Posted on in 2012 Posts

What Are You Doing to Protect Your Home?

If you mention the word snake, it evokes definite reactions with each individual.  Some freak out and others get excited.  I am definitely on the freak out side of things and when I almost stepped on one this past week in my OWN HOUSE I thought I would die!  We noticed a few weeks ago that we more than likely had a mouse as something had eaten Jim’s almonds he stored in a baggie in his computer bag.  However, after setting a bunch of mouse traps everywhere and not catching anything, I was convinced it was an even larger animal.  I went to Lowe’s and bought a trap for bigger animals and was sure I was going to catch me a varmint.  I laid some almonds in the middle of that one and waited, but again, we caught nothing.

We couldn’t imagine what it might be so we began walking the perimeter of our home looking for eaves that had been pulled down in case of a raccoon or other possible entry points for a smaller animal such as a mouse.  Other than the small hole in the empty almond bag, there was no other sign or clue as to what it was.  On the outside of the house, there was a spot where the electricity comes into the home that had a possible gap where a smaller animal might be able to get through.  So, Jim sprayed some expanding foam stuff into the hole to ensure nothing else got in.  However, what we didn’t think about what might already be inside.  Now that we had made our home totally animal proof from the outside, we had also trapped anything that was already inside!

About a week later, we finally caught our mouse since he had nowhere else to go for food but our traps.  However, I never expected a snake too!  Apparently, according to our exterminator, the mouse came through the hole in the wall and the snake followed him in.  Then we plugged the hole, killed the mouse, and the snake came out because he got hungry.  Luckily a friend who lives nearby came to help me get the snake out of the house saving the day or I’d still be standing on the chair screaming for help!  I guess the joys of sitting in my office writing and watching the wildlife in the woods in our backyard comes with a price!  When you live this close, having even just a small spot on this big house where something can get through is all these animals needed to wreak major havoc in my life!

I think about that scenario and am reminded of how diligent we need to be in our Christian lives as well to ensure the enemy stays outside and does not come in.  Leaving just a small entry point for sin to enter in is all Satan needs to cause a lot of trouble in our lives.  What do you do when you see the enemy trying to get in?  Do you run and plug up the holes…perhaps by spending more time in prayer and Bible study?  Or do you stand on a chair screaming for someone else to come take care of it for you?  Do you have a good friend that you can call “911” to and have them help you find your way out of your mess?  That friend would be one who isn’t afraid to point out the areas in your life that might be open to the enemy.  Do you have traps set to alert you that the enemy is near?  These might be disciplines in your daily routines to help you measure whether you’re prepared for battle or not by the amount of time spent preparing.  Does the enemy take you seriously? It only takes one little sin to enter in and before you know it, a lot of others follow if you’re not alert at all times.

I hope you’ll take the time today to examine your spiritual house.  Are there areas you need to work on to ensure a more secure environment?  Ask the Holy Spirit to show you the leaks in your foundation so that you can get them sealed up today!  Don’t find yourself holding an empty almond bag!  Rather, let your storehouses be full and your life be safe from the things that seek to cause trouble in your walk with God.  The enemy doesn’t stand a chance when your life is sealed up by the Blood of Jesus Christ!

1Peter 5:8-11 (NKJV) Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.  Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world.  But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you.To Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.

Psalm 121:7 The Lord shall preserve you from all evil; He shall preserve your soul.

Posted on in 2012 Posts

May Your Skies Be Blue and Your Dark Clouds Be Few!

Wow! I rarely whine but, wow! Have you ever had a week like I had last week? I haven’t felt so beat up in many years as I did coming out of last week. Talking with my friends, I realized that I was not the only one. One friend said she felt like she had a dark cloud following her. Others had times of immense struggle and persecution too.  As I was driving down the highway early in the morning on Friday, the sunrise ahead of me seemed to speak to me. In the far distance, the sun was trying to rise to brighten the sky but just above it, there was a dark wall of clouds that appeared to be pressing down on it from all sides. All you could see was the sun’s little light peering out from under all the darkness. That particular sunrise was a picture of exactly how I was feeling inside that day.

