The storms of life

Good afternoon bloggers :) I'm sitting in my honey's chair while he's taking his afternoon nap before returning to work. For the last couple of weeks he's been working a split shift, he goes in about 5 am and get's home between 10:30 and noon, takes a nap, eats, then back to work @ 4 pm til between 10:00- midnight then he does it all over again. :( It makes it hard on him and the rest of the family. The kids don't get to see him much, usually not til the weekend unless by some flukey chance they are home when he is or up when he gets home. So we are praying that God intervenes and sends a dock worker so hubby can get back to his regular schedule.
On another note, Leesha (my 10 year old) was having stomach pains last week so we took her to the ER and she had to have an ultrasound done. It came back showing that she has fatty tissue in her liver. I took her to her pediatricain (?) and he wants her to have a EKG and a glucose test done. We also have to go see a dietician on the 28 of March. She is overweight so that contributes to the fatty liver and it can be caused by type 2 diabetes. Not really want we wanted to hear. But these are called the storms of life right? At the beginning of this week we started out all rainy and cold, today is sunny and 62. It reminded me of the life storms we face. We start out all cloudy (sad), rainy (tears) and cold (hurt). It's a period of time that can sometimes be hard to bear, sometimes it produces floods that will cause some damage ( we had floods here a couple of weeks ago). But as the days pass by we see the light at the end of the tunnel, our break through is getting close! Just like the weather breaks and the sun will shine and the air will warm up, our troubles will break, we will see the clouds roll away and our soul will warm again. THANK YOU JESUS FOR THE SUNNY DAYS AND THE CLOUDY RAINY DAYS TOO!!!

Battlefield of the mind

Oh how the mind wanders! Can we really learn how to control it? We are people that do not like to have self control but yet it's required of us as christians. We hear so much about bad stuff happening in the world and I have to wonder why people choose to be tormented by evil thoughts. Why doesn't the world want peace? Why does the world think it's so easy to just give into satan? Why are we such weak people? When we give our lives to Christ we inherit His strength, yet most of us do not activate that strength. So as christians we should not be weak people.

The things that satan puts in front of us really isn't that exciting. When we take a step back and look at the whole picture we can see the flaws in his plans. Yet we choose to only see what we want to see.

We have so many choices that we have to make each and every day. Our whole life really consists of making decisions yet there are so many that don't know how to make them. One of things that a parent has to do is teach our children that decision making is an every day thing. Robby is really struggling with making decisions, he has so many options coming at him at once. Keeping the information straight in our minds is a challenge for all of us no matter what our age is. He's collecting information about colleges (mom and dad would like to see him go to a christian college), making up school work that he choose not to do, and having a relationship with a young girl from Tiffin. Many life changing elements are coming at him, yet I see that he is fighting God. Why?? Oh bubba if you only knew how much simplier your life would be if you would just quit fighting! Decisions would not only be left up to you, you would have someone there to help you who knows your end from your beginning. We have had several bad arguements over last couple of weeks and he's constantly telling me that he's not ready to follow God. My position as a mother says that's hogwash! It's just a matter of dening ourselves to follow Him and that's what Robby is fighting, not wanting to deny himself.

So here's to all the kids out there, IF YOU TRUELY WANT A LIFE, QUIT FIGHTING GOD AND JUST GO WITH THE JESUS FLOW~~~~

Instructions LOL!!

Please read the warning entry first that is below the wee hours entry! Thank you! I'm still new at this so I'm working on how to post correctly.

The wee hours of the morning God you are precious!

Now that we are brough current. God wakes me up at 12:44 this morning and I try to go back to bed but He won't have it. I can't sleep when I got hot so guess what..... I was burning up this morning. So I come down stairs and I finally say "Ok God what is it"? He says in a loving voice "enjoy your weekend"? NO!!! I tell him. I hear this little chuckle in my soul and I sit on my couch and have to laugh too. He tells me that if " you would have only listened to me your weekend would have been so different". But God I didn't want to stay there all weekend, I wanted to be home. In my comfort zone doing what I always do. He then points out a few mishaps that I had this past weekend with my attitude and how it affected those around me. WOW!!! I say to myself. I really need to grow up. It's ok, God says, that's why I'm here. I will teach you things that go well beyond your imagination. Things that you think are ok, really are not ok with me. Life is not about you, it's about you glorifing me with your life. Well I surely didn't glorify Him this past weekend. But that's ok, that's what forgivness is for! Now I have to learn my lesson and do what He tells me to do, despite how I feel. So you see, I'm a Jesus girl, who got put in her place by the man who loves her the most.



