Food For Thought #27

Praising the Lord. 

Praising the Lord isn't something you should just do in worship service. It should be a big part of every day. 

I realized this week while doing my morning devotions that I really had not set apart any time recently just to praise the Lord. There certainly are enough things in the world to praise him about. Sometimes I get so caught up in asking for things that I forget to say a simple 'Thank you' everyone once in a while. 

Psalm 150

 Praise the Lord.

Praise God in his sanctuary;

    praise him in his mighty heavens.

Praise him for his acts of power;

    praise him for his surpassing greatness.

Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,

    praise him with the harp and lyre,

praise him with timbrel and dancing,

    praise him with the strings and pipe,

 praise him with the clash of cymbals,

    praise him with resounding cymbals.

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord.

Psalm 103 

Praise the Lord, my soul;

    all my inmost being, praise his holy name.

Praise the Lord, my soul,

    and forget not all his benefits—

 who forgives all your sins

    and heals all your diseases,

who redeems your life from the pit

    and crowns you with love and compassion,

 who satisfies your desires with good things

    so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

Thanks for reading. 

-Mikayla-

Food For Thought is open for guest posts. If you are interested, please, drop me a note in the sidebar or in the comments. I would love to host you.

My Life (In as many posts as it takes) #55

Well, I've got a slew of random photos for ya. Some of these photos are from about a month or two ago, I hope you enjoy them! =D

Also, I hope to make a Q&A vidio, I already got some questions, but I want a lot more so please, comment and ask me as many questions as you like! It would make my day. =D

Sarah, Rose, Grace, Rebekkah, and me on the fourth of July. =D 

Sarah and I with the flag. =D

Me with our tree home grown watermelons.

I received a purity ring for my birthday. =) 

Luke.

That, 'are you taken a picture right now' face. ;D

His, 'seriously' face. ;D

A snail. =) 

Goodness you can tell when things are from the past. Isn't this awesome? =D

Okay, so I'm a weirdo and took pictures of the mainboard of a computer. =D

Luke, so happy.

Then he realized I was taking photos. ;D

Our cherry tomatoes. =D

Yes, this is a piece of parsley in oil in a thing of water. ;D

My shirt.

Random deck boards...

Toothless, so confiscated.

Luke while I was walking. =) 

Light bulb. =) 

Remember these? I used to practically be attached to my walkmen but I didn't remember how fun it was till I pulled it out a little bit ago to listen to a book on it. =D

Totally feeling like a hippy. ;D

Got to love Texas, we even put out state on our sodas. =D

Please comment with questions for my Q&A vidio! Thank you! =D 

 -Mikayla-

Food For Thought #26

“Preach the Gospel at all times, use words only when you must.” -Saint Francis

This is one of my favorite quotes, mainly because I think we forgot this concept sometimes. I rarely get the chance in my day to day life to preach the gospel with my words, but I get dozens of chances every single day of my life to preach Gods love with my actions.

If you look at it, more people are interested in your faith if they first notice how different you are from the world and wonder what drives you towards that.

Everything about you is a living testimony to your relationship with God. How you dress, how you treat your family, what you spend your time on, what you read, what you listen to and watch, how you treat strangers, your attitude, EVERYTHING.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t read a single non-Christian book, I mean I personally love Nancy Drew, which is a pretty neutral series. I’m just saying if the Percy Jackson books were my favorite, and it was what I talked about all the time, and I carried that with me everywhere, how would people see that I was different?

(Please know that I have not actually read Percy Jackson, though I do know a lot about it, I simply used this as an example)

Can you imagine how different of a testimony I would have if I switched Percy Jackson with the Bible? Because at the end of the day I could care less weather or not people knew that I adored the Nancy Drew I just read. The impression I want people to come away from me with is not “Wow, what a Nancy Drew fan” but “There is really something good and different about her.”

Isn’t that what you want to say with your actions and words? To show God’s love everywhere and with everything.

Thanks for reading.

-Mikayla-

My Life (In as many posts as it takes) #54

In one of my recent polls a lot of you said you wanted to see tutorials. I have to admit, at first I was daunted by this because it seemed to me all the people doing tutorials were doing ultra awesome stuff like wall quotes, felt models, and stuff like that. I'm not promising this will be that cool, but it is a simple little thing I made up. =) 

Paint sample bookmarks. 

Supplies needed: 

Paint samples.

 (The long strips of seven colors. Can be found at Walmart.)

Stickers: 

I recommend black with clear backgrounds. 

Ribbon: 

Very thin ribbon. If you can only get one color I would recommend white. 

Corner rounder: 

If you have this tool I would recommend using it.

Hole punch: 

You can also use shape punches such as heart, star, or square. 

Below are all my supplies.

1. Start by picking out the paint sample you want to start with. 

I picked blue. 

