>My church is in the process of a transformation. We are working toward shedding some dead weight. We are trying to become more outwardly focused and putting our energy into where Christ called us to put it… in our Jerusalem, our Samaria, and to the world. We are evaluating our programs and budget and making sure we are being good stewards of the resources of time, money, and people that God has gifted us with. We are working to get our church lined back up with the plumb line of God’s Word and God’s Command and Christ’s Commission.

>

>My family spent this weekend having a yard sale.
I do not like yard sales.
I like going to other people’s yard sales, but not having my own. I always have this looming dread in the back of my head that I am going to waste all this time and energy packing and pricing and arranging and end up just sitting out in the hot Alabama sun for nothing.
Then I still have to do something with all the things that do not sale.
My husband tried to encourage me… to no avail.
So Thursday morning through Saturday afternoon we sat out in our driveway praying that someone would see our excess and make it their treasure.

While I was walking around the tables and re-arranging things, the way my mother-in-law showed me how to do to encourage the sales, the wind blew open one of the cookbooks that we had on a table.

I looked down on the table to close the cover and read God’s recipe for salvation. So I thought hmmm maybe I’ll flip through this one.

I never randomly flip through a cookbook. I had rather look and see what we have in the kitchen and then go to google and search a recipe for whatever item I have found. My husband is the one who looks to see what’s in the cookbook and then goes to the store to search out the items for the recipe he has found.

This particular cookbook was from around 1987 and was put together by a Christian’s women group in Tennessee, L.i.f.t., Ladies In Fellowship Together. I thought the acronym was quite good so I carried the cookbook with me to my shade chasing chair.

As I turned through the pages I came across a page titled Beatitudes For Homemakers. Before I share these “beatitudes” I think it’s pretty important to point out that the term homemaker has been possibly misused a little. I say that because I believe that every wife, every mother- whether they are a “housewife”, a “stay-at-home mom” or a “career woman” or a “working mom”, are all still the home makers. So really this should just be Beatitudes For Every Woman.

Now before I typed all these out I considered conveniently leaving out the one’s I’m not so good at… and well I just went ahead and put them all in… 🙂

>I opened up the mail the other day and I read “Are the stressful events in your life drawing you closer to God?” This was the heading in some mail from Marriage Today with Jimmy and Karen Evans.

I almost laughed out loud.

Hmmmm, do the stressful events in my life draw me closer to God?
Well I suppose if you count me filling up my journal pages with all the the things that I think are wrong with my life and with just life in general and asking God when or if He’s going to do something about it as drawing closer to Him… I would say yes.

However, somehow, I don’t think that what was what the question meant.

As I read further Jimmy Evans went on in the letter to say, “When you’re under stress, the enemy can tempt you to doubt God’s goodness or His motives. Many people think it’s wrong to doubt and are hard on themselves for having doubts about their marriage. Doubt is something God wants to use for your benefit, not make you feel guilty about. He wants to strengthen your faith and show you just how trustworthy He is.”

As I continued skimming through this intriguing piece of mail I read, “Doubt isn’t sin until it causes you to disobey God in unbelief. Doubt and unbelief are not the same thing. Unbelief is what happens in your heart when you don’t bring your doubts before Jesus.
Doubt says, ‘I don’t know if I can do this. It’s so hard to trust God.’
Unbelief says, ‘I won’t do this! There’s no way God can help me.’“

I continued skimming through this mail and then laid it down where I could come back to it… I knew I would need to.

It’s been a stressful time. Life has been hard. My family has been through a lot, not in just the past few days, but the past few years. I know that most likely your family has faced it’s own struggles as well. In these days of struggles. These wilderness years, I have had many moments of doubt, many moments of confusion, many moments of weak flesh, many moments of frustration… but my Redeemer has always seen me through.

I was reminded once again as I listened to the Precept video on Isaiah 53 that I am to count all suffering as all joy. Enduring whatever suffering I am going through for the joy and the hope that is set before me. I was reminded that if I am suffering it is because God is at work in me.

I was reminded that Jesus was not a victim. He willingly subjected Himself to suffering so that God would be glorified, so that I would be saved, so that you would be saved.