I feel as a Christian, it is my duty in life to let my light shine. I can’t cower because someone doesn’t agree with me or thinks I am false.  Although, it would make life a lot easier!  I have been writing for God for nearly two years now and saying things that some may or may not agree with me. However, clouds of disagreement will not keep me from doing what I have been called to do. God knows I’m not perfect but He loves me and chooses to use me anyways. He knows I will faithfully serve Him in everything He asks me to do. Clouds of judgment will not discourage me because I know He knows my inmost being and that’s good enough for me!

Tomorrow I will be sharing my struggles, pain and triumphs through life with a group of women as I share my testimony of how I came to know Christ as my personal Savior. When I’m not being transparent in my writing or speaking though, I tend to always try to stay upbeat and positive in my Facebook posts and Twitter tweets. Perhaps they paint a picture of a more perfect me than what you get in my speaking and writing—or even real life for that matter!  I just choose not to spew negativity on everyone reading my posts every day, so I keep it happy. In one conversation this week a friend said, “Lori, Christians have struggles too. Life can’t be perfect all the time; it’s not a good witness to be cheerful everyday!  People need to see we have down days too.” I agree to some extent that we need to be real, so that is why I share candidly through my writings and in my speaking. However, I do feel it is more edifying to God when I share what He is doing in my life versus whining everyday about what He is not. It’s when we start to rise and shine so to speak, only to look up, see the wall of clouds above that are pressing in and give up without trying that we are ineffective for the kingdom.

We are currently doing a study in our small group by John Piper called Desiring God. I like John’s statement, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” If we as Christians continue walking around with dark clouds over our heads crying woe is me, how are we glorifying God? But you say, “Lori, you don’t understand. I’ve had a rough life. I have had people hurt me; I’ve made bad choices that are irreversible, everyone’s out to get me.”  I say, “How is God glorified in that? If we have a world of miserable Christians walking this earth, day after day after day, who would want to join us?” I wouldn’t!  I would also say, “Haven’t we all suffered?  What makes your suffering any worse than mine?  However, I will tell you that what you may not see is on the other side of all of those dark clouds is a blue sky! Knowing that, do you really want to stay where you’re at and never get beyond the darkness?”  What do you need to do to push past the uglies and darkness that have been prevailing in your life up to now?

I have learned that when my focus is on the blue skies above all of this mess of ugly clouds we call trials and persecution, I don’t seem to even notice their threat after a while. They no longer are a hindrance or hold power to squelch my daily walk of being satisfied in the Lord and joyful in heart. I do admit that sometimes the clouds can get dark and scary when there are many crowding together instead of just one here and there. I even become weary and downright exhausted at times from their intensity as I did last week. But I have learned the hard way to trust there is not a cloud in the sky or wall of clouds for that matter that God can’t move. I don’t need to worry and fret.

So please, if you’re going to insist on carrying your dark clouds around over your head year after year, please don’t ask me to join you in that. I promise to pray for you, help you through the tough times, and do whatever it takes to get you out of that mess. But don’t ask me to agree with you or insist I choose to hang out under your clouds too. I have learned that not only is He most glorified when I am satisfied in Him; but, I am also most satisfied when I am glorifying Him! I can’t see that it is glorifying to have a black cloud accompanying me everywhere I go. Will there be cloudy days ahead? Sure! Will I struggle through them? Of course! But for today I don’t apologize for this smile on my face or the freedom that I feel in Christ. I praise Him that He has set me free from the bondage of worry, strife and all of the other clouds that have tried to get in my way. It’s all because I choose not to focus on the clouds, but rather on the One Who created them. Won’t you make that choice with me today too?

Proverbs 3: 5-6  (NKJV)

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.

Posted on in 2012 Posts

Help! I’m Getting Old and I Can’t Make It Stop!

It used to be if I felt old, I would lose five pounds, buy a new outfit and stay up past 10:00 pm one night to feel young again.  Now I would have to lose twenty pounds, color my roots, shop for days to find something that fits, and take a nap the next day if I did stay up late.  It wears me out even thinking about it.  I think I am just getting too old to shake the feeling old feeling anymore.  However, I have learned it is all in perspective.  I was at a party a few weeks ago and an elderly gentleman mentioned he was, “At the age where everything is either dried up or it leaks!”  I guess relative to where he is at in life, I might begin to feel young again.

