Making a real change with the new year

This is the end of a year where many of us have wishes of things to accomplish with the new year. If you are living in a rut it's time to change. This is it people you have a chance to change your way of living. This new year could be the same, be worse or be better it'll all matter on you and how you look at things. You can't change everything around you but you can change your future out look on life. No one can take the steps for you that you need to take to make the changes you want to see in yourself and there is no one but you who can decide what to do.  In order to change you must DO something.  If you don't do anything different you are never going to accomplish the dreams and goals you have for the upcoming year.
If you want to loose weight, you have to take a real step and change your eating and way of life. If you want to be happier you have to change the circumstances or the way you think. If you want to be a better person than you were in 2012 you are the only person who can make that happen. Only you have the power to make the choice to change who you are. It's a year to be serious about changing you, only then can we take the first steps to changing the world.
Time to stop blaming the world for the problems and start with the man/woman in the mirror. Change can only come by the choices we make on our own.  Yes, God will help you change, don't under estimate him, but also remember that He expects us to sometimes take the steps necessary to help change ourselves. He gives us those choices and we have to chose the right ones in order to sometimes help make our lives different. He gives us choices, and the strength to make the right ones, we just have to pick the right choice.
Let your 2013 make a difference in your life. Make this the year to look back on and say, "I really can see the difference and I like what I see."

O.K. to spoil kids at Christmas, God spoils you!

This Christmas has been way off for me this year. Between being pregnant and feeling overwhelmed with worlds events I just feel very, un-Christmas spirit like. Not the bahumbug I don't like Christmas, but just honestly not in the joy filled mood I normally am with the Christmas season. A lot of the stress I think has come from my own self doing though. I am a huge pusher of, "keeping Christ in Christmas." We all know that we want to keep Christ in Christmas that Christmas to Christians is about celebrating Jesus birth and it's all about him.  But trying to convince a 4 year old and 1 year old of this concept is something extremely hard to do at least without completely ruining their excitement.
I have thought about this for weeks and have finally come to realize that there is nothing wrong with how my children view Christmas. Why do we push 'Christ in Christmas" so much anyways? Yes it's about his birth but shouldn't we also be celebrating about His life? I mean Christ came to save the world. He was a gift He was all about bringing love, joy and peace to the world and personal sacrifice.
What if we stopped trying so hard to bring in extra "Jesus mode" and start bringing him in for real, bringing real peace, happiness, joy and love to our children. Our every day lives should be just as full of these things all year round. If we are sincere about having Jesus in Christmas then we should be sincere in showing our children Jesus all year around so when Christmas comes they don't question if when we celebrate it has something to do with Jesus.
I don't feel that Jesus is looking down and proud of me when I try so hard to push 'Christ in Christmas,' the way I see many other Christians do. I believe He gave us these little children to see things differently. There really is nothing wrong with sharing Jesus at Christmas but there is also nothing wrong with your kids being excited because they know they are going to get gifts soon, lots of yummy food, and lots of family time. If we are showing Jesus at Christmas than all these things are things that Jesus would be happy to see. He gave us these precious gifts called children, to make them happy, to show them love and yes, once in a while I think Jesus is totally on board with us spoiling them to pieces. He spoiled and still spoils us as His children on a daily basis why wouldn't He want us to show the same kind of giving and caring to our own children? I think keeping peace, love, and lots of joy in this time of year is the best way to keep Christ in Christmas.
So this year, to get out of my little funk I was in regarding the season of Christmas I stopped trying so hard to make sure my 4 year old understood that it was ALL about Jesus, not the presents. I started trying to just remind him once in a while that we get gifts and celebrate this time of year for Jesus birthday, just like when we get ready to celebrate his birthday and with celebrating birthdays there is nothing wrong with the excitement over the expectation of the gifts and fun he'll have this time of year.  I have given up the crazy notion that my 4 year old should only be excited because Jesus was born after all he is 4, and presents to him really are the fun of it all.
For now, as a parent I pray that eventually his little mind and heart will comprehend and enjoy the gift of Christmas given a long time ago. Until then the point Christ has is that we keep Christ in everything we do and say, not just in certain times of the year like Christmas.

Does God know you? Matthew 7:21-23

Does God know you? This may seem like a funny question because most people in churches do not focus on such things, they focus on the  "Do you know Jesus?" Question. And though I agree I hope you know Jesus I think many times the point is fully missed in the church. In Matthew 7:21-23 Jesus speaks very clearly about Jesus needing to know you. "'Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' And then I will declare to them 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'"

Jesus must know you in order for him to not send you away from Him at heaven's gates. Lot's of people will admit to knowing Jesus, but in order to get into heave Jesus must know you! Saying you know Jesus and even acting the part does not mean Jesus knows you and that my friends is the key to entering heaven.

Acting religious and following all the rules does not mean that Jesus knows you. Preaching and teaching and even as far as casting out demons in the his name does not mean he knows you. 

How do you know if Jesus know's you? Verse 21 explains it well that you will be doing the 'will of My Father in heaven.' Saying a washed up prayer to Jesus is not what get's you saved.  Only true repentance and surrender to Jesus asking him to come into your life and let him be the LORD of your life is the first step. This step allows God to truly enter your life only then can the Father in heaven reveal His will to you and only then can you truly follow the will of the Father in Heaven.

Too many times we focus on the if we know Jesus part, and yes I believe it is important to know Jesus, but we also need to make sure we focus on the does Jesus know us part. Our heavenly destination is given to us through our relationship with Jesus Christ and relationships are not suppose to be one sided Jesus needs to know you too. 

Doing the will of the Father does not always mean you have to be doing something spiritual or even be in a high position in the church or be noticed by men for your 'religiousness.' Actually in Jesus times most of these types of people were criticized by Jesus for their fakeness and he called them hypocrites  Doing the will of the Father will mean that you are doing what He wants for your life, not what you want for your life. It may not mean you are recognized for anything or it may mean you need to step out of your comfort zone and be putting yourself out there way more than you are. Only God can tell you what his will is for your life. Knowing His will allows you to know that Jesus know's you because if He knows you and has given you the will of the Father it also means you are surrendering yourself to the use of His glorious plan! And there is no better position in the world to be in than to be in the knowledge that you are living in the will of the Father in Heaven.

Don’t be a bipolar Christian

We've all seen them. They are more common in the Christian circles than we would like to admit. Most of us are them and don’t even realize it. What am I talking about? Why a bipolar Christian of course. No one wants to think of themselves as being Bipolar, but truth be told most of us are, even the “awesome Christians.”

Why do I say most Christians are bipolar? Because now a days, someone who is a Christian 24/7 is hard to come by.  Back in the day when the book of Acts was going on you can see all over the place people being Christians, day and night. They sold their homes; they divided up everything among themselves, took care of the poor, the needy, each other and gave everything for the cause of Christ. They were truly devoted to living and breathing their faith.  Their character was Christian, a person set solely for the cause of serving Christ. They didn't care what the other people around them thought.  They made sure to always be doing what was right hoping to be a light to the world. Hoping the world would see and want to the same thing because of their genuineness for Jesus Christ and also for the love that Jesus Christ gave them for others in the world.

In the church we often do our part when people are looking and when we are trying to make an impression. I've had a very hard time finding someone who is a Christian 24/7, even I am guilty of it, wish I wasn't.  We try to look good by getting involved in church where we are comfortable. But we only help as far as we want too for surely we have to put up a boundary somewhere or we would always be serving and helping people for the cause of Christ to build others up in the faith and that would just be exhausting. (please catch the form of sarcasm) Christ doesn't tell us to take up the cross of Christianity when we feel like it. He tells us to take it up daily. We are sacrificing our lives for the service of Christ the moment we offer to let Him come in and be the Lord of our lives. That means forsaking all selfish naturally human desires to give of ourselves fully to the cause of serving Jesus Christ.

We are not to worry about fitting into the world or looking weird to them or being judge by them we are suppose to be looked at differently. If we are no different than we are not being the lights of Christ in a darkened world that needs Him dearly. We are told to be the light in the world “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” Matthew 5:14-16

There are lots of ‘nice’ people in this world. The world doesn't need more ‘nice’ people, they need ‘true’ people. They need to know the truth. God doesn't ask us to just be lights to our circle of Christian friends, he asks us to be a light to the world. This means that just as it is important to do the right thing to help encourage our fellow Christian’s, we also need to do what is right so that when people who aren’t Christians will see the good deeds we do and they will know that it is not just natural human kindness in us but it is God’s light shining through us.