I had to ask myself-  “How often do I take on the victim role when suffering comes my way?” I have to admit that when suffering hits I seem to immediately respond as the victim, not the suffering servant that I am called to be in Christ.

>This week has been and will continue to be a week of dumping burdens.

I know what I am supposed to do with these burdens and even though I rest on one day and lay them down at my Saviors feet and cast them upon His strong shoulders… I will catch myself running to them and grabbing them back up and trying to carry them all over again in a spilt second.

When I grab all these up I find my focus scattered.
I find myself unable to even think straight because I am trying to keep account of all my burdens.
In my inability to focus I become unable to hear my family clearly and I can’t find enough quiet in my own head to complete a single thought and then I find myself frustrated and spewing irritability on everyone.

Believe it or not I think I have discovered that these times are what set me into a migraine. It begins with me being dizzy and light headed and unable to focus my eyes and then the dull throbbing begins behind my eye and wraps around my neck and up the back of my head to my forehead.
Yes, I do believe that our attitude physically affects us.

My husband and I just finished having a conversation about attitude and about the fact that we are in complete control of how we choose to respond to certain things. You see I have chosen to respond to some of the things he has said to me this week with hurt and anger and I have chosen to hang on to each instance so that I could let the justification of my irritability build with what I call hard core facts.

>This could be part of my rebellion issue popping up or it could be simply a “pet peeve” or it could be righteous indignation…

There is something in Christendom that makes my neck tighten up.

The ever present, “I don’t care who this offends but I blah, blah, blah”
or the great threat, “Let’s see who really loves Jesus and re posts this” or “forwards this”
or even the “If you care about (fill in the blank) then you’ll re post/forward, etc”

I could be reading the most awesome email and then if I get to the bottom and read one of these it loses all sincerity to me.
I then delete it.

I just don’t feel that I ever need to announce that I don’t care if I offend you because of my convictions. The way that I live out those convictions should declare that in itself.

I also don’t feel I need to prove my love for my Savior by cowering before a post threat… I just don’t see how re-posting or forwarding an email is living out my faith before men. It’s pretty easy to hide behind a computer screen and just press send.

You see that post might have said a really good thing, but if I re-post it because some person demanded me to prove something to them… then I am obeying man and not God. If the post is of God and it moves the Spirit within me, I’ll re-post it because my God led me to, not because my loyalty was threatened by man.

I can forward a thousand and one emails and re-posts every thing I read and still deny my Jesus before men. I can declare on my facebook page how much I love Jesus… but it means nothing if I have not loved Him enough to obey Him or to share His love when face to face with another human being.

Personal interaction was important enough to God that He left the glory of heaven to take on humanity and this flesh in order to share His love with us face to face. God did not have a Written Word face and then have a completely different Human Interaction face. His life lived out His Word.

When we become believers we are sanctified in this Word and we are filled with the Holy Spirit and we too should be fleshing out the Word of God and others should be able to behold His glory in us.

Jesus didn’t have to stand up on a soapbox and shout that He didn’t care who He offended and He didn’t have to threaten anyone to spread His message. He just spoke and did what He did and didn’t change according to where He was at or who was listening.
He simply lived out His Word.

May we too, as His disciples, follow His example and live out His Word.

May we not just be computer christians, blogging believers, facebook faithfuls, email evangelists, or testimony tweeters.

Let us also manifest and magnify the glory of our God and declare His gospel and let us praise His name outside the gates. Let us also, when we are given the opportunity to be face to face, and look another human being in the eye, be bold and confident enough in the truth that we know to share the only Name that eternally saves.

>Last night I ran from massive multiple tornadoes on foot all night long. They were everywhere. Yes, for those that don’t know I do live right in the middle of the April fury. Our home somehow managed to get missed by less than a mile, but the damage was all around us. My husband had been home from work only 3 hours when the first tornado ripped through his work. My dad called as He watched one coming down across the street from his place of work right before they all ran across the street to seek shelter in a basement. We spent the day and night running back and forth across the street to our neighbors basement. 

It was a day that our children will never forget especially since after it happened they went with us to help those who were directly hit. They saw first hand how we can lose everything in mere seconds. I pray that this taught them to not put their treasures or hope in the things of this earth. We used this storm to help teach them this truth. We also used it to teach them that sometimes it takes God allowing these kind of things to happen to wake people up so that they remember that the only thing that lasts is Him. 