I am reminded every morning when I wake up though that I am no longer a spring chicken.  My feet, legs and back remind me that there are some things even a Tempur-Pedic mattress can’t fix.  I look in the mirror and my sexy nightgowns lost the sexy somewhere along the way.  Although, I have found that if I don’t put my glasses on right away, I can pretend that I have a younger body and all is well.  It’s much more pleasant than facing reality before my first cup of coffee. I pull out the medicine drawer and filler-up on the hormones I lost in menopause in hopes that I can finish a sentence at any given time during the day.  On the bright side, I still have my own teeth and most days I can still laugh about getting old!  I laugh even harder if it’s someone else getting older and not me though.  However, the reality of life is, we are all going to get older unless we are dead.  So looking at a glass half-full, one might be praising God for another day added to our age instead of the alternative!

Then there are the situations when I feel like life has been unfair to some.  In last month’s mass shooting, one of the men killed, Matt McQuinn, was only twenty-seven years old.  It affected me as his parents were people I’ve known for many years.  We used to worship together every Sunday morning with our young children in the days gone by.  When the kids are young you don’t think anything could happen to them.  Even when Matt was twenty-seven, who would have thought he wouldn’t make it back home from a Batman movie?

I don’t understand it when God chooses to take someone from this life what I would think was prematurely.  However, Jim and I were discussing this last night as I am yet again faced with a couple of loved ones struggling with cancer.  Jim said he has learned, “that this earth is just a practice grounds…it’s full of do-overs.  While we are here on earth, God allows us to figure things out so to speak.  Grace is a beautiful gift we shouldn’t overlook.  It allows us to become the person God created us to be and still allows us to have a clean slate after it is all said and done.  Grace erases our past and gives us hope of a new beginning…sometimes over and over and over.”

If I knew what I know now when I was younger, my choices would have been drastically different. However, if I had not walked through the valley of sin and destruction, I may not appreciate the grace afforded to me to find my way out of that life today.  I may not be the strong believer that I am today had I not felt the no-strings-attached forgiveness extended to me when I simply asked.  Had I not walked through the trials given to me, I would have never developed the relationship that I have with my Savior that I have learned to lean on and to trust.

We both agreed that perhaps when someone is called home at an earlier age than I think they should be, that maybe they have “passed the test.”  You know…become the person they were to become and served the purpose God had given them in this world.  It seems like the younger the death, the more impact it has on those around them.  Perhaps like Jesus, they were sent here to live so that even in their premature death, they might influence those around them for Christ.  It doesn’t always make sense to us and we grieve over our losses.  However, since when did God ever tell us everything or allow us to understand all about His plan?  We aren’t here to have all the answers or say when someone should live or die.  We are here to practice until we get it right!

So who cares if my teeth fall out, my hair needs colored and my bones creak when I move?  My focus here on earth is to “get it right” and fulfill that which God has called me to do.  Maybe I’m a slow learner and I will have to live to be 92 before God calls me home.  Perhaps He just has so much for me to do I won’t be able to get it all done until then.  I don’t know what tomorrow brings…neither do you.  So, tell your friends and family you love them.  Talk to them about Jesus if they don’t know Him personally like you do.  Ultimately, it won’t matter how old they are when they die if they have accepted Jesus as their Savior.  They will be in eternity with Him…no more sorrow or pain…no more need for do-overs—or makeovers for that matter!  If you wake up tomorrow and God has called me home, don’t cry—know that I’m OK.  I’ve simply gotten through my grace period and I’ve been signed on for eternity in heaven!  (If I’m still around at 92, you can laugh at me and tease me that I must have fit into the slow learner category!)

Can I trust that it will be the same for you?  If you don’t know Jesus as your Savior, will you please pray today and ask Him to come into your heart?  I love my friends and family and want you all there with me.  It’s going to be a big party in the sky where young and old will be reunited in the afterlife. Until then, I thank God for another day to serve Him on this earth, and oh, please pass the Bengay!

Hebrews 13:14 (NLT)  For this world is not our permanent home; we are looking forward to a home yet to come.

Philippians 1:20-26  For I fully expect and hope that I will never be ashamed, but that I will continue to be bold for Christ, as I have been in the past. And I trust that my life will bring honor to Christ, whether I live or die. For to me, living means living for Christ, and dying is even better.But if I live, I can do more fruitful work for Christ. So I really don’t know which is better. I’m torn between two desires: I long to go and be with Christ, which would be far better for me. But for your sakes, it is better that I continue to live.