Don’t be a bipolar Christian, meaning don’t just be a Christian when it helps you fit in. Be a Christian all the time, at church, at home, at your job, in the grocery store and everywhere you go!

Comparison leads us to negativity

Hebrews 13:5 Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have, because God has said, “I will never leave you; never will I forsake you.”

Have you ever notice how unhappy you leave yourself feeling after looking around at what other people have compared to what you don’t have? It is a deadly trap too. It is so normal in our American way of life to have “THE AMERICAN DREAM!” You want the boat, the house, the nice cottage on the lake, the hot spouse, the awesome kids that are tops in everything, the best looks, the nicest and newest of all cars, a great job that you are valued in and appreciated. The list goes on and on and on. We don’t even remember we want half of those things until we realize someone else has them or has it better.

We are all guilty of it. We look around notice our friends kid is a straight A student while our kid is average. We were proud of them till that moment when we realized someone else’s kid just beat ours. Or you are so thankful when we buy a house for the first time. But, then you have a friend who bought a new house too but they sold their last one in order to upgrade to something way bigger and better than you can afford. Or your marriage, you think it’s going good, till we notice that someone else’s husband dotes on them so much more than our own husband does on us, they must be even more in-love with each other than you are with your spouse.

It’s the worst game to play and the worst mind set to get into and a hard one to break. We feed our need for self pity. At first we say we look so we can see where we can improve. Like with our marriage for instance. We think we have a good marriage going on but as soon as we see Mrs. Brown’s husband treating her so much better, we start questioning if we have a good marriage at all. Am I failing in my marriage as a wife that I need to improve in order to make my husband treat me the way Mrs. Brown’s husband treats her? Where do I fall short?  Why doesn’t he do those things for me? We start running questions through our minds of our not being good enough, first it’s our fault that we have done something wrong.  Then we move on to blaming our spouse thinking it’s his fault and he has a problem with you and he needs to step it up a bit. We get caught comparing all the time and then letting it take our minds to a level that we never really wanted it to be on.

Or if you aren’t married the scenario can play out differently of looking at another person’s life and thinking how happy they are because they are married. All of the sudden when you were perfectly content being single and doing your own thing walking with God in the world and not caring if you were married or not you start wanting the same thing  your friend has, a spouse, because it makes her so happy.

Either way we find ways to make ourselves unhappy by comparing what we have and can afford to what those around us have and start feeling like we don’t have what it takes to make us happy. We forget to find happiness in what we do have. We forget to be happy with the car we have, thankful it gets us from point A to point B. Thankful that we are not living on the street even if we don’t own a home. Thankful for our kids being able to even attend school and learn to read and write and communicate properly so that one day they can grow up and have an equal shot at a good job.  Thankful we have a husband who loves us and our kids and is striving to be there for us each day.  When we look around we see what we don’t have and question how everyone else around us is so blessed forgetting where we came from is not the same place as where they came from and that we too have been blessed in so many ways.

God does not want us to live in misery like this all the time. Sure he wants us to make sure we are doing things his way and measuring up to his standards for our lives, but he does not want us looking around coveting what others have and wishing for better. He doesn’t want us wondering around depressed because we think someone else’s life might be better.  He wants us to be satisfied with the life he gave us and be satisfied in his loving arms. He doesn’t love the person down the street anymore than he loves you or me.  We have to choose to look at what we have and be thankful for everything. It is a season to be thankful and there are so many things big and small we have been blessed with that we are to be thankful for. Being content with what you have brings you a life full of joy and happiness.

 I choose to be thankful. I choose to stop looking at others and measuring myself up to their successes and failures. I choose to let God be my everything and know all things are a blessing from Him to me.  I deserve none of them but am so thankful He saw fit to give them to me. God loves me, won’t leave me, won’t forsake me and holds me in the palm of His hand. He does not hold me any higher or lower or tighter than other people I have chosen to compare myself too. 

Saved from Drowning

About 7 1/2 years ago I was on the Jersey shore after my brother's wedding hanging out with some family and one of the grooms man from the wedding. Joe, the grooms man, and I were kinda messing around near the waters edge and eventually he threw me in the water where we proceeded our fun little games not realizing what was going on around us while we were playing around. You see as we were messing around we did not realize the effects that the ocean has while the tide comes in. Eventually we realized we were way past our waists in water and out a good distance from the shore. When we realized we needed to try and get back to shore we started swimming, what happened though was because of the undertow and the tide, and all that other jazz I still don't understand about the ocean, we ended up pretty much swimming in place. I am not a strong swimmer by any means of the word. I tried for about 5 minutes to swim in place and then told Joe, "I can't do it anymore." I was out of energy. I was literally going to drown in the ocean, I couldn't do it. Then somehow he got enough strength for both of us (thankfully he had been doing lots of working out due to joining the Marines) There were rocks that came out all the way to were we were and we found ourselves close enough that he could throw me up onto them. Yes to this day I know Joe saved my life because if he wouldn't have been out there I would have given up as I had nothing left to give and I would have eventually become shark food. We both managed to get out of the ocean thanks to his strength and thankfully he had enough to get us both there.

Lately I have been doing a lot of soul searching and struggling with things. I feel like I am pretty much swimming in place with my faith and not able to get to a safe rock. I am in unfamiliar territory and feeling lost and defeated, just like I felt when I was in the ocean that I didn't know or understand what was going on around me. Last night was honestly terrible, yet beautiful all in one! I hate the feeling of being vulnerable with other Christians but it just happened I am sure it was a God thing as lately my words to him were the same as I gave to Joe when I had no more energy left to keep swimming. I told him; "I can't do it anymore."  But last night was the arm that grabbed me and saved me again from the feeling of drowning.
God doesn't ask us to be alone in our little minds with the struggles we go through. He doesn't ask us to go through it alone, but he does ask us to trust Him to get us through.  I got to my breaking point and He rescued me yet again, not by grabbing my hand and walking with me, but but wrapping arms of love and grace around me and picking me up and carrying me. I am such the independent, I can do it myself, type of person, but God breaks people like me so we know that we do not exist in our faith on our own, but only in His strength can we survive.
He said, "My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness." So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. 2 Corinthians 12:9

We all go through struggles, but sometimes I think God puts us through them to keep us relying on His strength and not our own. Too often I think we try to be faithful to Him on our own forgetting that He is the one who gives us our faith and any strength we have is from the Spirit not from our own abilities.

The Devil has the Bible memorized. Do you?

So this is really weird that I am posting three days in a row but I had to write and share what God taught me this morning while reading His word, if nothing more than that I'll remember this lesson for years to come.

I was reading in Matthew chapter 4; the part of the Bible where Jesus has gone into the desert and Satan comes to tempt him three times.  I was reading through it having read these words probably at least a hundred times if not more and thinking before I even read them, I know this, Jesus wins and tells Satan to bugger off. But today I got a new light of thought while reading through this part of the scriptures.
Have you ever noticed while reading this part that Satan is quoting scripture to Jesus? Yes he is, he actually is quoting scripture to Jesus to try and get him to fall into the temptation.  Then it hit me. Do I know the difference between Satan's voice and God's? And Do I know the Bible better than Satan? I mean Satan knows the scriptures. He knows what they say by heart, he doesn't even hesitate to use it against the Savior why would he hesitate to use it to tempt us into thinking we are doing something wonderful for Christ by quoting scriptures to get us side tracked.
I now think I am understanding the spiritual battle a little better this morning now more than I did. If Satan knows the scriptures that well to feel comfortable enough to use them to fight Jesus then he is way more than comfortable enough to fight me with them as well.  He knows that I do not have the scriptures memorized near the way Jesus does and from what I can tell I don't have them memorized even as good as the devil does, honestly I had to look up the scripture he quoted to Jesus to find out where it was. I get why it is so important to memorize the scriptures and to understand them better, it's because Satan is capable of fighting our hearts and minds with scriptures to make it sound like we are hearing a voice that is not actually God's. When we memorize our Bible and hide God's word in our hearts and seek God's face and counsel we too can then be like Jesus and know the difference between Satan's temptations leading us off the right track and God's voice leading us to the path of righteousness.