Thank you Jesus for loving me

~Loradoodle~

WARNING!!!

Have you ever felt like God was warning you to not do something? The bible definition of warning is (v) to give notice to befoehand especially of danger or evil; to counsel. There are 29 verses throughout the bible that have the word "warn" in them. Warnings I'am thankful to have providing that I listen to them. Last week I felt the urge to put something on my facebook page about me being a Jesus girl, which I did, but at the end of my post I also put that the devil didn't know who he was messing with. The whole time I was typing this I felt this warning in my stomach to not say that. I DIDN'T LISTEN! I have not had good days since I put that on my page. My heart has been so heavy with insecurities, my family has been seperated by words of others, deception has set in in the hearts of all of us. The devil has attacked everyone in my house all weekend long, and he still contiues to attack. I guess he got offended by what I said on my page that day! But the thing is, is that I didn't put that on my page for good reason, it was put there as a bragging right. Look at me everyone, I'm a good christian girl! But remember earlier that I had a warning to not post that. God knew that I wasn't posting it to encourage anyone, claiming any victory, or anything else with a good heart. It was put there with evil intentions (boasting is evil in God's eyes). Psalms 81:8 says "Listen to me, O my people, while I give you stern warnings. O Isreal, if you would only listen to me". Alot of times we suffer because we just don't listen. Reading through Psalms 81 we find 2 more verses 13 and 14 that say 13) Oh, that my people would listen to me! Oh that Isreal would follow me, walking in my paths! 14) How quickly I would then subdue their enemies! How soon my hands would be upon their foes!" OUCH!!, subdue my enemy? All it would have took was me listening to the warning that God was giving me and the whole weekend could have been different!

Now there's a theme here that I need to explain. Last weekend my daughters girl scout troop was spending the weekend camping at the girl scout house and I just had a bad attitude toward it. I didn't want to spend the weekend there (actually I didn't even want to spend 1 night there) and her leader and I have not been getting along. We work together with this troop, she is the leader and I'm the co-leader. We have not been seeing eye to eye for sometime and I just didn't want to have to spend that much time with her. So my attitude stunk like a skunk! I tried talking her out of staying all weekend and she wouldn't change her mind and that made me mad. I WASN'T GETTING WHAT I WANTED!!!! How dare she do that to me, so I had this idea the devil was attacking me with her so that's when I decided that I would post that on my facebook page. Was the devil really attacking me with her? NO!!, but God was trying to get me to give my hateful attitude toward everything to Him and do what He tells me to do. I thought I'd take the easy way out and rebuke the devil publically instead of submitting my attitude. Guess what, when He knew that I wasn't going to submitt it willingly He stepped aside and said "there ya go child, you are on your own". In the book of Job we read in the first chapter about the devil taking things away from Job and how God agreed to let this happen. Now I know that God didn't let this happen to Job because of anything that Job had done, but He let it happen to me because I needed to learn a valuable lesson. He stepped aside and let the devil torment me. When a woman has to be gone away from home the last thing she wants to deal with is her "monthly" friend, well guess what! Yep you guessed it, my friend arrived friday morning. Oh joy!!! I prayed all day for God to somehow cancel the camp out, apparently that's not what He wanted. At 6:00 Friday evening I was making phone calls to try to find unbaked pizza dough from the pizza shop in town, guess what NO ONE WAS ABLE TO SELL ME ANY BECAUSE OF THEIR STORE POLICY!!! Talk about getting even more aggitated! I ended up in the next town buying pizza dough, a trip by the way that was in the opposite direction of where I was going! Now mind you all the way there and back to the girl scout house I'm praying for God to "give me peace", which in my mind was giving me what I wanted---to not have to stay here. As time went on my attitude got worse and worse. 1:30 saturday morning I ended up coming home anyways! Got to coughing and couldn't stop, got up and stayed up til 3:30. Finally went to bed to wake up @ 7 a.m. 3 1/2 hours of sleep! Oh come on Lord, what are you doing to me???? Leesha had basketball, then it was back to the scout house to do cupcakes and help them make lasagna. Back home. Bad attitude still here. Go to bed. Wake up. Bad attitude still here. Do not go to church. Finish completing girl scout cookie orders. Bad attitude still here. Back to scout house. Leesha not feeling well. Bring her back home. Bad attitude still here. Load cookies for the girl's to get when they get picked up by mom/dad from their weekend stay at scout house. Bad attitude still here. Come home. Still here. Finally Monday morning, bad attitude still here. What the heck is going on??? Lord help me!! Agruement with Robby. Bad attitude is now worsening. AHHH!!! time for bed. Read next blog entry

