Thursday, March 28, 2013

Spring!

Everywhere we look we are surrounded by the promise of new life.  Trees, once seemingly dead, are now covered with beautiful blossoms.  The cold, infertile land of winter is giving way to a warmer, greener land of hope.  The hope of bearing fruit and reaping harvest.  The hope of taking a life seemingly barren and making it beautiful once again.  This is what spring offers us every year. Her colors amaze us, her beauty inspires us, her new life refreshes us.  Spring is truly a gift from God; it reminds us that He never leaves us the way we are.  God is always about resurrection and new life, the seasons are a constant reminder of this truth.  God uses the barren times of our lives to shape us into the people He knows we can be.  When our lives feel like winter and our future seems bleak, remember spring is coming.  God isn’t done with us, He hasn’t forgotten us, but rather He is perfecting us.  Making us ready, so when our spring comes, we will be healthy enough to bloom.

 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, “Therefore we do not lose heart.  Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

GOD'S REDEEMING GRACE

I am so thankful for the transparency of our speaker Pastor Bobby Fisher this morning. What a wonderful testimony of God's grace and redemption. I am in awe of how God's plan is so perfect and how He guides us through our darkest days, and is also there to celebrate with us our greatest joys! God's protection was upon Bobby through his homelessness, drugs, alcohol, anger which led to abuse along with the many other trials he went through. There was a perfect plan in place to bring Bobby & Jill out of their struggles and into God's light.

I loved these thoughts on prayer that Bobby shared with us this morning:

  1. Prayer doesn't change God, it changes us.
  2. Prayer doesn't empower us, it empowers God to work through us.
  3. Prayer isn't measurable, it's mystical.
  4. Stop telling God what you want Him to do and let him work through your prayers.

Here are the 3 questions Bobby asked us this morning:

  1. Are you praying? on a regular basis, 10-15 minutes specifically spending time praying
  2. What are you praying for? God, what do you want to do in my life? 
  3. Who are you praying with? Make a commitment to pray for each other

Just this morning one of my friends at MOPS gave me her copy of "Praying God's Word For Your Husband" by Kathi Lipp. I look forward to learning how to pray more effectively for my husband and to experience God's power through prayer. 

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Friendship: The Saving Grace of "Me Too"

I don't know about you, but for me yesterday was one of those mornings where I woke up and wasn't sure I would even going to make it out of my PJ's, let alone make it out of the house and to that much-needed MOPS meeting. Here's how God got me over my hurtles on Tuesday:

I woke up to my husband saying "It's 8 o' clock" after having been up most of the night with my youngest daughter who had come down with a high fever.

God-solved: my husband offered to work from home so I could leave my sick kiddo at home.

Next, that darn Daylight Savings time-change has made my morning an hour shorter and I've not had a shower in 2 days and haven't had much sleep to compensate for that.

God-solved: I had a really great hair morning (probably because I didn't sleep much on it) and I decided it didn't need to be washed to be presentable (this doesn't happen very often!).

And also because of the time change, I didn't have time to bring my craft (being the craft-leader and all), or the fruit I should have brought for breakfast sharing, and (gasp!) I didn't have time to make coffee.

God-solved: I let go of the "shoulda's" for the morning and instead put on a dress, slapped on some deodorant and got myself to the nearest Starbucks drive thru. They were so fast getting all the caffeine-starved customers through the line that I was only 5 minutes late for MOPS (score!).

Then I was able to forget for 2 hours that my daughter had a fever, or that I needed a shower, and instead had breakfast, laughed, and shared some great "me too" conversation with my table ladies. 

That video of that speaker I can't remember the name of (because I'm sleep-deprived, remember?), was so great, wasn't it? Friendships, and having girlfriends to share our not-perfectness with, and opening our lives up to women who really care about us is such a gift. My major "God-solved" moment on Tuesday wasn't the hair, or my husband (though I love him!), or the Starbucks I had. It was that I got to MOPS and told my friends about my morning, and what I was going through, and how I had failed to meet my own expectations of myself; and they said "me too." And then we took pictures with cool props and were silly --- and who doesn't need to just be silly every so often??

I'm not alone; you're not alone. Take a risk, take a chance and trust someone with the stuff you wish you weren't dealing with. Chances are, they will welcome your openness and you both will be blessed when she says, "Me too!"