God uses you where you don't see

Ever felt like you weren’t doing enough for Christ but wanted to be used but had no idea how? Have you openly told God you are willing to follow him and want him to use you for furthering his kingdom? I have been there done that. It’s not something easy to get over either. That feeling that you are just living a basic day to day life and no one notices you. You feel as though you aren’t helping grow the kingdom for Christ because you haven’t been able to openly share your faith with anyone but maybe your baby?

What you don’t see going on around you in the spiritual world might just shock your socks off! God doesn’t always show you how he is using you to advance his kingdom for his glory and bringing people closer to himself or drawing them in for the first time to know and understand his love. Don't underestimate him He is using you!

I live a pretty quiet mundane life. I don’t do a lot outside of the home. Once a month I serve in our church for a full weekend to help try and get people involved in the church more and in the community to grow the church. I don’t feel like I am being used by God very often and what I am doing many times feel like it is not enough. I am always looking for ways to help God more.

But God has really spoken to me about this. It is not a selfish desire to have God use me but I have to trust that even if I do not see how he is using me that He still is using me.  A few months ago I was going through this agonizing feeling of pain in my heart because I just wasn’t sure God really wanted to use me and maybe it was just a lifelong pipe dream that I could help reach other people for Christ and to help further their lives for God’s glory. You could say I wasn’t trusting that God was using me at all. At the time I was just a stay at home mom my weeks were the same day in and day out with a possible trip to the grocery store or a random play date and church on the weekends.

One day I was not feeling like praying along with our pastor at our church at the closing of his sermon. I mean I was really kind of angry with God at the time begging him to use me. I happened to be staring down at my lap with tears in my eyes with burning desire and anger just wanting him to notice me and use me.  Then out of the corner of my eye I saw this hand go up. Now, you aren’t supposed to look up but I did. About three people down from me was a person who raised their hand to accept Christ.  Now truth be told I did not know this person but I knew the person they were with. And it hit me. Through a long line from me inviting someone to church to them inviting someone with them and then that person was invited by them. 

I had no idea who this person was but that was when God really spoke to me. My desire to help him grow his kingdom was great, but my heart might just need a little tweaking when it came to understanding that He is in control.  He had used me in more ways than I could ever know and that I just have to believe that He does want to use me and is using me even if I may never see how far that light I carry will be allowed to go. He just wants me to keep following him, being open to allowing him to use me even if I may never know till heaven how much my life and light for Christ has affected his kingdom. I may just be a stay at home mom with no real outreach to many.  My light may be small but I know if I allow God to use my light He will allow it to grow and spread to those around me though I may never know to who.

Don’t underestimate what God is doing with you and through you, He has used you in ways you can not see!

Give Thanks for everything no matter who is president

I love this time of year! The fall looks, smells, and the comfy baggy clothes with slippers, and the foods can't forget about those. November is such a fun month as it is typically the month we give thanks for the things in our lives which we have been blessed with over the last year or years. This year with the election I can't really say I have heard a lot of extra thankfulness going on anywhere, just more extra complaining and grumbling and now that elections are over I am hearing it even more. But today is another day to give thanks for everything! We have a choice each day when we wake up to look at what we don't like and complain or to look at what we have and be thankful. We even need to be thankful for the things we may not necessarily like or understand as we know God has a plan and we need to be thankful He is fulfilling His plan his way in His perfect will and timing. "Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." I Thessalonians 5:16-18  This verse is so familiar to many but we only seem to remember to give thanks when we get our way with everything.
There is so much to be thankful for, politically and just in our own little worlds. We are alive, we are saved by the grace of God given to us through Jesus Christ.  Even if you have nothing else besides knowing that God is your savior and leader of your life there is nothing else in this world worth complaining about He has already provided you with the safest and best gift any of us could ask for. However, lets be honest, if you live in America there is A LOT more to be thankful for.
Circumstances are not always what we see as being great. However, if we can remember there is a purpose and ordained will of God that is being carried out and trust that God knows best then we can be thankful that we are not in charge and that even if we can't see the end picture God's will is perfect for all. If we can not be thankful to Him then I have to ask if it is true that we fully trust Him? Or is that just a line we use around our Christian friends? Trusting God with everything will allow you to relax, sit back and realized that yes, you can be thankful in all your circumstances! You may not like things going on around you, no one says you have to like it, but you do need to be thankful that God had His will put into place.
The world is watching how you will react, make sure you are making God proud with your reactions and not embarrassing Him by acting like He no longer has control of the world. Make sure to make this month a month of being thankful for all things, for He has given us many blessings!

December 21, 2012; are you ready for it?

December 21, 2012; are you ready for it?

Do I believe that the end of the world is going to happen on the day many people are predicting to be everyone’s last day on earth? No I do not. I believe what the Bible says in Matthew 24:36 ““But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son,^[a]but only the Father.” I believe this to be true and fact that we will not ever be able to figure out exactly the day or time when God the Father will return and the last few years of the world will happen.

However this whole hype has really got me to thinking about the end of the world type happenings that are described in the full chapter of Matthew 24 and the book of Revelation. Though I don’t believe that the end of the world would take place on December 21 this year I do believe that it was a great way to get Christian’s back off their comfortable butts and back out into the world. What if it was the end of it all coming? What if December 21 was the last day all Christians were on this earth before Jesus returns to bring us all to heaven? Are we ready? Will we be excited to see him? Or would we wish for a lot more time because we start realizing all of our family, friends and even people we don’t know who are going to be left behind that He gave us more than ample opportunities to talk to about our faith?

I think too many times we get caught up in the worldly things we want to do and we skip the whole idea that tomorrow or even today could be our last day here on earth. What if we did know that in less than two months Christ would come back and our chances of reaching out to the lost and showing them the Jesus we know who can save them just like He saved us? Would we stop worrying about the little things that don’t matter? Would we stop trying to find ways to bigger and better everything we have? Would we stop focusing on things like, what shoes is my kid going to wear to school, limit the shoes to one pair that might get worn out and spend the extra cash on making sure we have the biggest Christian outreaches there are to make sure we could reach as many people between now and then as humanly possible?  Would we give all of our time as much as humanly possible to reaching out to our neighbors, friends and family to make sure they knew the end was really near and their time to accept Jesus Christ’s offer was limited.

The time is limited for some that we meet. You don’t know if that person you met at the library yesterday will live through the night. You don’t know if the biggest loves of your life will even live through the night. We don’t know how much time they have and we can’t guarantee we even have that much time ourselves. We all are given limited time but thousands of opportunities to shine for Jesus to grow his kingdom.

Remember, when you get to heaven God doesn’t care what your excuse for wasted time, He holds you accountable for the people He led to your path. He isn’t going to ask you why your missionary friends didn’t do it or why your pastor didn’t do it or your Sunday school teacher; He’s going to ask you.  He isn’t going to be happy to hear that you didn’t have time to stop and talk that day, or that you didn’t know you were suppose to witness to them, or that you got nervous of what they would think of you or reject what you had to say. He expects us to reach the world with our lights no matter how big or small they may seem to us, He has plans to use the light you have.

For those who don’t know Christ personally, time is not an option to play with. If God says ‘times up,’ will you be ready for it?

