I Did It

Well I finally did it.  I removed myself from the great distraction of facebook.  I hadn’t realized how much time I actually spent on facebook until now.  It’s almost a relief to not have it anymore.  It did make me a bit nervous how in deactivating my account they said people could still invite me to events and I could log back in at any time.  Hmmm...

So I had a really amazing devotional time this morning.  I’m doing our church’s ‘Foundations’ devotional and it was talking about reading the Bible ‘for real’.  Not just reading the words but seeking God in it.  I’ve been reading a Chronological Bible and I’ve found it very helpful to read the events in the order that they occurred.   So today before I started the Bible reading portion of my devotional time I asked God to speak to me though what I would be reading and these are the passages that stuck out to me:

2 Samuel 23:10

‘He killed Philistines until his hand was too tired to lift his sword, and the Lord gave him a great victory that day.  The rest of the army did not return until it was time to collect the plunder.’

2 Samuel 23:12

‘But Shammah held his ground in the middle of the field and beat back the Philistines.  So the Lord brought about a great victory.

Both verses are talking about David’s strongest warriors.  Jashobeam (verse 10) and Shammah stood their ground in difficult circumstances.  Even when the rest of the army deserted him Jashobeam kept fighting for the goal of victory.  He used all his strength and concentration until he could not even lift his own sword, ‘and the Lord gave him a great victory.’  The rest of the army ran away from this difficult task of winning a battle.  They only returned to reap the benefits of victory.

Now these guys weren’t perfect and neither am I; but what an amazing picture of faith!  Standing firm no matter what others around them were doing and God gave them great victory!  I’m going to ponder about that one today!

Thanks God!

Jesus in Everything!

Yesterday was another amazing day in Children's Ministry!  I took a picture of my amazing marker face paint which was part of our activities.  I also had the privilege of speaking the lesson part of the evening.  I’ve taught lessons for kids ministry before and so often I find that during my preparation time that God teaches me something through the lesson before I teach it to the kids.  This week’s lesson was fairly straight forward.  We want Jesus in everything!  Well maybe not that straight forward.  These were the verses I based my lesson off of:

Proverbs 3:6

“Seek his will in all you do and he will show you which path to take.”

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

“Always be joyful.  Never stop praying.  Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.”

This morning when I logged on to Facebook , I was overwhelmed with baby info and I had to face my biggest foe: envy.  It is just so hard to hear about ‘feeling the baby move’, ‘our precious gift has arrived’, and so many other real heartfelt posts and to be sitting here in a quiet house alone.  Just waiting.  I talk to God about this every day and today was no exception. I was reminded of my lesson from last night and how we want Jesus in everything, every situation, wherever we are, no matter how we’re feeling. 

“God I trust you.  I know you have a plan for me.  You’re holding my future baby in your arms right now.  But right now I’m having a hard time.  Give me strength God.  Give me strength and patience.  You know what you’re doing” 

Then this song came to mind and my Facebook friends helped me recall the title so I can share it with you.

http://youtu.be/CHdSgQVIb5c

FFH- One Of These Days
One of these days I'm gonna fly
Over the mountain
One of these days I'm gonna ride
On the silver lining
One of these days I'm gonna witness
All I've been missing
One of these days

One of these days I'm gonna do
All the things that I've never done
I'm gonna finish all the races
That I've run but I've never won
And I'm gonna see a million faces
And recognize everyone
One of these days

Chorus:
One of these days
Gonna see the hand that took the nails for me
One of these days
Gonna hold the key to the mansion built for me
One of these days
Gonna walk the streets of gold that were paved for me
One of these days
I'm gonna see my Savior face to face
One of these days

One of these days I'm gonna see
Just what became of me
On the day that I believed
When you took myself from me
And I believe I will see
What I would have been
If You didn't save me
One of these days

And one of these days I'm gonna talk
With all the saints that have gone before
And in their sandals I will walk
And we will sit along the shore
And I will learn all the things
That I never knew before
All this and more

One of these days I'll finally be
In a place where there's no more need
No more pain and no more grief
No more foolish disbelief
And all the joy there will be
When at last we finally see
One of these days

 

Wake Up Call

http://mediasuite.316networks.com/player.php?p=i0yi846u
http://www.annegrahamlotz.com/

It almost feels some days like I should blog every day just to keep up with all the cool things going on around me.