2. Cut off two of the chips. This is so that it will be the avrage size for a bookmark. I took one off the bottom and one of the top so I was left with the middle colors.

Make sure to cut off the white strip, it will make it look better.

And you're left with the middle five chips. 

3. Next grap your corner rounder and punch off the corners of the chip. If you don't have a corner rounder you can just use sisors. =) 

4. Pick your stickers and apply them. I would recommend not putting any stickers in the top box because that's where your hole is going to go and you want to make sure to leave room for that. 

5. Pick a hole punch.

I chose a heart.

Line it up to the center of the top and punch it.

See, isn't it cute??

6. Pick a ribbon.

Then cut off a foot worth of it. 

Fold it in half.

Then put the loop half through the hole..

and the thread the free ends through the loop!

Pull that tight!

And there you go. That is a simple way to make some cute bookmarks! =D

Don't throw away those chips you cut off yet! I'll be back soon with a tutorial on a project you can do with those to! =D 

 -Mikayla- 

Did you enjoy this? 

Do you think you'll try it? 

Food For Thought #25 Guest Post

Guest post from Maddy at Maddy's Digital Diary 

Being thankful for the simple things. It's something we all forget. Like, I had my family, friends, a house to sleep in, clothes to wear, and 

just stuff like that and I was thankful for it. But, I think that we often forget to be thankful for the simple things. Sometimes even the big things. Just recently, I went on a mission trip with my dance school. It was amazing. I was thankful to be able to go and I learned a lot. I'd like to share a story with you all...

Me and my dance school just got to Kentucky and were having a great time. The town that we were in was just like any other town. During the day, we would go out and minister to others and at night, we would go back to our hotel and normally talk or play games until about 12. It was fun. It was just like any other place. We stayed there for 2 days and then went to another town that was much different. It was a very poor town. There were just dozens of houses lined up down the street and it would just go on for miles. That's all there was in that town. Nothing else. We were kind of shocked by it all but also, we had to stay at a very small church, in a bunk room with another group who had come up. ( We didn't know that anyone else would be there until 10 minutes before we got there. ) Anyways, it was definitely different. I remember that we all didn't really know what to think and we were all like " Come on guys, we can do it, It's only for four days, " So, we put our happy faces on and we got to paint a mans house in the morning, and teach dance at night. As the days were coming to a end, we realized that this was an awesome place even though it was very poor and had pretty much nothing. We were able to meet many great people and made many friends. What surprised me the most, is that many of these kids had bad parents or just had barely anything, but, they had so much joy. And they were thankful for the little and only things they had...

Guys, we need to be thankful for everything just as these kids were. Me and friends weren't being thankful at first for the opportunity  that we had to go there. Even if it wasn't what we thought that it would be. Some people might tell you that kids can't teach you anything, but they can. I learned so much from them and just to be thankful for everything. Good or bad.

Thanks for letting me post, Mikayla! Go here to read about the rest of my trip where you can read about us painting a house, going horseback riding, and much more! Also, I'd love to get to know you! Feel free to follow/contact me over at my blog, my group blog, or google plus. :-) Have a great day! 

Thank you Maddy! 

-Mikayla- 

Food For Thought is open for guest posts. If you are interested, please, drop me a note in the sidebar or in the comments. I would love to host you.

Writing Wednesday #13

When God Gives You Something Back

Well, at the beginning of the month I wrote a post saying I believed that maybe God had taken my gift of writing because he intended me to do something different. Well, God gave me an answer. I was trying to write one night, and it just wasn’t really working and I felt a little nudge to go write in this story that I didn’t have anything planned in. So, following that nudge (Anyone care to guess who nudged?) and went and wrote. And Wrote. And wrote more. I have been doing amazingly well in this story! God has given me my writing back, at least for a time.

I honestly believe God was trying to make me realize that I need to stop just writing and start actually putting effort and heart into my story. Along with my faith.

For the past two months I’ve been writing pretty much meaningless story’s and I want to stop that. I think God really wanted to get ahold of me because of that.

So, I have my writing back. Like always, I wrote a poem about it which is at the end of this post.

Thank you all for your sweet comments and prayers, you do not know how much those helped me.

-Mikayla-

A battle is quieted inside my soul 

It’s over with a clocks eerie toll.

My soul finally finds its rest 

After this long and hard fought test.

The battle finally has a victor, 

And now I know what’s at my core.

I gave God back the gift he had given me

And he gave me an answer, plain to see.

My writing is here to stay 

Here for a year, or maybe just a day. 

But now it is clear to me that I should be writing 

There are battles my characters should be fighting. 

Now my own soul is finally at rest 

I can set my characters on a quest. 

I’m thanking God every day for giving me back this 

Because it is something I would greatly miss.