Changing stubbornness into something positive

Over the last year or so I have really been trying to work on some of the big issues in my life, like anger, stubbornness, gossip, jealousy and negativity.  All of these are not found to be traits that people run after to get and keep but are more known for their bad sides.
This last month I have been doing a devotional by Joyce Meyers regarding dealing with issues of a negative heart.  She does a great way of summing up ideas of how to deal with negativity and where it comes from in short order. Last night she was explaining how Satan is said to be the "father of lies." he is super good at helping you hear and think about bad stuff and stuff that isn't even true and letting it grow and fester in your heart and mind to bring on negativity. Satan is full of many traits that are terrible but, at the end of the devotional her last few words really spoke to me, "Satan's strong point is patience." Wow! It sunk in like a brick wall. I have often ask myself how I can keep going back to old ways of thinking that I have worked on for months on end. Satan is good at being patient and will patiently wait out my ability to fail as a human.
 So then I thought well there has to be something God has given me to fight this and it is true He has. I am one of the most stubborn people you'll ever meet. Stubbornness can be a sin if you allow yourself to destroy you so that you never change your ways. However, sometimes I think if we direct it in the right paths and ask God to use our stubbornness for us and not against us that He will find a way to help you use it. After all, it is a trait that He himself even has,He is stubborn enough to keep coming after us on a daily basis because He wants us and loves us. Why would he not allow my stubbornness traits to be used for good. I can be stubborn I can be down right hard to get through too, so why not put up that stubbornness factor when it comes to Satan so he can not win. Why not be a little stubborn, but in a good way.  I plan to be stubborn to keep on keeping on the path of righteousness. I plan to be stubborn and not let Satan's patience win out but let my stubbornness for the cause of Christ win every time.  Between my stubbornness and allowing God to lead me through every temptation I believe it's a winning situation that Satan can not ever break.

Sometimes God answers prayers with 'NO'

Often when talking to other people about prayer I often hear things about how awesome God is 'when' he answers our prayers. The other day I was discussing a personal issue which I have been praying about for a few weeks now and my friend has been also praying with me and she said, "I know God is going to answer our prayers.. He is a good and amazing God."  Now most of us know what was meant by that, she was saying she knows God is going to answer our prayers the way we have asked.  

But,  God answers our prayers even when we don't get what we ask for. Sometimes, and many times God's answer is, "No." Or other times he answers in his own way, still fulfilling our prayers with what we consider to be a good answer, however it is not in our way of thinking of how He should be doing it. Just because God doesn't answer our prayers how we ask does not mean he is not listening or that he does not care or that he is ignoring us all together. It just sometimes means he did not have that planned for us and He has it all planned out differently than we can see it. Just because God says 'no' to our prayers does not make him less good or less amazing of a God.

A great reminder for me is when I think about my little buddy Per. I use to be diligent in praying that God would heal his body and let him live through his third bout of cancer. But, God did not heal him to live a long life here on this earth, He healed him by taking him to heaven where he would never suffer again.  This to some means God didn't hear my prayers, but I believe he did, he just didn't answer the prayers I prayed in the way I had directly asked. God had a different plan in mind. 

Just as when Jesus is found praying in the Garden in Matthew Chapter 6 before his arrest asking;' my father if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.' God the Father didn't answer Jesus requests by finding a different sacrifice for us but continued with His will and His desire as scary and as humiliating and uncomfortable as it may have been.  His will is perfect and he has a perfect plan for us. 
Even if His answers are No to our prayers we have to trust that He has a perfect plan and and his will for us is perfect.  That doesn't just include us and our lives but the lives of the rest of the world around us. There is a perfect plan for every 'yes' and every 'no' God gives. We just need to remember to stay in peace knowing a yes or no He's got it all planned perfectly for us.

Womanly emotions are not as relaxing as trusting in God.

Proverbs 3: 5&6 "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your paths." (NKJ)
This morning while relaxing with a cup of coffee and just enjoying life I was reminded of these two verses. They are very familiar to me as they were the verses my parents always seemed to call our 'family verses.' I have heard a couple short messages on this passage in the past but today God really seemed to be working on my heart and not exactly in the way that a preacher might have implied it. After pondering on them for some time I started realizing what I believe God has been saying to me through them.
Lately with my pregnancy I have been letting my emotions and my thought processes of human reasoning dictate not only my actions but sometimes even my mood. As a woman, pregnant or not, I know we tend to lean more on trying to be logical but also basing our logical explanations on feelings, that are often times not always facts. God doesn't ask us to know or reason out everything. He is asking me to trust Him and to acknowledge him in everything I do and he will lead me exactly where I need to go. 
 I need to stop focusing on my womanly understanding of life and things going on around me and just relax and trust that everything will happen just as He sees fit.  Even though He doesn't promise bad things to never happen if I trust Him with it all he does promise to walk me through it and I can lean on Him for everything no matter how large or small they may be. So when bad things do happen I have to trust Him to know what is best, know His plan and wait on his timing. 
So I can sit back, relax a little more, enjoy more cups of coffee, stress less about my children and trust that God has a plan and will direct my path and my children's paths in exactly the direction He has planned out for us without fear or worry of wondering when the next bad thing might happen. I have a choice from here on out, to trust God with my whole life and that He has a plan for it, or I can choose to stay in my womanly nature of emotional reasoning and worry.  And I pray that I continue to learn to trust God with His plan more than try and control my situations with worry and emotional reasoning.

Difference between raising an individual and a replica

Just relax! If I've heard this once I've heard it a 1000 times since I have had my first child. I am not one prone to relaxing when it comes to my kids. I want to be on top of everything they do making sure they are safe, that their feelings aren't being hurt and that they also in turn are being purely gentle and nice to everyone they meet. I am sure part of it was how I was raised coming out in my parenting style. Hoping that my children don't embarrassed me and do something I don't like, basically asking them at such a young age to be perfect.
I have over the last couple months really been praying about my parenting style. I want my children to feel free to be who they are, not feel like they are being watched so closely that they are not allowed to screw up or make their own mistakes without being in trouble or making me mad.  I want my children happy and most of all I want to please God through my parenting as it is a huge job he has blessed me with. I have prayed several times for God to start showing me more and more how He would like me to parent these children He has blessed my husband and I with, after all they are not really mine but His.
Today as I was reading through Romans 12 I came across these verses: Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace he has given us. (Romans 12: 4-6)
Now this is one of my favorite lines in the Bible to use regarding the fact that we are all individuals and we all have different talents and we should use them according to the purpose God designed them for.  However, how true would this be as well for applying to parenting. My children are different then me, they are part of the body in my individual home called my family. I did not enjoy my parents when it seemed like they wanted me to focus on growing up the way they wanted me too instead of letting me feel free to explore and find who I was created to be. God designed my children to not be me, but to be someone completely different than me. This means even to the point that I may not understand some of who they are or what they do. But my job is not to remove the parts of them that I don't understand but to embrace them and accept them and let them learn and grow.
When thinking about it do I really expect my children to be perfect?  No, but I do think I try many times to form them more to what I think they should be and should be acting like instead of letting them learn a little on their own, and learn to be themselves which is obviously going to be someone way different than I am.
Does this mean when they do something wrong that I shouldn't discipline them? Obviously not! It does mean that just because they do something I may not like, doesn't mean it's wrong. I have to sit back now before reacting, which is not the easiest thing to do, and evaluate in my brain is it wrong or just different from my way of thinking? The point with parenting isn't making sure we raise perfect little children, but to make sure we raise individuals free to be who God created them to be and encourage them, no matter how weird we think they may be at the time, to advance in who they are but still placing those safe boundaries for them so they know what is personality and being and individual and what is actually wrong. So the truth is yes, relax and enjoy the moments with the children I have been blessed with and enjoy the moments they feel free to express themselves and form to who they are suppose to be.

No longer cliche "I just pray I have a healthy baby"

When we find out we are expecting many of us can’t help but think how we would prefer one gender over the other. We often say, well I just hope it’s healthy, but deep down we don’t expect anything but healthy.  We still secretly inside wish for gender, though we mean what we say about healthy it’s almost become a cliché saying as the majority of us have nothing but purely healthy babies.

So we went in for our 20 week ultra sound with our third child expecting routine everything. The tech doing the ultra sound was nice and cheery letting us know that our stubborn little one would need another ultrasound because she wasn’t able to get baby to move enough to check the whole spinal cord to make sure it was covered and all in good health.  That seemed simple enough she just couldn’t see the whole spinal area. So as we sat and waited for doc to come in so we could just go home and have the routine check up part over with we talked about gender and this that and the other thing.

Doc walked in and started talking about how babies head measurements looked great, heart looked good but baby was not measuring correctly between where the kidney and bladder connect and the area in the kidney was slightly dilated. Ever have your world turned upside down? I did. I cried my eyes out. Though this is nothing too serious as baby’s life is not in jeopardy I was sitting there feeling so stupid because that whole morning all I was concerned with was should we find out gender or should we not.  When in truth what we should be concerned about is making sure our babies are healthy.  The cliché of saying “I just hope baby is healthy,” was no longer a cliché saying it was true 100% true and I didn’t care anymore if the baby was boy or girl just pray for healthy.

I was a devastated mom and feeling terrible. Worried sick that my baby was not healthy and that there wasn’t a darn thing I can do about it!  I had the feeling in the pit of my stomach like that one you get when your kid falls down and gets hurt and you can’t do much for their pain just hold them and pray they end up being better. Of course the doc repeated over and over and over again that typically this type of a thing would usually clear up sometimes it doesn’t but just had to be aware of the situation, but usually all turns out fine.

The guilt that washed over me in the room was more than I could bear. I couldn't keep the tears in, partially because I am pregnant and emotional but mostly because I felt so guilty. The guilt just wouldn't subside it ate at me all the way home, all the way through making dinner. And then the worry hit me like a brick wall. I worried about my baby.  Asking God what we were going to do? What happened if the worst of the worst happened? And then there was this awkward moment of the question being repeated to me ever so gently, “What are you going to do?  What would you do if the worst that she mentioned did happen? Will you not still trust me? Have you not been saying that this baby either boy or girl has a purpose that I have in mind for them and you?”  The tears immediately stopped of course realizing that though the things the doc mentioned were not only out of my control but that if those things were going to come to pass once baby was born that I had to trust God to be in charge of it all. I didn't do anything to cause the problem with baby it was God’s choice to have anything that may happen to this little one occur.  

I was so glad that I had such a big God with big shoulders to go to. Even though things could have been spoken that were a lot worse than what the doc told us I was still saddened but felt so much comfort after going to him and being reassured over and over that He was in control and no matter what He was going to look after me and my family including the little on growing inside of me. There is peace in knowing that even if this baby comes out with issues and if they don’t go away, God is taking care of it all and is holding both me and my child through each step of the way. He will never give us more than He is willing to help us through and He will never ask me to go through it alone.

Though Matt and I are sure things will turn out fine, it was a hard lesson to have to go through in order to answer the one question I keep asking myself even before I got pregnant. “If something really bad happened to me, would I still really trust and rely on God believing he’ll take care of me?”  I can honestly answer that though this may seem minuet detailed to some it was the question I really had to find an answer too.  Is my faith and my trust in God conditional or will I trust that He is good even if bad happens in my life which is only under his control?

The answer, yes, yes! and I am totally 100% sure that I’ve never felt more reliant on Him or happy even if things aren’t perfect with my child. I know that God has a purpose for my child and for my life and that no matter if baby is born healthy or baby is born boy or girl there is a purpose that no one can stop and all will be fine and perfect like He designed and worry is not something He has asked of me to do. Knowing I can fully trust him has relieved me of literally all my worry and it is the BEST feeling I’ll ever have.

For every flaw there is something great

I think many times we as humans, but even more so as women, get caught up in glancing around us. We see the things that others have, don't have. We compare ourselves to others on all levels and at different times. We ask ourselves questions like, "do I measure up?" or "How did they do that?' We even go as far as too look around and focus even more on our flaws. We focus on how bad we think our flaws are or how imperfect we are as a human, wishing we had someone else's flaws because ours are much worse. No matter how we look at our flaws we can often time find ourselves judging our flaws according to what we see in others.

I personally have a huge HUGE problem with this on occasion.  I personally think I have the worst flaws in the world. When I read where Paul writes in scripture that he is the worst sinner of them all I often think that he hadn't met me yet! I mean honestly I have flaws I feel everyone can see, everyone finds crucial and critical that should be dealt with NOW! and get them gone like yesterday!

Yesterday I was talking with a good Godly friend of mine and she is always full of wisdom and wise counsel, she mentioned to me she thought it was strange how we are always focusing on our flaws and not on our good points. For every flaw you may have there is also something great about you.  This is not obviously an excuse to focus on only the good stuff and stop thinking about how to work on our flaws, but that we should focus less on them and if you focus on them make sure you spend as much time focusing on your positive personality traits.

I went home and had a lot on my mind yesterday but this was the main thought I had taken away with me. The truth is that I believe she is right. At least it's a correct statement in my own life. How many times do I focus on what I need to change or don't like about my personality and I focus on it to the point of probably obsessing over it a bit because I just don't like it. Truly I don't think anyone likes their flaws it's humiliating to even admit we have them. But each time we focus on a flaw how much more do we need to go in prayer and maybe ask God to help us deal with those flaws and then ask Him to gently show us some good qualities we have as well that we can focus on and maybe even grow more in to improve those good qualities and move them to great qualities.

God created us to be human, which means we are subject to error, subject to our flaws. He did not just make us solely to have flaws he made us to succeed in areas of our life as well and to use those areas we are good in to encourage and enlighten others around us.  Don't let Satan pull you down by focusing only on your flaws. It's time we start focusing on the beautiful parts inside of us as well that God created to have you shine through for Him.  Both our flaws and our great qualities were designed by God's creative mind to make us exactly the person we are.  Embrace them both and focus on the good of you as much as or even more so than you focus on your flaws.

"So that no one will malign the word of God!"

Does your husband feel confident you love him? Does your husband feel free to always be himself around you both on good days and bad days? Does he feel inspired by you; does he feel relaxed around you?  Or, does he feel like he is always failing, always trying to keep up to impress you and always trying to find ways to make you happy? Questions that a wife should care enough to ask herself of a regular basis.

 To look at myself in the mirror and answer these questions honestly I know many times I fail. There are so many times I am sure that my actions towards my husband do not always show him love, they are not always kind and uplifting or encouraging. Many times I find myself degrading him, telling him what he did wrong and focusing on the things that I wish he would do better.  I say that I am just trying to help him become a better person. But in reality I just need to love him where he is and let God work his way into my husband’s heart. God has a nice way of convincing people where they need to grow and improve on their own, he doesn’t really need our help.

When reading through second Timothy this morning I got stuck on the following verse; 3-5 “likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to too much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.” This last part really stuck out to me. Even though I don’t have a ton of older women in my life encouraging me on a daily basis to be this way I still know that I need to be this way towards my husband and even my children. 

The goal and purpose of acting this way is actually at the end of the phrase, “so that no one will malign the word of God.”  Yah I had to look up malign just to make sure I understood the full meaning of this phrase.  Here are some other terms that came up when I googled the word; evil in nature, slander, defame.  So the meaning here is that we are to love our husbands so that those around us, including our children and husbands, will see Christ in a good and loving light from our actions.  That our actions and love and subjection to our husbands be honoring and glorifying to Christ so that it will not give those around us who do not know Christ a reason to slander our God or bad mouth him in anyway.

How cool is that! If we as Christian women constantly loved our husbands, stood beside them and were truly subject to them, showed much more self control than most of us do, were truly kind always, we would be awesome lights for Christ!  We are to start by loving our husbands whole heartedly. We are to love them even with the flaws we see in them, be submissive and care for them and our children.  Talk about a pretty easy mission for reaching others for Christ. To start with our actions towards our husbands to encourage them, lift them up, and pray for them daily without cutting them down and trying to do God’s job.  We are too be building them up to affirm them for who they are in Christ so that they know that just as much as we love them for who they are all the time, so does God.  Our pure love for our husbands comes only from the one who first loved us, but we must learn to love them with the same kind of love Christ has shown us!

Let's love our husbands with God's love so that we leave no room open to let others in this world slander our God!

Self worth as a stay at home mom

In a world where it is more common to be a working mom as a stay at home mom I can feel completely insignificant. The hardest year of my life was after I quit my job to stay home and be with my children. My oldest was 2 at the time and I was more than ready to stay home with him, hang out with him all day, relax, play, do educational stuff. Also keep my house in beautiful perfect order so when my husband came home from work each night there would be a perfect meal ready and waiting for him and all we had to do each night after dinner was sit and relax and enjoy each other’s company.  It was a hard year for me because there were so many things I didn’t understand about being a homemaker.  You don’t get training for this kind of a job, it’s a learn as you go and you better learn fast, hang on tight while praying your way through the day.

