Posted on in 2013 Posts

It’s Been a Squirrely Kind of Week!

Church in the park 2013 003Did you ever have a week when you have so much to do and so little time?  Even the best laid plans change and cause stress.   Since our house has a walkout basement, we literally live several feet up in the trees.  Because of that, I see a squirrel’s world like I never have before.

Jim called me to the window on Friday to see this squirrel taking a nap in the tree.  When have you ever seen a squirrel stop?  They are typically running, running, running.

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They literally flit from one thing to another…thus the meaning of the word squirrely!  I ran for my camera but I was too late, it woke up.  However,  it proceeded to take time to groom itself before running off to its next great adventure.

In the middle of all the craziness of the week, God gave us a moment to laugh and forget it all.  I can’t help but think that He was trying to get my attention.  A squirrel in the tree does it every time!  He reminded me that even when I’m tired and stressed, it’s good to take some time to rest, take care of myself and then get back into the race. Most of all, He wants us to laugh a little along the way!

Church in the park 2013 008Is your life hectic like mine has been lately?  Do you need to rest?  How about your spiritual life?  Does your relationship with God need some grooming? Can you still laugh at the little things along the way or are you too uptight and stressed all the time?

My prayer for you this week is for you to get on track–whatever that might mean for you.  Whatever it is that needs to slow down or be cleaned up in your life, let it happen.  Don’t forget…be blessed and get out there and be a blessing!

Psalm 46:10  He says, “Be still , and know that I am God…

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Posted on in 2013 Posts

Really…I’m Just Trying To Be a Blessing!

Next week our church is going to hold their services in the park with a potluck to follow.  Every year we do this, I am reminded of a funny story the first summer I was with this group.  Jim and I had been recently married and I was in the “get to know everyone” phase of my new church.  We were each supposed to bring a dish to share and  I decided to make a fruit salad.  They are easy, fool-proof and very impressive to the eye with all of the great colors of summer.  When I got done mixing it, I put it in the refrigerator for the night so we could take it and run the next morning.  I was so excited to have such a pretty dish to share with my new friends!

The next day, we got everyone ready and out the door we went with our beautiful fruit salad!  When we got to the park, I put my bowl on the table and popped the lid off to add a spoon.  In unison, you could hear Jim and I gasp as he quickly shoved the lid back onto the bowl.  We both nonchalantly headed to the parking lot with our salad.  Much to our dismay, there were these brown things all throughout the salad.  We couldn’t figure it out at first until it was explained.

One of the kids, unbeknownst to me, was concerned about the fruit getting too hot out in the summer heat as we waited to eat.  Just trying to be a blessing, they decided to help me out.  They decided that in order to stay cold, we would need ice.  Instead of normal ice cubes though, they decided to make them from root-beer of all things!  Too funny!  There Jim and I were, tossing little brown ice balls to the ground wondering if we should just scrap the salad all together!  Since the ice hadn’t had much time to melt, we went ahead and took it back to the table once we pulled all of them out.  We had to warn people of the issue just in case.  How embarrassing!

Have you ever had a situation like that where you just wanted to help but it wasn’t appreciated?  I felt bad for them as I am sure they were proud of what they had done to help.  Perhaps they just needed to think it through a bit better.  However, in a kid’s mind, root-beer ice cubes would be awesome!  LOL!

I know when I write my blog, I have good intentions.  I pray.  I write.  I sleep on it and pray again.  I tweak, tweak, and tweak.  Then I post.  Some might not understand why I do this and others might not appreciate my efforts.  However, this blog is a ministry to me and I take it seriously.  It is a venue that God gave me to share things He lays on my heart to hopefully bless others.  I know some of you are blessed because you respond and tell me that you are.  I know that others are reading my words but I never really know if it “tasted” OK or not.  Others, leave comments of disagreement…they find  remnants of root-beer ice-cubes, so to speak, I guess.

One would think I would be upset if someone doesn’t agree.  But, no, I’m not.  I’m excited that something I wrote made someone stop and think.  I am happy to be questioned because it makes me have to go to the Bible and confirm what I’ve written.  It’s kind of like a “quality test” before the “picnic”.  I am confident by the time that I publish, the words I have written are those that God wants me to share.  Could I be wrong?  Most certainly!  I am human.  However, I never take it personally if someone disagrees with my message of truth.  As long as I am earnestly praying and writing, I feel that God will bless my efforts.  It is not my message that I try to convey; rather, I try to teach others about the relationship I have and they can have with Jesus.

So if you read one of my messages some day and gasp; before throwing out the things that disturb you, stop and think about it.  Pray about it.  Question me if need be.  Know that I am writing with only the spirit of being a blessing and not to hurt or embarrass you.  My hope is that my writings, or fruit salads if you may, are pleasing to the eye as well as tasty nourishment to your soul. 

Thanks for reading and for your feedback.  If we all just keep moving forward toward the prize, God will take care of the details.  I count it a privilege to write and have readers like yourselves who read.  God has blessed me greatly through this ministry.  I can only hope you are blessed too.

Have a great week…and don’t forget to be a blessing!

Hebrews 10:23  Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.

Posted on in 2013 Posts

In God We Trust (ed?)

photo (29) - CopyYou all know that I like to keep things happy and  up-beat on my blog.  However, my heart has been burdened with a message I think God wants me to share.  So in obedience, I’m prayerfully, going to talk about gay marriage in our country today.  It grieves me to have to talk about it as I have friends that I care about who have chosen the gay lifestyle.  However, if I don’t speak truth , what kind of friend am I?

