Life is hard~

Life is hard~

I doubt there is anyone that gets to go through it with no struggle~

Today I had to unpack a box that I had put away around 11 years ago~

Time capsules should be avoided!~

I went through things, some easy, some not so easy~

School pictures, report cards, and projects for my sons~

It always hurts to see their eyes in those pictures lose that excited glow of childhood~

The first years of school they are so happy! and then~

A few more years of life and the glow is gone and the smile is not sincere~

A mother's heart longs to protect her children, to have them always hold onto the childhood beliefs that life is fun!~

But life is not always fun~

All too early, children realize that parents divorce, friends betray, classmates bully, teachers criticize, the world demands~

Life is hard~

Free To Walk

     A lot of times people turn on the TV for background sounds for their day. I usually turn on the Christian radio station or a praise CD while I'm in the house; outside, the birds and breeze are the soundtrack for my day.
     One day while I was working in the kitchen, or painting, or making jewelry, or something like that I had the radio program on and caught a bit of story shared about a child that had been in Sunday School and was relating a story they had learned about Enoch. When asked to retell the story the child said that every day God would come by Enoch's house and say "Hey Enoch, let's go for a walk!" and Enoch would say "sure!", and away they would go. Each day God would come by and ask Enoch to go walking and each day Enoch was ready and off they would go for a wonderful day of sharing. One day they had walked further than normal and it was getting quite late. Enoch told God that they better head back to his house so he could get home before it was too dark and God said "Enoch, we're closer to My house than to yours, why don't you just go home with Me tonight?" And Enoch did! That's a pretty good summary of the story of Enoch as it's told in the bible!
     The same day I heard this story I also listened to a lesson given by Cindy Jacobs about prayer. The lesson concerned how we block God from answering our prayers by unforgiveness. I went through thinking of offenses I had taken in my life and forgave everyone that was involved. I've done this before several times and you'd think I wouldn't have anymore left but it's amazing how many little things we can pack away in our trunk of offenses! It starts in childhood or maybe babyhood? And goes through every day we breath! Being offended is easier than to NOT be offended! Anyway, I worked to bring to mind anything I needed to let go of and prayed about it, releasing the people, the offense and myself!
     Later when I was working in the garden the Holy Spirit showed me how unforgiveness binds us to an anchor that keeps us from being free to doing the things God wants us to. He showed me how it's like a big ball and chain! When God comes by our house to ask us to go walking with Him, as He did with Enoch, we can't even get out of our doors because the ball and chain has us anchored! When we work on it, we make it smaller and smaller, but it is a continual work and it doesn't usually happen overnight. Many times we need to give the offense to God and ask Him to help us to let it go, to help us heal, to put it away from ourselves. And many times we have to do this day after day until finally we find it gone! Then we have the freedom to go walking with God, to go where He wants us to go!

How Dare?

     This is not really an article that I'm wanting to write, but I've seen it happen time and again and the Spirit wants it shared, so here goes~
     Many times people feel down and out, they believe that they have nothing in life except God! (I'm wondering if that's such a bad thing? I mean, "except God"!) They reach the point where they say that "there's nothing they can do except pray"!
     Okay, so aren't we supposed to be praying in all things anyway? Aren't we supposed to have faith? Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1 Aren't we supposed to seek His kingdom first in all things? Okay, well never mind, that's all a whole 'nother article.
     This article is about the fact that people pray and pray when they are sad, depressed, lonely, broke, or need help in general, right? Then when they get their answered prayer, they are so thankful that they serve God with their whole hearts! Right? Wrong! They praise Him in the town square or at the water fountain at work for the rest of their lives? Wrong!
     From what I've observed as soon as "people's fortunes change" and they have received their answered prayer they quickly turn to more pressing things than praising God or even praying now that they aren't in "need". Now it's time to enjoy whatever it is that God has sent their way, a new love interest, more money, a new job, a new house, a new car...whatever it is, it seems to take up their full energy.
     Don't get me wrong, there are a few people that don't forget God and what He's done for them, but a large group of people do! I would believe that more people forget to witness to the generous loving nature of God than there are who remember.
     See this article is very "cynic", but it bothers me to see people begging God to do something and then when He does, they forget Him until they need a "Genie" in their pocket again. God is no genie in a pocket! He won't even fit in a pocket! He is the great Creator of all things! He holds the universe together! How dare we forget Him until He's "needed again"?! How dare we treat Him with such disregard? How dare we put the answered prayer before the great and loving Father that answers our prayer?!
     Okay, that's it~ I'm through~ until God stirs this again!