The dreams of playing on the floor with my one and only son, all while having a beautifully clean home with fresh cooked meals and fresh baked goods galore all while being pregnant, were in fact a dream.  In reality stay at home moms don’t have it easy like that at all. We don’t get to play all day and the idea of having a beautifully clean home with a 2 year old is an insane illusion. Clean a window and look back while you are cleaning the next one and he’s already finger printed it up the first one and possibly put his mouth all over it.  Cleaning is an endless chore.  At least when I worked out of the home no one was home to make it dirty 24/7 so it stayed clean a little longer.

But it wasn’t the endless cleaning battles I faced, or the fact that all the happy dreams of having a perfect life were not coming true it was also the inside battle that came along shortly after becoming a stay at home mom.  It was the feeling of self worth going down the drain. Needing to feel that I was just as important to the world as I was when I worked and brought in money to help support my family.  I had worked hard ever since I was 15 years old and now, now I didn’t make a dime and my hard work was hard to see as usually one room got cleaned the other one was getting destroyed all over again.  There wasn’t a lot to show for your hard days of work as a stay at home mom and it started to really wear on me. I couldn’t stand not being productive or at least looking like I had been unproductive.

So then I did this awesome thing to try and start feeling worthwhile. I started serving in every type of ministry opportunity that came my way. At least to the rest of the world, that seemed to look more lowly on the stay at home moms, this would look good. At least it looked like I did something again and the awesome part was I could do it for free and then it looked even better!  But the truth was that the more I did and volunteered for the unhappier I became.  The more I did the more I felt like I was jipping my kids. The more ministry opportunities I took on the less quality time I got to spend with my kids and my husband.

I know God has called me into ministry. I know that 100%.  Most who know me know that I have a huge desire to work with women’s ministry type programs. I also enjoy helping in kids ministry programs. I did my best to find ways to get involved in programs like this to help fill that void that I had to be involved and be important in the ministry of Christ; I needed a sense of self-worth.

The big problem with all this was that the more I got involved with those ministries the guiltier I felt regarding my personal life. Things just never seemed to go right at home. I was becoming extremely short tempered with my kids and soon with my husband. No one in my house was doing anything right in my eyes and the perfect home life I was striving for fell down the tubes and fast.

I had to really start praying as I didn’t understand. “God I know you called me to do women’s ministry, and help out in the church, but why is my life seem so rough so hard? Are you testing me am I doing something wrong. I just want to serve you.”  So many days I would privately pray this as I watched my home life become more of a struggle for me and for my husband and kids. I was so wrapped up in doing ministry for other people with the idea that I was doing it for God that I hadn’t looked at my own life with my family as my main ministry. I had not been the person at home that God wanted me to be.

I always thought that the dreams of being the perfect mom at home with a long long patience span, a great wife that ever adores and yes is even submissive to her husband was just in fact that, a dream. I thought it was something that was never going to happen, it didn’t really exist. However, I think it can exist. I think that the type of woman I dream of being, the type of life I dreamed of having for my family is actually a possibility and even something God desires for my life and the life of my family. I don’t mean that I would be a Stepford wife or anything like that, but I do believe that God desires me to be a wife and a mommy as my first ministry to the world and yes being happy may just be part of that.

If I can’t be supportive and helpful to my husband more often than I am then I am failing that ministry. If I can’t each day replicate the type of good Christian behavior that I should be showing to my children then I am failing that ministry as well. Honestly it’s hard. I am only human I would love for others to see me as something great and grand. But, more than the rest of the world, I care most deeply about my spouse and his ever growing faith and life and my children and their faith and future lives.  I have to take the time now while my children are young to teach them and show them the aspects of Jesus before it’s too late. I need to practice and work on my behaviors at home before they grow up and think more negatively about Christianity because of the twisted unloving ways that were not lived out in their home here.

I eventually stopped working in all ministries I had volunteered for and the worst part was at first I felt guilty. And then I looked at my home life. I am far from feeling guilty that I stepped back and listened to the voice inside my heart that told me my current ministry is to serve my family. The rest of the world will still be there when my kids were not so little and in need of so much of my love and attention.

My house, it’s still a wreck most days, I still feel like I can’t keep up with everything but my family, well even though it’s far from perfect and there are still good days and bad days, the good days far outweigh the bad days. It’s a process I am working on still. I am much happier severing along side with my husband and serving my babies and making sure they get the attention and love they need now than I was trying to serve the rest of the world only to feel important. I am important to the people who are most important to me and that is really all that matters. And I know that even though parts of me are super excited to move onto serving in other areas I know God has called me to I know that now is not that time and I am to embrace and enjoy the time and ministry he has called me to now.  I have a long way to go to be the perfect wife and mother but thankfully now I can at least enjoy the ride as I work to become the best I can be for the ministry I am in.

Please God through marriage-celebrating 5 years!

I am so excited for today! Today my husband and I are celebrating 5 years of marriage together. I know to some five years is no big deal. But to me five years is a big deal. Seriously, in today's world it feels like we have actually conquered something. With how I use to be 5 years ago it is also amazing to look back and see how much has changed. I know no matter how much Matt loved me when he married me there are times he never would have stayed married to me for this long without God helping to give him patience and wisdom to deal with me and all my weirdness and strange ways and stubbornness.
This isn't me writing to brag about five years of marriage, though I think any couple has a right to brag when they reach the mile stone of another year survived together, but I am writing to say that without us having both turned our lives over to Christ's direction a few years back and letting him rule our home we would have not made it to five years, at least not happily celebrating five years.
I find it so fun that just yesterday, the day before we marked 5 years of marriage under our belts, I picked up this amazing book to read called the Sacred Marriage. Such a great book! It has really caused me to take a look at not only myself but more at how I deal with my husband, and what being married and committed to my husband for the rest of my life should really mean.  Making it through the last five years has been great but part of me has worried that the next five years, because of who I am, would get boring.  I am so glad for the new perspective God has shown me through this book. My marriage to my husband is just as much of a service and mission to Christ's cause as witnessing can be.  God created Matt's and my marriage for a purpose and we made a promise to love and cherish each other in all phases and stages of life. My priority in my marriage is actually to emanate Christ, not just to my husband but, through our marriage may we show Christ love for the church to our children and those around us who are watching.
I am now a lot less nervous about becoming bored with the next five years but am looking forward to finding ways to enhance God's church through my marriage and also to find new ways each day to make my husband not only happy but also to help him keep growing in his own personal walk with God. This isn't just a goal to make it through the next five years. This is a goal to make it through life together and doing so in a holy, happy and honorable way that please God. There may be obstacles that come our way but I know they are to make us stronger together as a couple and closer to God so that through the struggles and the good times we can learn to properly show Christ's love for each other as Christ does for the church.

Finding joy in all my circumstances

Have you ever met someone that is happy all the time? The person that seems to be so happy that you would think they never had a bad day or ever had anything truly bad happen to them?  The person that is so happy that sometimes you are so jealous about their happiness and pure joy that you think it’s fake or you get irritated with them?  For me personally though I may seem irritated with someone like that, but actually it’s me being irritated with me not them. Deep down I wish I had their joy. When you ask them about their contentment they answer so honestly that they of course have bad days, and tempers and issues but you don’t believe them because they always seem so put together. But the other truth that they will tell you is the fact that they are so joyful with life in general because of the joy they get from Jesus.

For years this has bugged me. I mean truly to the depth of my core it’s bugged me. It’s almost that thought process of how come God loves them more than me that they are so content and I am not? The truth is I know Jesus, he is a part of my life isn’t he?  So why can’t I have that joy, that peace that same happiness that they have. And the answer is I can!

From the day I was born I was surrounded by “Christianity.” I pretty much grew up in a church as soon as I was brought home from the hospital. It was something I learned. I learned quickly at a very young age how to play the game. The game of pleasing my parents and the people in the church. I knew just the right things to say and do. I memorized scripture like it was nobody’s business. I had more verses memorized by the time I was in second grade than the average adult memorizes in their whole life. I was a pro at playing the game of “Christianity.” But when I looked around most of the people around me were doing the same thing. When in church on Sunday they played the part of a holy person and the rest of the week, unless surrounded by their Christian friends, they were no different than the rest of the world.  Most of them if they did have joy I found out were taking something on a regular basis to make them that way, little pills prescribed to help their anxiety, depression and other issues go away. So I went along with them all pretending on Sunday’s to be happy and full of Jesus love. I became one of the best Christian game players of them all.

