A Lesson You Cannot Learn from A Book

Where there is no cross, there is no crown. This lesson cannot be learned from books, and men do not usually taste this sweetness. This rich life does not exist in a comfortable environment. If the spices are not refined to become oil, the fragrance of the perfume cannot flow forth; and if the grapes are not crushed in the vat, they will not become wine.


FROM A CHINESE CHRISTIAN

Monday's are for Gratitude

Gratitude brings us closer to the Father as our perspective is changed and we see that in even the smallest of details that HE is passionate about us!

So continuing on in my gratitude journal...

11.  A Wonderful thanksgiving meal with family and friends

12.  Waking up to snowfall (and especially sweet as that was the Christmas tree picking day!)

12.  Boys building snowmen

13.  Snowball fights

14.  Candy Canes

15.  A Hot Fire on a Cold Snowy Day

16.  Good Friends

17.  Winter Coats and Mittens that keep us warm

19.  The Warm Home Provided for us

20.  The Christmas Tree that helps us Celebrates the REASON for this SEASON!!

21.  Sweet, Sweet Girls:  Molly, Madelyn, and Caitlyn!

So as this new week begins, what are you thankful for?  Where can you find the tresures hidden in the mundane of life?  Join us at the Gratitude Community...A Holy Experience

May your Monday be Blessed beyond measure in all the Father has...

Happy Home

Home is the true wife's kingdom.

Very largely does the wife hold in her hands, as a sacred trust, the happiness and the highest good of the

hearts that nestle there. In the last analysis, home happiness depends on the wife.

Her spirit gives the home its atmosphere.

Her hands fashion its beauty.

Her heart makes its love.

And the end is so worthy, so noble, so divine, that no woman who has been called to be a wife, and has listened to the call, should consider any price too great to pay, to be . . .

the light,

the joy,

the blessing,

the inspiration,

of a home.

The woman who makes a sweet, beautiful home, filling it with love and prayer and purity, is doing something better than anything else her hands could find to do beneath the skies.
A true mother is one of the holiest secrets of home happiness.
God sends many beautiful things to this world,
many noble gifts;
but no blessing is richer than that which He bestows
in a mother
who has learned love's lessons well,
and has realized something of the meaning

of her sacred callling.

~ J. R. Miller, "Secrets of Happy Home Life, 1894" ~

Fasting: not an if, but a when

The idea of voluntary sacrifice is rare idea in our culture that is saturated with pleasure, instant gratification, and selfishness.  Fasting by definition is abstaining from food.  Many Christians think fasting is radical, however, Jesus said WHEN you fast (Matthew 6:16), not if you fast.  So if Jesus said WHEN we fast, why are we not fasting?  I believe most people don't understand it.  My lack of understanding has lead me on a path of learning and listening because I want to understand.  So these next few posts are going to be about what I have been learning about fasting.

Jesus has a burning desire for us, a firey passion.  The depth of His love comes through to me by His tender mercy, His gladness of having a relationship with me, His zealousness.  Until we fully understand our idendity in Christ, we won't understand our need to fast or even possess a desire to try it.  Fasting positions our hearts to encounter Jesus as the Bridegroom.  The purpose of fasting is to strengthen us in our quest to be preoccupied with God and His will.  We fast in in order to encounter God more intimately, more profoundly, to change the world! 

I read that and think, YES, YES, YES...I want that intimacy with my Abba daddy.  I long for Jesus, so I fast.  I want to fully embrace the discipline, the grace, the joy of fasting.  So I challenge you, will you choose a day or two each week to say "I could eat that, but I won't because in my weakness, Christ strong, Christ is revealed."  That is my hearts cry, deep, active intimacy with my DADDY.  I want to experience HIS heart. 

Abba, Father, draw me closer to your heart.  Give me the grace to fast and to hear your voice!

How to begin your week right...Gratitude

Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul

~Henry Ward Beecher

The only way to life a full of gratitude to my ABBA FATHER is to always have my eyes and heart open to the blessings, both big and small, both beautiful and ugly, both extraordinary and mundane that surround me every moment of every day.  The way to combat the cares and worries of this world is by being ever aware of the largeness of God's love for me.

There is a blog I love to read for she writes about the substance of life, the beautiful moments, and the hard truths.  Her name is Ann Voskamp.  You can find her at A Holy Experience.  She has begun what she refers to as the Gratitude Community.  Each Monday she seeks to find the beautiful among the mundane, ordinary and ugly of life.  It is transforming people, it is transforming me and my family.  It is not hard once the FATHER opens your eyes to all HE has given you.  The goal is about living a life of worship!  How else can you come to the ONE who has given it all for for you?  How else can the darkness flee but by continual praise?  1000 gifts, that was her challenge, that is my challenge.  My family and I started our school year with Gratitude Journal.  Now I am going to join her in the blogging world and I hope you will be encouraged!  Come, join us!

1.  My Abba daddy who loves me too much to leave me in my filth

2.  The early morning sun shining on my face as I seek my FATHERS

3.  The words of LIFE spoken by a GOD who pursues me and a daddy who loves me and thinsk I'm enough

4.  The start of a new day, new beginnings

5.  Fresh revelation

6.  A straight path before me

7.  Birds singing praises along with me

8.  Grateful, sweet children

9.  New, big kitchen

10.  My hardworking husband

Something to ponder...

John Adams said, "From all that I have read of history and government and human life and manners, I have drawn this conclusion: that the manners of women were the most infallible barometer to ascertain the degree of morality and virtue of a nation. The Jews, the Greeks, the Romans , the Swiss, the Dutch, all lost their public spirit and their republican forms of government when they lost the modesty and domestic virtues of their women."
Proverbs 14:1 "The wisest of women builds her house, a foolish woman tears it down with her own hands."

A new plan...

For many years I have dreamed of the years I spent in the mission field as a child. Often yearning to return with an intensity that I could not explain or understand. After all I only felt that way because of my memories as a child growing up...right? That is what everyone told me, I had begun to set aside that deep desire. The Father had given me the other dreams HE had placed deep in my heart to be a wife and a mother and I was seeing those come to fruition before my very eyes. But why, on quiet occasions or while reading missionary stories to my children, did I have to tamp down the strong urge to GO? Recently I came to understand that that desire was there for HIS purpose, it was a dream HE did place in my heart, one HE intended for us to pursue.

Some months back in the spring of this year Kendall came to me and said the Lord had shown him something. Not telling me what it was, he wanted the Father to show me separately. A laying out of fleece so to speak, like Gideon did in the Old Testament. Then one early morning as I was reading through the New Testament I read this:

How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed?

And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not hear?

And how shall they hear without a preacher?

And how shall they preach unless they are sent?

As it is written:

How beautiful are the feel of those who preach the gospel of peace,

Who bring glad tidings of good things?

Romans 10: 14-15

AND I KNEW, the Father in HIS all encompassing presence and sweet, still voice, whispered in my spirit..."Yes beloved, I have lit that same flame in your husband, I am giving him the dream of taking ME to the nations! Your dreams will be a reality, for that was MY dream for you!!" So I ask do dreams come true?

Just as Joshua asked the leaders of each tribe of Israel to take a rock as they crossed the Jordan and set foot into the promise land so it would serve as a reminder for the generations to come what God had done. This blog has become my "rock" to bring Glory to my Abba Father. We are willing FATHER, send us where you want us to GO...