Open Gate

     Good Morning Again! Except this morning it's 4 AM! 
     It makes me smile the way the Holy Spirit works in my life. I've had a couple of days to finish the second thing that could have gone onto either the "Just Thinking" blog or the "Revealed" one, but I didn't get it done so now here I am in the dark of the early morning getting it typed up before I let myself get caught up in the busyness of the day! Thank You Holy  Spirit! Yes, I am thankful for being woke up at 4 AM, because I don't want to be a person that is so caught up with the things of this world that I miss God's calling to do things that He wants in my life. =) and that actually will lead me into a third article that I need to type up. God reveals and I type-- is the pattern! And hopefully I'll get it typed up before I'm awakened by the Holy Spirit in the early morning to do it!
     The wonderful, thoughtful, mighty man of God that I'm allowed to call my husband has created a corner garden for me in our backyard. It's actually "our garden" but it's to meet a need that I have to grow things! One day while I was weeding around the fence of "our garden" one of our dogs was laying peacefully on the inside of the garden until she realized that I had moved to the outside to pull the weeds from the outer side of the fence. She sat up and looked at me puzzled that I wasn't where she had last seen me and then started to whine, I told her she could come out to me, the gate was open for her. She continued to whine and never even looked at the gate, I had to get up from my work area and go to the gate and call her out through the open gate! 
     God showed me that is often how people are. They go about their lives until they realize they aren't happy, then they start looking for Him and whining, oops, I mean praying? Instead of looking around to see where they are and how to get back close to God they just start praying for Him to do something!
     Hopefully we can learn from our mistakes and not sit in our situation and whine, but look for where God is(did He move while we weren't paying attention?) and then move ourselves to Him, not just sit and whine and wait for Him to come show us the open gate! 
   
   

"Hum Drum" or Joyful Obedience?

     It has taken me a long time to get back to blogging! We moved and that brought a lot of chaos into my tidy little life~ but the Spirit woke me up this morning around 4:30 to let me know it's time for me to write again. I have two things that have been revealed recently, I'll talk about these in the order that they've come into my life chronologically because I'm not really sure that one is any more important than the other! =) The smile it to "lighten'" the mood, it's hard to word things "sweetly" at 4:30 in the morning, so the smile will have to do it!~
     I'm going to write the first one about a woman that I know, but I'll write it with a fictitious name to protect her identity. This woman is an elderly woman that kept thinking that she had no more purpose in life, she lived in an assisted living facility and her family was raised with families of their own and her husband had passed after she had been by his side through a horribly debilitating disease. She thought what more was there now for her?
     She did praise God and she went to church and bible study, so she was no stranger to scripture, but all of her life she had attended a more conservative church that taught "faith" but was not too much into the power and working of the Holy Spirit.
     One visit that my husband and I had with her we encouraged her to invite the Holy Spirit into her heart. After a shared prayer between the three of us she stated "I know my purpose!"! It was exciting! I had been trying to tell her all along that she could be doing a great deal by praying, but it never took root until she invited the Holy Spirit in! She was on fire to pray for her neighbors in the facility!
     On subsequent visits she shared different encounters she had with the people in the facility, she prayed for healing and it happened! She was excited and praying for people left and right~ One of the people  she prayed for was a woman in a wheelchair that had been told she would not likely ever be out of the wheelchair walking again. Within a few days of praying this "prayer warrior" looked out of her window to see the woman walking with an attendant around the sidewalk encircling the building! She was so excited!
     This woman was living a spiritually exciting life, she was praising God in her little apartment daily! In her 80's she had spiritually become God's daughter of joy, she would put praise music in her little CD player and dance around her apartment with hands raised, she studied God's word and prayed for her "brothers and sisters".
     The lesson in this life story is the change that took place when the Holy Spirit was welcomed in, her life and attitude changed from "hum-drum" endurance to one of joyful obedience. Other lives were touched by the Kingdom of our Father living in her and God was glorified! That is what we are still here on Earth for! Don't spend your life just waiting for the end, ask the Holy Spirit in to your heart, start living for God, walk with Him daily and grow in His glory. Your life will be changed and you'll grow in His love and joy!