I suppose all the thunderstorms that have come through here as of late renewed this day in my mind and so I saw tornadoes and debre flying in the air all night as I ran to seek shelter. The funny thing was in my dream the storms were all around me and trees falling and being ripped up and yet my hair was not even blowing. I was completely protected.

Then would you believe that I wake up this morning to the sound of thunder once again. I go outside to see if the wind and rain is going to blow me out of my sacred spot and I step out the door and just sit on the steps to listen to what was a gently rolling thunder.

Then too close for comfort lightening strikes and this crazy loud crackling thunder explodes and I physically jump up off the steps and my heart is pounding like mad in my chest. I am thinking to myself, “God that is so not funny!” Then I am immediately reminded of the awesomeness of my God and reminded that I need not take Him lightly in anyway. He is God.

Yes, the fear of God put in me in an instance. My mind goes to the mountain in Exodus when God was spoke to the people as a whole and when His voice thundered they all came to Moses and said “you talk to Him and then just tell us what He said…” I have to admit that this morning I sympathized with them… 

After my heart stills I sit back down outside under our breezeway and contemplate whether it is safe to bring my stuff out and then another lightening strike and simultaneous crazy loud crackling thunder explodes and shoots light out of the “off” bulb above my head… yeh, I go in the house.

I now crowd in my kitchen corner (because it is conveniently located next to the coffee pot and I don’t have to stop my study time to refill my cup… just reach over). I am in Isaiah 55 today and then I am directed in my homework to research the times I have seen covenant in my studies these past few weeks. I love studying covenant, because our God is a covenant keeping God.

With my very recent morning experience this one verse spoke volumes and immediately sent me into a song of praise 

>I have made lots of decisions without ever consulting the Lord. Before December 9, 2001 it never even occurred to me to seek God’s advice in anything. The only time I prayed was when I wanted Him to do something for me and it was never to seek His will, just to get me out of this mess the way I thought He should do it. This prayer was usually a time that I would attempt to bargain with God.

You know the classic, “Dear God if you will do this then I will do that… I promise!”  

You see I didn’t know God well enough to seek Him before I made the bad decision that I was now asking Him to fix. Pro-active prayer was not on my mind at all. I just went through life as I wished and expected Him to do what I wanted Him to when I asked Him to do it. Then I would discount His existence and reality when He failed to comply to my demands. 

Wow… yeh… I had alot to learn…
How very thankful I am for the patience of my Creator and Eternal Father.

I wish I could say that after December 9, 2011 I finally got it. Nope. Not!
However, the learning process had finally begun. I finally had stopped and said, “God, I am missing it and I know it. Please teach me!”

Even as a (to the best of my known ability) fully surrendered bond-servant of Christ I have made decisions without consulting God first. How easy it is to think this is what I am going to do and I don’t need to pray about it. Most of the worst ones were in my early times of learning but I catch myself still falling into this trap.

The one that weighs the heaviest on me to this day is the decision to have my tubes tied. Today as I consider this decision I cringe. I had been walking with the Lord faithfully for almost three years when I chose this step, yet I know that I never one time asked God if this is what I should do. I just put my foot down, said it was the plan, and delivered my youngest and had them immediately take me back for the tubal.

You see my first child, was a wonderful precious child, that literally did not sleep for almost three years. When I found myself pregnant with my second, I told God He was crazy and was trying to kill me. Before I even knew who my Bekah would be I shut the door on any future consideration of another child. I basically said, “well God I’ll take care of this myself”

Now 7 years later I would give anything to take back that decision… or simply to know that it was God’s guidance that led me to make it, not this ever present reminder that I never even asked Him what was His will. Now I will never know if He had a son for me, that man-child, to carry my husband’s name to a next generation, or another beautiful girl to melt my heart with her giggles of joy.

I have often prayed that God would just take it upon Himself to reverse my decision, to just throw down His Godly gavel and shout Over-ruled! And heal my womb and bless me with life again… but He hasn’t. But I love Him still. I will bear the indignation of the LORD and keep this as my reminder to pray in all things.

This morning as I was working in my Isaiah Precept homework I read