Finding the Balance

Hello All,
So a couple days ago I was in the coffee shop on campus reading the Good Book like I normally do around 1 or so, and a thought formulated in my mind. While reading the book of Isaiah, I came across an interesting thought about Hezekiah. First, he was a man of prayer and was a God-fearing man. Second there are some pretty exciting stories involving his life. One being Hezekiah prayed for the Good Lord to deliver Israel from the Assyrians. And He does. kills 185,000 actually and delivers Israel.
Now I am not wanting to be a Bible-beater here; but there is a tie with trombone and God here--though you'll never get it off the bat. Two things, I got out of reading these two chapters were:
(1) Prayer is one of the most direct ways of communicating with God our desires, needs, and giving Him praise. And having that communication is effective--even though it may not be the answer we want, having a "conversation" with our Father is so key in our walk with Him. (James 5:16)

(2) I have to admit when I read that part about the 185,000 being killed and how God answered Hezekiah's prayer about sparing him death, I went "Whoa!" It's pretty awesome when I come across things like that. And pretty exciting!!

Then I got to thinking, I think there are more times that I'm excited about trombone stuff than about spiritual stuff. Now don't take me wrong, many times I get excited about playing the trombone and seeing the Lord's work in my journey with the trombone. But I think it may have been a while when I got excited just about the Good Book and the relevant stories pertaining to my life.

This is where that balance comes in. Maybe I need to do more reading with the Good Book, especially these kind of stories where I see the good Lord working. If anything, being excited about God should always trump being excited about the trombone. Ask my friends, I talk aheckuva lot about the trombone, and boy is it exciting!! But I'm beginning to think I also to need to talk a lot about God, the Good Book, and awesome spiritual things. It's funny too, because those things are there in my life--it's not that it's not happening--but to be a professing believer, maybe I should have that balance of professing my excitement about the trombone as well as professing my excitement about what a gracious, loving Father has done in my life.

Whelp have a good day today :-)

From
J-man (Psalm 31:14-16)