Yesterday I went to church to watch a simulcast called ‘Wake-Up Call’ by Anne Graham.  It was really good!  I would REALLY encourage you to watch it.  At the end of the message Anne was talking about how she took some time to just listen to God and have her soul wiped clean.  A lot of us look at pastors and teachers and just assume that they have less trouble with sin than the rest of us.  That is definitely not the case.   They are human too. She said how God just kept revealing to her things that she needed to confess and repent of.  She challenged others to also take some quiet time and just listen and let God speak to you.  I tried it this morning before the kids got here for daycare.  It was AMAZING!  For me I concentrate best if I write down my prayers.  During this time of listening I just kept getting pages and pages of things to pray for!  It was AWESOME!

A couple days ago I was just thinking about the wonders of God and looked out the window to see an amazing sky.

Another thing to mention is that it was my 25^th birthday this last week.  For whatever reason it appeared to be a cup cake birthday!  I made cupcakes with one of my daycare kids on Thursday, and then Friday I got cupcakes from my mom and from my sister.  Jared also surprised me with ice cream cake!  It was a fun birthday!

What God Can Do

Wow!  I just love getting back into the groove of things!  We had our last weekend holiday of the summer season as well as the last marathon.  Both went well!  But now we’re getting down to business.

Philippians 1:9 – ‘I pray that your love will overflow more and more and that you will keep on growing in knowledge and understanding”

It’s really true that to grow in your faith you need to fellowship with other believers.  We’ve had our first few meetings now already with our children’s ministry groups and it was SO great to reconnect with them!  I am SO excited to get to know my new groups of children.  I have already met my Wednesday night group and we are going to have a great year together!  I can tell already.  I feel so much better prepared this year as opposed to previous years when I was still getting a feel for things.  God has just kept showing himself to me this summer and over the last 2 years or so.  Want an example?

One Sunday I was sitting in the main service close to the front with my parents.  This is abnormal for us as we usually sit in the simulcast (overflow area sort of).  Anyway, I was just settling in to my seat when I noticed the girl sitting in the row in front of us.  She looked very familiar, but the person I thought it looked like was not someone I thought would be in church.  At the end of the service she turned to get her things and I could see her whole face.  It was AWESOME!  I went to school with S.R. from K-9 but hadn’t seen her in for sure 5/6 years.  And there she was sitting in front of me! 

From that day we’ve kept in contact.  Though S.R. has not been on the ‘church scene’ as long as I have, I have learnt a lot from her over the summer.  She’s asked me questions, shared her own ‘God moment’ stories and it’s just incredible how she’s growing in her faith!  Her growth inspires me to dig deeper, read more, do more and be better!

Want one more example?

I do childcare at home and so often I feel like I’m not doing enough to teach these children about Jesus.  I often tell myself that they are young and just don’t understand quite yet.  But today we were doing our daily bible story and it was where Jesus says ‘Let the little children come to me and do not stop them.’  One of the girls that I’ve been watching for a while starting talking about the things she knew about Jesus and Heaven.  I explained to her about what we need to do to be able to get to Heaven and see Jesus and hug him and ask him all the questions she wanted to ask (‘How did God make eyes?’...).  I asked her if she wanted to do that, and she said yes!  WOOO!  So I prayed with her saying sorry to Jesus for how we do bad things sometimes, that we really want to be more like him and be able to be with him in Heaven...  It was AWESOME.  Then we read a book about Heaven which got her even more excited!  Now I’m excited too!

I could go on and on about all these amazing things God has been doing in my life butI really need to go to bed.

Jumping back in

Well summer break is quickly coming to a close and we’re jumping back into our regular children’s ministry for the coming school year.  We had a meeting on Tuesday to hear the scoop on how things will run this year.  I am starting ‘from scratch’ you might say with a new group of grade 2 kids.  I am very excited to meet them and see what ‘Going Deeper With God’ will be like with them this year!

Jared and I try to do devotions together every night and last night’s devotional was very interesting.  It was talking about how ‘love ads margin”.  The first line of the devotional states:

“You can’t do everything.  And love understands the wisdom of living inside this reality.”

Obvious yet profound I thought.  I try so hard to be a good wife some days.  Get the dishes done, write out a meal plan and shopping list, wash the floor...  But some days it just doesn’t happen and that doesn’t make me a poor wife.  Jared is still going to love me if there are a few crumbs on the floor, or dishes on the counter.  I am so very blessed to have an amazing husband whose love adds margin.  And on top of being amazing, he sure is cute!