Prayer Before Shopping

Have you ever prayed before grocery shopping? My sister-in-law recently asked me about praying before grocery shopping and I had to tell her I had gotten out of the habit but I used to always pray before I went in the grocery store.  That when I did pray before grocery shopping it seemed as if there were bargains there just waiting for me to come along and spot them. And it even seemed that I got better parking spots when I prayed before grocery shopping.  Maybe all this is just my imagination but I can tell you that now I am going over budget more than I did when I prayed before shopping. I am not as disciplined about using my coupons and am just spending too much money. 

Now I know you may think the Lord is too busy to care about your grocery shopping, or that it's silly to pray about something so ordinary as grocery shopping.  I think the Lord does care about even the small things. He expects us to be good stewards of everything he has given us and that would include the money in the grocery budget.  He is waiting to bless us and we just ignore Him and the awesome power He has.

If you have read my blog, you know that I don't make New Year's resolutions and it's too early for those anyway, but my goal for the New Year is to be more mindful before I go grocery shopping and PRAY.  I never said a really long prayer, I usually just thanked God for the money I had to spend on groceries and asked Him to help me stay in the budget while meeting the needs of my family.

The Bible says in Philippians 4:6 Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.  To me this means I can feel free to ask for help when I go grocery shopping.  And I am not going to wait until the new year to start. Never a better time than the present.

Have a great day!
Mae

1/7/2013

This past weekend was pretty productive.  We got the tree and all the decorations down and put away, the house cleaned, laundry done, and we did our grocery shopping.

I am having to take a look at our grocery budget again.  Prices just keep going up.  I was looking at what one blog considered deals at Kroger this week and it occurred to me that none of the meat was below $2.00 per pound.  If you have read my blog you know that I use to only buy meat that was below $2/pound.  That is getting close to impossible now. But I refuse to pay as much as they are asking for some meats.  Even some of the manager’s specials that were marked down weren’t a deal.  Turkey wings were marked down to $1.79/pound.  They had turkey breast on sale for the same price.  That made no sense at all to me.  Why would you buy wings when you could purchase a whole breast for just a few dollars more.  You’d get more meat and less bone.  I still had money leftover in the grocery money envelope mainly because I just wouldn’t pay the prices they were asking.  Fortunately, I have plenty of food in the house and did not really need anything other than produce.

We are looking into growing chickens for meat this year.  We plan to start with 100. 50 for our freezer and 50 to sell.  Right now we are still doing research on the selling portion.  We also want to expand the egg production.  We are getting more customers than we have eggs for.  That is a good problem to have. 

We are also planning to plant more fruit trees, some rhubarb, and maybe some asparagus and enlarging the garden area.  I would also like to plant grapes, elderberries, gooseberries and strawberries this year.

What is it about winter that makes us yearn for spring so badly?  Every winter all I can think about is what we will plant this year.

Here is my list of blessings that I have counted this week:

Jan 3– I won $5 on the new Kroger game.  I rarely win any thing so I count that as a blessing.  It’s $5 worth of food off my next purchase.

Jan 4– Sunshine-it is so nice to see the sun shining and feel the warmth if offers.  We have had snow on the ground for several days now and it is still too cold for it to melt but it’s still nice having the sunshine.

Jan 5– Was able to get my tree down and get my house back to normal

Jan 6– I managed to get everything we needed from the grocery store and still have money leftover in the grocery envelope.

Jan 7– It’s treatment day and I know that I am blessed to be able to continue on treatments that cost so much with very little coming out of my pocket.

Have a great day.

Mae