MyLeslieNotebook

What makes you worry? What makes you stressed? What gives you that oh-I'm-going-to-be-sick feeling in the pit of your stomach? Worry is very real, not only for adults as they look at taxes, retirement, jobs, and budgets. But it's also real for teenage girls, who deal with friend drama, boy drama, teacher drama, llama drama (just kidding; it's just a funny thing to say), college, driving, money, jobs, and more.  I very vividly remember having some drama in my life in high school, sharing it with a trusted adult, and having her tell me, "That's nothing to worry about."  But she was wrong. It was. Just because a worry isn't an "adult" worry doesn't mean you're not allowed to worry about it. The worries in your life are very real, very stressful, and very life-changing. BUT...Jesus talked about it in the Sermon on the Mount: "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, wha...

My daughter is a little pack rat.  She is three years old and loves nothing more than to "play mama," meaning she likes to pretend to be a mother to her baby dolls. She feeds them, changes their clothes, puts them down for naps, and does other things she thinks all good mamas do. But she also wants anything that might "help" her play mama, such as an empty orange juice container, old coupons, or any variety of other things I would normally throw away. She'll take an old M&M container and pretend to give her babies "snacks." It's precious.  But she's got this collection of, well, TRASH under her bed. Though he uses  it for her babies, her assortment of things that help her be a "mama" looks like a pile of junk. But they are her treasures, and I indulge her for now because she's three years old. Jesus speaks to our storing of treasures, too: "DO NOT STORE UP for yourselves treasures on earth...but store up for yours...

As a weekly Sunday School teacher, I have a few "favorite" truths that my girls have heard over and over and over:  If you love God, you obey Him. Be weird. Speak Truth. And one of my all-time favorites:   no secrets  unless you know you'll be sharing it with balloons, a cake, and a bunch of people jumping out of a hiding place yelling, "Surprise!"  Keeping sin a secret is a prime dwelling place for Satan. So you should have no secrets in your life. (Surprise parties are the exception :))  But I'm going to have to add to that truth about keeping secrets, because today's passage from the Sermon on the Mount actually   tells  us to keep secrets: "Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them....When you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you......

So far in looking at the Sermon on the Mount, we've heard some great button-less commands from Jesus: Be Weird. Forgive. Bounce. Speak Truth. Don't slap back. Tough teachings, but all of them are focused not on just doing the right thing but on making sure your actions reflect your heart . In essence, Jesus is showing us how to love. The word love  in the New Testament is almost always agape,  a Greek word that describes the unconditional, selfless, perfect love of Christ.  It's not just in an emotion; (emotions don't reveal God!) agape  is love that is  lived out.   Of course, we won't always get it right, [ we're not God!!! ] but when we think about how to agape  love someone, our question should be, "How would Jesus love this person?"  And our mind goes to how He: >saved the life of a woman caught in adultery who was about to be stoned (John 8:1-11) >commanded demons to come out of a crazy man living in a cemetery...

I've never been in a fist fight.  If you know me well, that's probably not a surprise. I can honestly say I couldn't hit a person. But I'm not saying I never thought anyone would punch me. That's a totally different story. So in middle and high school I sometimes found myself contemplating what I would do if someone punched me. Luckily I never got punched so I never found out. But I wondered if I'd hit back, if I'd run away, or just stand there and cry. (Honestly, probably the last!) For those of you wondering the same thing, the Sermon on the Mount addresses this very topic. And you may not like what it says: "You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.  But I tell you, don't resist an evildoer. On the contrary, if anyone slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also....And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two," (Matthew 5:38-39 and 41, HCSB). That "eye for an eye" s...

Pinky swear.  Swear on your grandmother's grave. No fingers crossed behind my back. Hold up one hand and swear on the Bible. What does it take to prove to someone that you're telling the truth? When was the last time you told the truth and someone thought you were lying? When was the last time you lied and fooled someone into thinking you told the truth? Jesus was pretty serious when it came to telling the truth. And, not surprisingly, He talked about it in His Sermon on the Mount:  "Again, you have heard that it was said to our ancestors, You must not break your oath, but you must keep your oaths to the Lord.  But I tell you, don't take an oath at all...But let your word 'yes' be 'yes,' and your 'no' be 'no.' Anything more than this is from the evil one," (Matthew 5:33-34, 37, HCSB). Evidently the first century Jews had something like the pinky swear: the oath. Seems like you were required to tell the truth if you t...

There's a big difference between a bounce and a fall. Picture yourself holding one of those giant bouncy balls in one hand and a triple-scoop ice cream cone in the other.  Now picture yourself dropping them at the same time. One bounces, one falls. Now keep that image in mind as you read the following from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount: "You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart,"  (Matthew 5:27-28, NIV). (Since I'm a girl and I'm writing this with the high-school and college-aged girl in mind, we're going to look at this from a girl's perspective.) Like the passage on murder (Matthew 5:21-26), this seems a little harsh. Is lust the same as adultery? Do they really deserve the same punishment? Not my call. But something glares at us from these words that we are wise to understand and believe: Jesus command...

So if you're ready to embrace your weirdness (see yesterday's post if you haven't read it yet!) then let's move on through the next few verses in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them," (Matthew 5:17, NIV). Jesus interjects this little comment before giving His next command. You see, Jesus is getting ready to completely undo all the Pharisees had created as far as what the law meant, how to follow it and why we follow it. So before Jesus jumps into His explanation of what it really means to follow the Law, He wanted everyone to know that He wasn't changing the law; He was finishing  it. Another way to say the word for "fulfill" in the verse above is "complete." Jesus had come to complete  the Law.  And one of the first things He did to complete the Law was to help His disciples (His audience at the Sermon on the Mount) ...

(If you didn't read the intro to this strangely-titled post, please do so below.) So as I have pondered the commands of Jesus, I kept feeling drawn to one particular Scripture: His Sermon on the Mount. It was early in Jesus' earthly ministry, and the words He said were startling to the people that heard it. It doesn't seem so crazy to us, but basically Jesus took some of the more well-known "buttons" of His day and up-ended them. Explained them. Made them into a heart issue instead of a list of dos and don'ts. So let's look at what He taught in the Sermon on the Mount and see how it should look in the life of a 21st century young woman.      "You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.       "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under ...

We have a truck that I rarely drive, mainly because it's huge and I much rather prefer my compact little Accord. But this morning I had to take it to work, so I found myself going down the interstate, trying to get the time displayed on the dash.  (My dash insisted on showing me the radio station. If any of you are car-radio programmers out there, please know I can remember what station I'm on after about 5 seconds. Then can you please make it show the time again? Thank you.) So anyway (this story is taking WAAAYYY too long) this dash has about 50 buttons on it, and I know  there's one that says "clock" on it. But it takes me forever to find it. And I ask out loud, "Do I really need all these buttons?" And instantly my thoughts on dash buttons take me to my faith. We 21st century Christians are much like the first century Pharisees, making up a bunch of rules for what it means to follow God. "Buttons," I'm going to call them. The Phar...