Up and Running…or at least Walking…

This is almost as fun as getting up in the morning and putting on a new outfit. No. I take that back. It’s definitely more fun. In case you didn’t notice, Off the Beaten Path is sporting a brand new do!

Welcome to the new and improved Off the Beaten Path web site and blog. Thanks to my wonderful Design Diva, we’re up and running, or at least walking ’cause we do still have a few little bugs to work out. Mainly she has to spend a little time on the phone with me this afternoon telling me how to keep from deleting the whole thing.

As is so typical of me, I got on here Saturday when she was still working on things and started poking around and all. Of course I deleted some stuff accidentally, but not permanently. Some of the text she had entered for me just took a little trip into cyberspace for a few minutes and then, by the sheer grace of God, it came back. But not before I’d e-mailed her and confessed my dilemma. (If I’d just waited a few minutes I wouldn’t have needed to confess anything!) Fortunately, since the Design Diva has never met me and lives on the other side of the country I simply had to imagine the faces she was making and the terrible things she was saying about me. After doing that for a little while, I decided to imagine instead that she is a graciously forgiving and patient woman instead and that she simply shrugged her shoulders at my mistakes and said something like, “Oh that poor thing. She’s so anxious to get her blog up and running, she just couldn’t help herself. I just love people like that!”

At any rate, enough of my vain imaginations!

Don’t you just love new? New anything! I’m the kind of woman who can’t wait to wear a new article of clothing I just purchased. I go home from the store or receive the article of clothing in the mail via UPS and I immediately come up with some place to wear it. That’s why I was so shocked when I visited my friend Kim a couple of weeks ago and learned that she had three perfectly beautiful suits in her closet that still had the tags on them after having purchased them not three days ago, not three months ago, but two years ago! How in the world? That just wouldn’t happen in my closet. There are days I wish I could look in my closet and find something with a tag on it, but alas, that has never happened.

I might not be able to find anything brand new in my closet this morning, but I know where I can find some new duds every day. In Christ. In Him all things are new.

A New Spirit
In Ezekiel 11:19 God promised to give the children of the New Covenant, that’s us believers, a new spirit. When we sport our new spirit we have the unlimited potential of living beyond the ordinary. Our flesh, which usually cries out and demands its own way, isn’t as strong when we walk in this new spirit. When we walk in the spirit and feed the spirit, we are able to live victorious lives and do things we couldn’t ordinarily do.

Isaiah 40:31 tells us that if we wait patiently for God to give it to us (instead of racing ahead like I did with the blog Saturday), He’ll give us new strength. At my age I could use a little renewed strength. Why can God do this? Because verse 28 says that He never becomes weary or tired and His mind is always sharp. That’s the God who’s giving me new strength for every day, every trial, and every dilemma.

Fortunately for me and those of you who tend to be a little impetuous like me, God has new compassions and mercies available to us every day. Lamentations 3:22-23 says: