Today, tomorrow, and every day after that.....

God has a plan for MY life.

Sometimes we spend so much time doing group activities at church that we forget that God sees us individually.

How do I feel about myself?

How can I love this life that I have?

I have to understand that I'm in a process! God is doing something. He not only sees where I'm at right now.....he sees me in 5 years, 10 years, 50 years. He sees where I am in the future.

What am I doing to influence my children's personalities? Good and bad....

Everyone Jesus healed eventually died, but he helped them live the life they had left with new wholeness.

I do not have to feel bad about myself because God has a big plan for me, but I have to walk upright and do what I need to do to be MY personal best. Not held up to anyone else's standards. Simply my personal best. Spiritually, emotionally, physically.

Jesus understands me.

Jesus loves me. Not because I've done everything right, but because I'm His child.

I have to make a decision to change and improve ME. Not focus on my circumstances or those around me.

There is joy in the Holy Spirit. Pray. Pray in the Holy Spirit. Daily. Constantly. All the time.

There is redemptive correction which is done through God's love. Am I willing to accept it? Am I willing to walk in it? Am I willing to adjust my notions of my own life?

I want to be the real deal. At church, in my home, in my marriage, in my mothering, in my neighborhood, in my appearance, in my everything.

Take me Lord and help me to become what You desire me to be.

I want to enjoy the JOURNEY as well as my husband and children enjoy me along my journey.

Sometimes people are blinded....

I've been there.
Blinded by....
love,
the situation,
hardship,
excitement,
stubbornness,
guilt,
greed,
selfishness,
envy,
pride.
And the list could go on and on.

I have spent the day talking with/mentoring/pleading with/discussing/praying for my sister today. She is in a situation right now where people are giving her advice regarding a situation, but she is blinded. Blinded by selfishness, love, excitement, lots of stuff. She is being asked to wait six months. Six months seems like eternity. From the outside, we know it's not. But to her, it's eternity. The person she believes she will marry (and we all love and believe he is great for her) is under spiritual leadership right now that is asking him to step back from their relationship and focus on the Lord for six months before getting married. He is passionately in love with the Lord. She knows that it's best for him, but using her female ways to draw him to her instead of his spiritual leadership. I wish she could see. I wish she would listen. She loves the Lord but she has yet to learn to completely TRUST Him. Trust that His ways are higher our ways. She is seeing through blinders right now. It's so hard, especially for my personality type, to watch her make the wrong decision. It's hard to see her overestimate her maturity. I've been there. Thought I was ready for things that I wasn't. Thought that I was right and everyone else was wrong. Perhaps I didn't say it, but I thought it.

Why is that emotions are sooooo powerful? How is that our heart can trump our mind? When do you have to just let go and allow people, even loved family members, make their own decisions? Where does Godly counsel stop and my own desires start?

I know they both want to follow the Lord, but I believe that she is not allowing him to make the decision solely based on HIM listening to the voice of God. I don't want their foundation to be cracked because she influenced him to make a decision against his spiritual leadership. This is so hard!

Lord, please help me be constant in prayer for them and not just say what I feel. Please Lord, let them hear your voice in all this. You may need to speak a bit louder because she isn't listening right now. This is so important. It's their future. It's so much bigger than the present. Please Lord, help her hear the words that those that love her are speaking. Help him stand up and take a place of spiritual leadership even if it makes her mad or hurts her, because in the end it's the only way for them to be all that You want them to be as a couple. I trust You! I want to keep talking. Keep giving advice. Make her understand. I can't change her heart though. Only You can. Please Lord, soften her heart to You. Help her understand what Your voice sounds like. Please. I love You. Thank you!

The Whole Hearted Child

I have skimmed through The Whole Hearted Child before after getting it from the library.
But I found one at a used curriculum sale for $3 and was so excited to have my own copy.
I've only just begun as I grabbed my yellow highlighter and turned to the introduction.

Here's what I found there:

"By the grace of God, you will one day rejoice to see your children graduating from your home school to take places of Christian leadership in the church and in the world. Your wholehearted child will become a mature Christian adult, serving God "with wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind." (I Chron 28:9) And in God's timing, your sons and daughters will marry and begin their own families to carry on all that you have taught them, and to raise their own wholehearted children. May we all live to see that day."

Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever! Deut 5:29

Yes, Lord, let it be so.

Be still....

"Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him." Psalm 37:7a

Well, this verse is not my favorite because I struggle with it so.
I struggle to wait.
I struggle to be patient.
I like to have things happening.
Being accomplished.
Taken care of.
I don't always follow all the steps to a recipe because it takes too long.
I don't always follow all the rules because I want to get to the end result quicker.
I don't always pray for as long as I should because I don't do well repeating the same words night after night.
I find that busyness keeps me from boredom.
Boredom drives me crazy.


"May I recognize today that the worst form of busyness is the kind that keeps my destination unfocused." Max Lucado

"Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my cry come to You. Do not hide Your face from me in the day of my trouble; incline Your ear to me; in the day that I call, answer me speedily." Psalm 102:2 

Now that's what I'm talking about. I like that verse. David wasn't waiting patiently when he said "answer me speedily!" Again, I come back to the issue of balance in my life. Wisdom is perhaps what it all boils down to.

When to wait; when to cry out come quickly because I need you now.
When to press in; when to sit back.
When to speak; when to listen.
When to stand up for something; when to move on and realize it doesn't even really matter.
When to ask one more time; when to simply drop it.

Wisdom. Yes, I think that's what I'm longing for more of today.

"Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you." I Peter 5:6-7

Interrupting

Psalm 141:3
Set a guard over my mouth, LORD; keep watch over the door of my lips.


I tend to interrupt. I don't mean to do it rudely. I just always have struggled in this area. It has been brought to my attention a few times in my lifetime and was again today. It's never easy to hear things that hurt. But I also want to grow. The funny thing is that in my family that I grew up in there are a LOT of girls and we all like to talk and tell stories and often talk over each other and it's just normal for us. I'm not saying it's right, it's simply what we do. I'm not justifying. Simply saying that when you grow up with certain acceptable behaviors in your family it is not always as noticeable to you as to others.


Sanguine personalities also tend to have this negative attribute. Again, the part that hurt when it was quite bluntly brought to my attention by a frustrated individual today is that I don't mean to devalue someone else's opinion. I'm just talking. I talk. I talk a lot. I talk more than I should. Although, I strive VERY hard to not allow gossip to be a part of that "talk". I just like to talk to people. I can go up to a stranger and talk and talk and talk. I love working in the church office because I get to talk with lots of people. 


Anyways, it was a humbling experience when I was approached about it because I was in no way meaning to be rude or interrupt. I was just talking about what they were talking about. This is hard because I want to justify my actions and say it's just my personality and that I don't mean anything by it. But I know that growing in the Lord does not allow for justification. Whether or not the other person was in the right or not in their approach is not the question, but rather how I respond to it. 


I apologized and then sent a note of apology. Although I didn't feel it was a great offense, I didn't want any door of bitterness to be up between us. 


Lord, help me take this reminder as one from You that I need to guard my mouth. It's not always just the words I say but WHEN I say them. You know this is an area that I work at but often slip up in. It is so important to me that my mouth is never an avenue for gossip that often I don't pay enough attention to other areas - like my tendency to interrupt. 

Psalm 141:3
Set a guard over my mouth, LORD; keep watch over the door of my lips.

Living in the middle

What does living "in the middle" mean? I'm not 100% sure but I'm coming believe that I often live there and that's not where I want to be.
Jesus didn't call us -me- to live a life in the middle. Choosing neither one way or the other. It sounds counter to what I always say about having balance in my life, but this is different. The "middle" represents the fence post. Am I going to be radically in love with Jesus in my home, neighborhood, ministry....or just enough in love with Jesus to get by?

Middle-intermediate or average. On neither extreme. Medium.

Those are not words I want to describe my spiritual life!

I want exceptional. Flowing from the lineage of Abraham and Sarah. Living in freedom from the law. (See Galations.) Not a slave to mediocrity just because the world says I have to fit into a box. Oh, let me change that, OR the church says we have to fit into a box. I'm not saying to not follow the teachings of the Word! Absolutely not!!! I'm saying, I want to be so radically in love with Jesus that it flows through in every area of my life!:)


Galations 1:10-
 10 Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.