A little something extra

We were watching a re-run of "Little House on the Prairie" and one of the characters used the word~ extraordinary.

Ava piped up and asked what extraordinary meant.

As I thought on it...I explained that it meant that something or someone was ordinary plus a little something extra.

I like to think in terms of food. French fries are ordinary; but french fries topped with cheese, bacon and ranch dressing for dipping makes them extraordinary.

We're talking a whole new level.

God used this to speak to me again last night at prayer time. We were watching a video by Jim Cymbala describing the work of the Holy Spirit in churches and in the lives of believers.

He explained that our entire belief system is supernatural. Not just natural...SUPER natural. Kind of like extraordinary, huh?

The virgin birth....supernatural.
The resurrection...supernatural.
The salvation experience....supernatural.


Yet we try to live and operate our everyday lives naturally.

Can you say frustrating????

You can't scrape cheese, bacon, and ranch dressing off of fries once they have been topped. It just doesn't work that way.

So why do we try to live like everyone else?

The deal is we are to be Holy Spirit filled...equipped with every spiritual blessing, ready and willing to be used mightily in the hands of a holy, creative, and powerful God.

So, as badly as we want to fit in and assimilate into neat little ordinary lives.....we weren't meant to.

We are extraordinary!

We are ordinary people but with a little (or how about a HUGE) something extra.

When I look at people that I deeply respect and admire I see this extraordinary quality at work in their lives.

They are completely ordinary people. There is nothing unique about them.

Life deals them heartaches, hardships, rejection, turmoil, and suffering just like everyone else...but something emerges above all else.

A fierce, passionate, determined joy and peace that blows anyone who bothers to look away.

Extraordinary...supernatural.

Let it be me!!!

Acts 19:11-12 "God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that even the handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them."