Act of God

Good morning, I was woken up this morning by my hubby Charlie. Our basement was flooded from the rising temps, rain, and the melting snow that we got on Friday. Our sump pump quit working so my father in law had to go get us a switch. Well guess what, it wasn't the switch, it was the pump, so back he went to get us a new one. Now the new pump is in and it's pumping out the water. Have to let the furnance dry out before we re-lite it and the temp is falling outside. Was 50 when I got up this morning it's now 35. GOD IS AWESOME!!!!!

Worship and Witness

Good morning bloggers!! I'm so excited about todays lesson in sunday school. Last year I watched a sermon from Joyce Meyers and she was teaching us about God removing things in our life that will not work while living a christian life. She had a cookie cutter and some play dough (she also had another teaching where she used a small tree and a pair of shears). She was teaching us to understand that when we are saved God has to get in our soul and start cutting away at things that will hinder our walk with Him. It was such a valuable lesson for me! I have been wanting to use this scernio in my class. At church we are doing a series called misson possible and today our pastor is preaching about witnessing (last week he taught us about worship) so I'm combinging both messages into my sunday school class. I believe the 2 go together like needle and thread.





While preparing for the lesson, I realized that our whole body is for worship and witness of God. I'm not sure that we understand that fully. I'm saying that in reference to me, I know that I didn't understand that at 16 when I first got saved. Many of us know the verse that says when we believe that Jesus died for us, His spirit comes to live in us, the old man is dead and the new man lives, but do we really understand what that means? I know I waited for changes to occur the second after I said amen to the salvation prayer. It didn't happen like that. I was 16 and I'm now 39 and just 2 years ago did I really start to understand what is to take place for the changes to occur. 21 years of wondering why the changes never seemed to happen to me, feeling as though God didn't want me, is this really what living for God is all about? How do we truely worship and witness God when we don't feel any different than we did before we got saved? I feel that's why so many walk away from their faith because they don't understand what their responsibilty is in their relationship with Jesus. This brings us to our lesson this morning.



Romans 12:1 tells us that we to give our bodies to God because of what He has done for us. What does "give our bodies" mean? It means that we stop fighting the changes God is trying to make in us. That's pretty simple to understand, harder to do right? I know for me it is. We also need to understand that it's something that is a everyday thing that will happen until we are in Heaven. Changing never ends! But we also need to understand that we are changing for the good of God and it should be a joyful time, change isn't easy but when it's done for God it's sure worth it. It's our responsibility to allow those changes to happen. 1 Peter 2:5 tells us that God is building (shaping, changing) our bodies into His temple! God has to remove things in us that just will not work for us in the relationship that we have with Him. It's the same thing with relationships with other people, we tell them what we will accept from them and what we won't accept, why should our relationship with Jesus be any different? He is the supreme being in the relationship and we are the ones that have to be shaped just right for the relationship to work. Our flesh will fight hard to not have to die, but it has to be the choice we make in order to have the kind of relationship with Jesus that died for us to be able to have with Him. Hard to understand during the younger years but the sooner they realize this the sooner their relationship can be strongly built. I look at my kids (16 and 10) and think to myself "the sooner you learn how important this is the longer you will live the kind of life that Jesus has planned for you". How awesome is that? I wish that I would have understood this at the age of 16, alot of things might have been alot different.
Have a blessed day in the Lord everyone
~Loradoodle~