hearts of PWOC to arise and share the good news. Thank you for the Bible, your Word. Help us to obey your Word and live righteously, in Jesus name, Amen.

Submitted by Laura Miller, President Yokota Air Force Base, Japan

Laura Miller and her husband Mark of 20 years are stationed in Japan at Yokota Air Force base. They have 3 children, 19, 16, and 14 years old, as well as a Rat Terrier named Riley.

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Oh, Taste and See!

Devotions
Nov 092009

Submitted By Kristin Hathaway

I recently had lunch with some girlfriends at a local steak restaurant. When the server came to take our order, she kept insisting that we try the chicken. She was so enthusiastic about the chicken, that if I hadn’t already ordered chicken, I think I would have changed my order!

When I mentioned that she really seemed to love her job, she said she had tried almost every item on the menu, because, “I can’t sell it if I don’t know how it tastes!” Immediately, the Lord brought Psalm 34:8 to mind: Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!

If we are not daily tasting and seeing that the Lord is good by spending time in His Word and in prayer, how can we tell others of his goodness? When we ask Him to show us his goodness, he is delighted to reveal himself to us. When we spend purposeful time in His Word, we develop hearts that are sensitive to his Spirit. Others are drawn to Him because our enthusiasm is contagious!

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Are you having trouble with MS Office files?

Tech Tuesday
Oct 132009

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I’ve received a lot of questions lately about Microsoft Office files. Most of these questions point back to the same answer so I’m going to discuss it here today.

How do you know what type of file you have? Every computer filename has two parts separated by a period. The first part is the file’s name and it comes before the period. The second part, following the period, is the file extension. This file extension, usually 3-4 characters in length, will identify what type of file it is. For example, Microsoft Word files often end in .doc, whereas Excel and PowerPoint files end in .xls or .ppt respectively. These extensions tell your computer how to open the file, or which application to use to read the data it holds.

Did you catch that I said ‘often’ above in regards to the Word file extension? The reason I said ‘often’ is because the newest versions of the Microsoft Office suite have actually added an ‘x’ to its file extensions, both Windows and Mac versions. This is where the questions are generated.

If you try to open a Word file with the .docx extension using an earlier version of MS Word (2003),  you may run in to trouble. The same is true with the other office applications, as well. There is a way to resolve this problem, however, and it does not require an upgrade purchase!

Microsoft has created a Compatibility Pack available for free download on their site. This download will enable users to open these new files in older versions of Office with no trouble. Note: Some features of the new applications may be lost even when using the Compatibility Pack.

For those of you that blamed these troubles on the Windows/Mac conversion, that has nothing to do with it! So, if you’ve had trouble with these files and couldn’t figure out why, try the download and see if that takes care of it.

Click here to learn more about the Compatibility Pack and to find the download link.

“Tech Tuesday” is published every Tuesday. To reach Tracy with comments or questions, email her here.

Posted by Tracy Hathaway at 12:25 am Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

A Hard Habit to Break

Tech Tuesday
Aug 252009

Like many of our PWOCers, I took keyboarding in High School only it was called Typing back then because computers hadn’t made their way into the classroom yet. Yes, it’s true. There was Life Before Laptops!

Typewriters used a system called monotype spacing, which simply means that every character was given an equal amount of space in the line of text. It didn’t distinguish between an i and a w in terms of the space they were given even though one takes up much less real estate than the other.

For this reason, experts (whoever they are) determined that adding an additional space after each sentence would help the human eye set one sentence apart from the next, hence the double space after each period rule.

Then word processors were developed followed by the personal desktop computer. With this new technology, characters were now given only the amount of real estate they actually needed marking the end of monotype spacing.

Where am I going with this? The end of monotype spacing also marked the end of the double space after each period rule.

So here’s the official memo ladies, break the habit and stop putting two spaces after each sentence. It’s a hard habit to break, but I have faith in you. I know you can do it!

For comments and suggestions, you can reach Tracy here.

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