But the truth of it all is that I never found the true contentment and happiness and joy that some Christians have actually shown.  It use to drive me nuts when missionaries would come to our church and talk and they were so excited and full of joy and all I was thinking was you people are nuts to be so happy you could die in the world you live in!  And then I would think things like maybe I should be a missionary so I can find that happiness too.  After all if I was a missionary then God would really love me more and give me joy. All I knew was I wanted what they had and I had no idea how on earth to get it.

After returning to the church a couple years ago and surrendering my life back to Christ it was so easy for me to start playing the game again. I got so frustrated with myself. I mean honestly I needed that real joy I craved it! On occasion I had it and in the beginning it was all real I had an inner peace most of the time. But soon playing the game took over.

  About a year ago I started meeting some lovely ladies in my church. And I mean they are lovely, not just in appearance but they have what I wanted so badly. They have the joy, that peace and they are truly content with their life. I started questioning again what it was that was so different about me to them. They were happy, their lives seemed perfect, and funny thing none of them are on drugs to make them happy.  These girls seemed to just have it all together and I LOVED IT!! Sure I can admit I was jealous of them all for being so happy, and honestly I think it was a righteous jealousy.  All of them are mommies with kids about the same ages as my little ones and at first I started thinking, oh they are so fake, no one is really that happy.  But they were, they really are that happy!  They are that joyful and they are that content with life! These are ladies that I look up to so much. They have pure Godly joy.  At first I thought yah it’s easy to have that kind of joy when your life is so perfect. But I started getting to know them. They did not have perfect lives at all they had struggles like cancer and I knew a couple of them as they went through miscarriages, something that honestly would have made me not to long ago question God and my relationship with him. But these girls still smiled and didn’t let their circumstances take away their joy.  These girls are seriously such a blessing to my life as they have shown that their joy doesn’t come in their circumstances but in the Lord. They aren’t perfect but they are real. They are the real deal and I love that I get to hang out with them all. They are the prime example to me of, “the joy of the Lord is my strength.”

The world tells me it's o.k to be negative and upset with things like my past and maybe even current circumstances I go through, but I don't want more excuses I just want pure, long lasting joy. I am still learning to keep the joy in my circumstances but I am learning also how to keep the joy no matter my circumstances.   It is not just ok to know that Jesus is there and he died for me but to embrace the fact that no matter what I do he is going to love me and accept me. But, in truth I knew this before what I also needed was to make time to have a real relationship with God.  It is really hard to know the Joy of the Lord when you don’t actually know him! I am still working on the getting to know God and trying to find joy no matter what is going on in my life or how stressful my day may appear. It’s not a fake thing anymore it’s learning to trust God knowing him and knowing that he can see me through every little detail of my day all I need to do is trust him and stay with an open communication with him.  I use to use every excuse under the sun, I have kids, when do I have time to do that? But the only way to keep a relationship strong and growing with love with anyone God or man is to work for it. If it’s really important to you to find joy you have to sometimes work for it and after a while the work doesn’t feel like work it feels more like a relaxing break you can get when talking with a friend over a cup of coffee.

Do Christians brainwash their kids?

So a while back I was sitting in a meeting with some wonderful Christian leaders and we got into a little discussion about our children and their faith. Someone said something about having children become Christians at such as young age as brain washing them and it wouldn't be sincere. I had to sit and think about it. I mean honestly it kind of makes sense to say something like that if you are trying to make little replicas of yourself.

But I’ve been thinking about this now off and on for the last few months ever since it happened because for me I need some serious clarity to my thoughts and how I really think we should be with our own children. If all I am doing is ‘brainwashing them” to believe as I do is that really right? We think of brainwashing someone like a negative thing. When in reality when you are brainwashing someone it is you repetitively insisting upon them your thoughts and beliefs in something hoping they will one day believe and think the exact same way.

So technically we brain wash our kids to learn their ABC’s right? We repeat it a thousand times and another thousand times again if we have to in order to make those letters stick.  We tell them how to count to 100 over and over and over again. Why? Because we believe that they have to know those basic facts in order to succeed at life. But, that is a belief most people have and it doesn’t go against the structure of our natural world.  The world where we don’t have to question the existence of letters and numbers and how they work because we know, after going through school ourselves, that these really are necessary to succeed in the future.

However, to me faith is the same thing. I am sure beyond a doubt of anything that my faith in God and his Son Jesus Christ is a necessity not just for this world but for all of eternity. I believe it with my whole being just as much as I believe that the ABC’s are a necessity for my children to graduate from high school and go on to succeed in their adult life some day.  So are we brain washing our kids? Call it whatever you want to but if you believe something without a shadow of a doubt aren’t you sure to try and tell not just your kids but also the world around you to convince them of the truths you know? 

 I know my children will end up making their own choices in life and what they believe in their future regarding God and Jesus I cannot control. But I can control the environment in which they are raised in so that when I get to heaven one day I do not have to be questioned by God as to why I didn’t try and raise my child with a sound Biblical background. At least I’ll know I tried my best to raise them to know God and fear and love him all at the same time.  If that is brainwashing my children then I guess that is what it is.  But to me it’s helping them grow up with a sound belief in the one thing I know as well as my ABC’s, that Jesus Christ is God and that we are to fear and respect and love him with our whole being. 

Thoughtful randomness from a 3 year old

Some days I am more stressed than others. But no matter how stressed out I may be my three year old never ceases to amaze me how sweet he is and how much the little words like thank you and I love you can mean so much and brighten up my day.

The other day I was having a pretty good day. I mean morning sickness was there and all but everything else was going pretty good.  And he says these cute random things where he is like, “mom I love you.” Or “Mom you are a good mom.”

And I’ve started to also notice his random statements like, “mom, thanks for…” he is always randomly finding something to thank me for these days. How sweet is that right? Ok so it makes me feel loved and warms my heart each time to know that he really does have thoughtful moments even so young. The random I love you’s from Alex are so much cuter to me when they aren’t put in his mind by anyone other than himself to say them. There are times I say I love you and he says “I love you too” but the times that really warm my heart are his own random thoughts.

But the other day it kind of hit me that his randomness is just what Jesus is looking for too. He doesn’t want just the “good morning, thanks for loving me please grant me a good day.”  He wants that random in the middle of the day thoughts of, “I love you.” Or “Thank you for…”  I don’t do very many random prayers that are about God they are usually about me, my family or my friends. I usually do random prayers when I read things on facebook that a friend is hurting or I hear something else and have a random prayer for that person or when I am feeling like I am getting to that breaking point as a mom and need more patients to get through my day. There is nothing wrong with praying for those things but the truth is I think sometimes God just enjoys hearing how thankful I am for His presents in my life and thankful for his love and that I love him too. There is nothing sweeter than knowing that someone loves you in return and appreciates the things big and small that you have given them and that randomly they think to tell you each day when you are least expecting it.  

Can I ever be a godly, amazing wife?

Sometimes life is just straight up hard. It’s hard to find ways to balance out the routines of life. Lately I have been really struggling with finding the balance I need for my kids and for my husband. I may be a stay at home mom but lately all I want to do is sleep, get sick and eat which makes me even more unable to motivate myself to find the perfect balance. But, even when I don’t have those things going on I have a hard time finding that perfect balance of getting stuff done, running errands, volunteering time and the like.

I know so many times I focus mostly on my kids. I worry that I need to spend more time with them. I worry that I am being too strict or too mean or sometimes too gentle. I want to find the balance in there for them and be the best mom I can be. I focus on this a lot. I read blogs, devotionals, and other people’s thoughts on good ways to be an ‘awesome’ mom to my kids.  Many times I even try to look up what the Bible says regarding children and raising them.

I know there is nothing wrong with that. But I am starting to realize that part of finding that perfect balance should also lie in finding ways to be the ‘awesome wife.’ I know since I have become a mom my poor husband many times gets put on the back burner so to speak so that I can focus my attention on being a good mom.  The reality of it is that I wouldn’t be a mom to any of my kids had I not married their father. 

