About Me

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Olive Branch, MS, United States
I'm a mom, a wife, a daughter, a sister and a friend. I work, I play, I laugh, I smile and I cry. I love to read, to ponder and to write. These are the thoughts I feel inspired to share...by no means all of them, just some of them.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Notes from Lysa TyrKeurst - Central Church, Collierville Nov 21, 2011

A couple of nuggets that she threw out as she began speaking....

• Our goal is not perfection, its imperfect progress.

• God made us as human beings, not human doings. As we look for God's will for our lives we should remember that its not so much what we are to do but instead its who we are supposed to be.


Lysa's talk centered on the following verses:

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

"16 Rejoice always, 17 pray continually, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus."

She said that there are three commands here from God telling us what His will is for us.

1) *Be Joyful!*

• Sometime when we feel no joy, that's the perfect time to look for God.

James 1:2 reference: "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds"

God doesn't say 'BE joyful' or 'FiND the joy' in the trials....rather He says 'CONSIDER it'....just think about where joy might be, even in the storm.

Lysa told a story about her daughter competing at a pretty high level in gymnastics until she got hurt and could never compete again. This led her to really examine why God allows (not causes) trials. She said that the trials are for one of three things:

A) God's Protection - maybe He is protecting us from something that could've happened down the line had we not faced the trial. In the case of her daughter.....maybe a broken neck instead of a messed up shoulder.

B) God's Provision - maybe God is allowing us to find something better. In the case of her daughter.....she then got into theatre and found an awesome leadership role.

C) God Process - maybe the trial is teaching us to grow, to learn, to become stronger for whatever God wants us to do in the future.

Lysa finished off this point by saying - 'I'm not trying to raise a great kid, I'm trying to raise an amazing woman.'. (Liked that!!)

2) *Be Prayerful!*

Lysa challenged us to move away from the 'God, bless me....' prayers and ask Him instead to 'interrupt us, to inconvenience us'. She talked about how its often difficult to really get fired up about prayer, to embrace it and what it can yield. She insisted that we should have a true conversation with God as we pray, asking Him to use us to direct His love to others. Then we should look for Him all throughout the day - look for all of the opportunities around us that He's given.

Lysa ended with this: 'Invite God to do life with you each day.'

3) *Be Thankful!*

Lysa talked about the fact that we've become so good at planning and strategizing and orchestrating our lives that we really require very little faith. When we aren't having to rely on faith, we tend to not be as thankful, or think to be thankful.

She encouraged us to ask God to take our little bit of 'natural' and add His 'super' to it each day. through seeing God work we can learn to have a thankful heart!

She left this topic with this: 'a truly thankful person is a truly peaceful person.'


At the end of Lysa's talk, she stressed that we needed to get out of the rut we so often get into to. The 'woe is me, I HAVE to get up, I HAVE to grocery shop, I HAVE to take the kids here and there, and so on.'. Instead we should be glad and rejoice that we are ABLE to do these things! She said 'I don't HAVE to live my life, I am ABLE to live it. And that is good.'

Be joyful, be prayerful and be thankful and just SEE what God does!