I am no theologian…just an ordinary woman who loves God and knows He can’t help but be totally dismayed with the direction our country is going.  A country that was originally founded as a nation that trusted God, is hardly recognizable as a Christian nation at all anymore.  God gives us clear direction.  He told us in His Word–the Bible–that marriage is between a man and a woman.  Genesis 2:20-24 But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.  The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.”  24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

This week someone was telling me about their friend who has a new boyfriend.  The last I heard their friend was married.  However, as the conversation went down, there was question as to whether she was still married or not.  Then it was said, “Well, I really don’t blame her for finding someone else.  Her husband was never home and they really didn’t have much of a marriage.”  Those words dug deep into my heart and have bothered me all week.  Is this the way we view marriage today?  Something of if it feels good, do it.  If it gets boring, move on?  Really?  It’s O.K. when you don’t have much of a marriage to go find someone else?  The last I heard it was a covenant between you, your spouse and God…until death do you part.  (1Corinthians 7:39A wife is bound by law as long as her husband lives; but if her husband dies, she is at liberty to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord. )

Is marriage not sacred anymore?   For many years the media has inundated us with sex.  Women nearly naked, buff men with their shirts off and often in underwear, men and women  laying together in bed either in the act of sex or suggesting it just to name a few examples.  Sex is a powerful tool that God uses to bind a man and woman together.  It is the super-glue so to speak to the relationship that keeps it strong.  However, we are all human.  When we are constantly bombarded with sex or risqué suggestions at every turn, some of us will not be able to handle the temptations.  The Bible talks about sexual deviations from  nearly the beginning of time.  It is a condition of the human race.  Hollywood, advertising and the like are feeding those human weaknesses every day and have been doing so for years.

If I am a Bible-believing Christian, I don’t have the luxury of disregarding what the Bible says when it comes to a topic regarding homosexuality.  1Corinthians 6:9-10 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, 10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.

I remember as a child wanting to do something that my friends were doing and I would say to my mom when she said no, “But Mom!  Everybody’s doing it!”  However, as my mom, she knew that my decision to join the crowd for whatever reason wasn’t good for me.  She would say, “If all your friend were jumping off a bridge, would you do that too?”  Just because everyone seems to be OK with it, doesn’t make it right. As Christians, we must know and heed God’s Word on subjects such as homosexuality and gay marriage even when it is uncomfortable or controversial.  God knows what is best for us.

Often, as human nature goes, those who are committing certain sins seek others who are doing the same.  When someone is living a sinful lifestyle, they want to find ways to justify what they are doing.  They look for the justification from those of like mind.  When someone enters into a sexually deviated  lifestyle of any kind, it may seem right for a season.  It may feel good physically.  It may cause endorphins to fly that make us happy.  Those endorphins may even cause us to be “drugged” to the point that we can no longer see right from wrong.  You see, it is that powerful super-glue affect that binds two together and makes it feel like a marriage kind of love.  However, marriage is not, surprisingly, just about emotional love—it is also about the body.  This article in Christianity Today explains it much better than I could ever do.   Even if there is no sex involved in a relationship, if a man loves another man or a woman loves another woman; just because they love doesn’t constitute the need for marriage.  I love my kids.  I love my friends.  Get the picture?

I’m not here to throw stones.  I am a sinner saved by grace just like anyone else who accepts the Lord as their Savior. I am trying to deliver this as humbly and lovingly as I can.  However, if you have chosen a gay lifestyle and continue down that path; I don’t believe God is not going to bless you.  (Hebrews 13:4  Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge.)  I feel that as a country, if we continue to accept the lies of Satan and choose to live in ways that go against God’s Word; we will perish.

Marriage is something that should be coveted…protected…and respected.  It is not something that was intended to be anything other than between man and woman.  If God wanted man to marry another man, he wouldn’t have bothered to create Eve for Adam.  It seems like there is nothing sacred anymore in our nation though.  We throw away babies, disrespect authority and now continue to mock marriage designed by God, Himself.  I fear for our land and for those of us who call ourselves Christians and continue to allow our nation to go in the direction it is headed.

I am sad.  I am sad that so many have believed the lie and chosen the gay lifestyle. There are good, loving people who have been sucked into the sin.  Someone said today that they felt sorry for those who have to give up the loves of their lives…their soul mate…in order to live under God’s law.  Don’t we all pay a price of some sort when we choose God?  It doesn’t literally cost us anything to accept the Lord.  Jesus already paid the price for our sins on the cross.  However, I do remember people making fun of me for my choice to become a Christian, family members not accepting my newfound faith, and a lot of old habits of my prior sinful life that I needed to shed.  Some things were easy to get rid of and others took work and sacrifice of self. My choice to follow God is not always popular.  I have even questioned my choice from time to time when depression sweeps over me or life seemed to just be too difficult.  However, I know today that there was no sin in my life worth losing the relationship that I have today with my Savior, Jesus Christ.  Satan wants us to believe that we can’t live without it—whatever it might be.  Jesus wants us to know we will not live (eternally) with it.

Life on this earth is temporary.  It is the choices we make in the few short years given us on this earth that will affect our souls for eternity.  If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t step out and try to warn those living this lifestyle of its ramifications.  I know some will quit following my blog while others will be angry and attack me.  It makes me sad.  However, I know I serve a God that is bigger than any sin that binds someone on this earth and with His help you can be set free.  I was set-free from my sins, just as you can be too.  We are all human.  We all struggle with sin.

If we believe and trust in God as one nation under God, we have to believe His Word.

All of  it.

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