Though being a mom is a super awesome and rewarding I think that being a wife could also end up being just as awesome and just as rewarding if not more so. I know God made marriage to be something so unique and special to be shared between us and yet most days I don’t even work on my marriage. I don’t look for ways to be a better wife. I don’t read blogs on marriage very often and I don’t do a ton of devotional stuff on my own to find out how to be a good wife.

I get so jealous when I hear guys talk about their wives and how awesome they think their wife is. They don’t even have to say those words there the guys that have been married for a few years and are still madly in love with their wife and know she is just straight up wonderful to them and every time they talk about her you know they think the world of her. It just oozes from their conversations whenever she comes up.  Or when reading the Bible and I read things like how Sarah was a woman of old who was a godly wife and was such a good woman, I get a little jealous but I think it’s in a good way. I don’t get that I dislike them feelings I get the, I want to be them jealousy problem. How are they so good at being a wonderful wife?  What are their secrets?  Don’t get me wrong I have heard my husband tell me thousands of times he thinks I am amazing and awesome but the truth is I know I could be so much better to him and for him than what I am.

So lately I have been searching to find ways to be more the way I think God intended me to be as a wife. I have a long way to go to be even close to some of the women in this world that I find to be godly Christian wives and great examples, but at least I think I am on the path to getting there. I have always desired to be like the woman found in Proverbs 31 but I guess I just thought it would come natural. In all honesty I know now it is going to take more than just a miraculous switch, it’s going to take a lot of work.  

There are three things I am really trying to work on remember to do to try and improve my marriage and make my husband happy and all around successful as much as I can help.

1)      Lift him up instead of tearing him down.  This means when we are in private as well as when I am discussing things about him with others. After all he is a great man and has so much talent and potential.  I am usually the one to find the faults and let him know what all of them are but instead of finding faults I need to find positives and help him work and focus on those. I am trying to encourage him in all aspects of his life.

2)      React slower. I am known for having a big mouth and a huge opinion and I am not one to usually keep it to myself for longer than a half a second.  This is far from easy for me but it’s something that I am trying to learn to do both for my life in general but also for my husband as the poor guy gets bombarded with this problem of mine more than anyone I know.

3)      When all else fails I use my children to help me out. I know that I want both of my boys to grow up and marry Godly wonderful women who adore them. So, I try to think of how I should set an example for the kind of wife they should look for in the future.

I know there are so many other ways to be a better more godly wife but this is where I start. I am not saying it’s perfect or fool proof because it’s not. But it does help to remain focused on knowing that I have set goals for myself to improve and grow in my marriage. I am hoping to some day when I die have God be proud of the legacy I left behind for other wives to follow. But, even if at the end the only person who ever cared was my husband I will still feel successful in having completed my job as his wife.

I support Chick-Fil-A

 The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city. When he saw them, he got up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground. “My lords,” he said, “please turn aside to your servant’s house. You can wash your feet and spend the night and then go on your way early in the morning.”

“No,” they answered, “we will spend the night in the square.”

 But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house. He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without yeast, and they ate. Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom —both young and old—surrounded the house. They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”

Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. ⁸ Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”

 “Get out of our way,” they replied. “This fellow came here as a foreigner, and now he wants to play the judge! We’ll treat you worse than them.” They kept bringing pressure on Lot and moved forward to break down the door.

But the men inside reached out and pulled Lot back into the house and shut the door.  Then they struck the men who were at the door of the house, young and old, with blindness so that they could not find the door.

The two men said to Lot, “Do you have anyone else here—sons-in-law, sons or daughters, or anyone else in the city who belongs to you? Get them out of here,  because we are going to destroy this place. The outcry to the Lord against its people is so great that he has sent us to destroy it.”

So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were pledged to marry^[a] his daughters. He said, “Hurry and get out of this place, because the Lord is about to destroy the city! ” But his sons-in-law thought he was joking.

 With the coming of dawn, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Hurry! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away when the city is punished. ”

 When he hesitated, the men grasped his hand and the hands of his wife and of his two daughters and led them safely out of the city, for the Lord was merciful to them.  As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, “Flee for your lives! Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!”

 But Lot said to them, “No, my lords,^[b] please!  Your servant has found favor in your eyes, and you^[e] have shown great kindness to me in sparing my life. But I can’t flee to the mountains; this disaster will overtake me, and I’ll die.  Look, here is a town near enough to run to, and it is small. Let me flee to it—it is very small, isn’t it? Then my life will be spared.”

 He said to him, “Very well, I will grant this request too; I will not overthrow the town you speak of.  But flee there quickly, because I cannot do anything until you reach it.” (That is why the town was called Zoar. )

By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land.  Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah —from the Lord out of the heavens. ²⁵ Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land.  But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.

 Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the Lord.  He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace.

So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham, and he brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived.

There has been a lot of controversy lately with the very blunt stance Chick Fil A has taken in regards to their belief in homosexuality. Many people seem upset by this because they believe everyone should think like them. That everyone is equal. The truth of the matter is that we are all created equal in God’s image and all sin is undoubtedly equal. However, no matter which way you look at it the Bible is very clear in many areas that Homosexuality is a sin and it is wrong! I do not support people who lie, cheat, steal and murder. I do not condone couples who live together prior to getting married ( I know a little backwards since I committed that sin huh? Thank God for forgiveness and a righting of my ways) I believe that just as I sinned by having relations with my husband prior to getting married people who sleep with someone else of the same sex also has committed a sin. Does this mean it is unforgiveable? No that is not by any means what the Christian world is saying. What we are saying is that it is a sin, one that was paid for when Jesus died on the cross. However it does not mean that we have to support homosexuals.

 I have friends who are homosexual and honestly they know I am against it but I also choose to let them make their own choices just as they let me have my own rights and beliefs. Just as I let them make their own choice because it is their life, each person has a right to disagree with someone else’s life choices and if need be, even be against them to the point of thinking it is wrong. Do we really as American’s want the punishment in the story above which is a very true story. God chose to destroy Sodom and Gomorra because of their terrible choices and all the abominations in which they were committing with each other and to others.  Do we think that we are so far high up on God’s list that we are not going to reap the consequences of our actions? God destroyed cities young and old alike because of this sin being so offensive to him.

So just because you believe that homosexuals should be allowed to do whatever they want as a normal couple I also have a right and a religious obligation to God to not support it or even defend the choices of others.  If Chick Fil A wants to not support them that is their choice and a brave one. I give them several props for being so open on the stance. I think it’s about time Christian’s stop pussy footing around about it and come right out and say what the Bible says about it. It says Jesus came to  pay for the punishment of the sins of the world and that includes homosexuality.  The old testament is very very clear that men are not to sleep with men and that women are not to sleep with women.  Leviticus 18:32 and Leviticus 20:13 are both great examples of what God says about it and he says it is “an abomination.” Verse 20 makes it very clear that they shall be put to death. God has made it very clear on how he feels about it.

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.  And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God. I Corinthians 6:9-11

This last verse says it all. Even though all are punishable by death when you are washed in Jesus your sins are forgiven and you become clean. 

Personally your choices are just that if you want to support it or not stand against it that is your own personal choice. But for those of us who believe it is wrong and stand against it should not be judged either for having our own beliefs, we are not saying those people should die and go to hell we are simply making a stance that we believe it is wrong.  There is nothing wrong with having a belief there is something wrong with laying down and playing dead when you believe someone is wrong just to go along with the rest of the crowed because you don’t want someone to be upset with you for not agreeing with them. Would you do the same if someone came up and started convincing people it was ok to walk around and kill whoever you felt necessary that day? Would you stand your ground that all murder is wrong or would you cave under the pressure of those around you who do not believe as you do?

I am sure there are a million people out there who would love to smack me for writing what I do. But the point is I have an opinion just as you do and I should be allowed to have my rights and opinions heard just as much as the people who don’t agree with me have their right.  So yes, I stand with Chick Fil A and if there was one around here I would go eat there all day long today!  Everyone has a right to their own beliefs and to stand their ground and make their opinions known and it’s time to stop worrying about who we offended as most of the people we offend have offended our God with their words and actions.