For You So Love God That You Give......?

Good morning Holy Spirit! Good morning Abba! Good morning Jesus! 
     It's all about You! All that I am I lay at Your feet, the good and the bad, the strengths and the weaknesses~ You alone can take it all and make me into what I should be. If I try by myself I fall so very short! If I ignore it, I wonder around never accomplishing the callings and work You have for me.
     So Lord, I pray You bind my heart to You and complete the good work that You have started. Please forgive me for sins of neglect, selfishness and ignorance. I fall so short of the woman You have created me to be, even as Your word says, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Please strengthen my spirit with Yours and help me to subject my flesh to Your perfect will. 
     Growing up always believing in You I have had such a selfish, self-centered life! If I believed in You, why has my focus always been on myself? Why in the world would I not have focused on You! the Great I AM, the Creative Genius of all things? I have been so obtuse! Here is little me, weak, helpless..oblivious! and there is You! strong, all powerful....omniscient! And I focus on me! How ridiculous! 
     I can't take credit for all of my mistake, many Christians, leaders and followers focus on the "people" side of the "God and His children" equation. It makes no sense actually! 
    As a woman I have learned to focus on many other people before myself, growing up I focused on my parents, I learned their requirements, their likes and dislikes and I learned to walk within those guidelines, trying to please them. As I grew older and became a "girlfriend" I took great pleasure in learning what was pleasing to my "boyfriend", I learned his likes and dislikes and tried to incorporate them into my own patterns. As a young wife, I really tried to do the things that I thought was fitting for a married woman, I tried to please my husband, the way we spent our time, the things I cooked, the way I dressed, the things I did, were focused outside of myself. Then when I became a mother I really kicked it into high gear, I had a little person I was responsible for, to keep happy and healthy and to please! No crying for my baby! 
     I see the pattern here that I was dedicated to pleasing the people in my life. And I applied the same thinking to You! I tried to dress like I thought You would want, I did the work I thought You would want. In all of my doing though, I didn't actually do the one thing You would want, I didn't spend time with You, fellowshipping with You, praising You, praying to You. I was too busy trying to do the material things I thought You would want me to do.
      Our relationship was still focused on me, not You! People tend to make things about themselves Lord, we are a selfish bunch! If we could learn to take our eyes off of ourselves and focus on You, You would be free to make us into the people You want us to be...the better part of ourselves. The world changing people that You have called us to be!
     Every person that has heard any scripture seems to have heard John 3:16,  “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. But have they ever heard of Your attributes, of the things that please or displease You? They know that they're loved and that's all that matters? Lord please forgive us! 
     Please reveal the reality of Who You are! Please help us to focus on You and not ourselves! You are the Great I AM! The Alpha and Omega, the Genius Creator of all things! You are the "Father that ran"~ how blessed are we? Amazing Lord, You are mindful that we are but dust, but that is no excuse for ourselves that we should not bow down, pick up our cross and devote ourselves to pleasing You instead of ourselves! 
     I have observed that people in need are so grateful when something is done for them, then they grow into expecting it to be done repeatedly....then demanding it! I had not equated it into their behaviour to You Lord, until now. People are thankful that You so loved them that You sent Your only Son~ but they want You to keep giving! They don't want to see that they might need to take some actions also! They might need to give their best back to You! No, they limit themselves to receiving, with little thought of giving. And they don't want to see that if they don't grow into a loving walk with You their life may have consequences that reflect their selfish attitude of taking and demanding! 
     So instead of focusing on "For God so loved the world that He gave" ~ Shouldn't we start asking "For the world so loved God that it gave"! What will you give? Your best? Your worst? Something you don't want or need anymore? If you will give your best, what is it that you value the most? Your time, your money, your attention, entertainment, energy.....will you give that?
     For you so love God that you give.....what?
     
      

Far Better Things~

There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind. 
Quote from C. S. Lewis


Amen! Streets of gold, no illness or tears not to mention being in God's presence!  I truly believe that people that take drugs CAN NOT get high enough to feel the euphoria of being in God's presence, but their spirit knows what it's missing and is trying to get a fix anyway it can...either by drugs or alcohol or whatever addiction makes them have a rush of highness for a short time. Give up on man made highs and seek the euphoria that accompanies God's presence!!~

Free To Walk

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!

Our New Garden

I took some pictures today so you could see our garden!
    Lane has worked so hard on it and it's really a wonderful place! We had tried to decide which part of our yard would be best for a garden area and the far corner behind the pool was where we had the most sun, so we chose there and I'm really glad we did, it's kind of private and aways from the house so it's like my own little world. When we decided the far corner, we went out to look at it and started digging around and realized there was some concrete blocks or something there under the grass, it was so overgrown with grass we didn't really know what was there.

      I started digging at it one day while Lane was at work and when he got home I was in trouble! He doesn't like for me to do too much manual work, so he took it over and sure enough we had a nice size patio under all of the grass! Once we realized that we had a patio under the grass we decided how to place our raised bed garden, we had thought about 2 of them, but one was plenty enough and we thought if we liked it this year we could add another one next year, Lord willing. So then Lane really kicked it into gear and built the frame for the vegetable garden areas, and I put some cement blocks up to hold the dirt for the flower bed in place. Lane hauled dirt, dirt and more dirt! We were really blessed by the boss he worked with at the time, he was given top soil and sand and a lot of mulch just for the hauling. We knew we had to put up a fence to keep the dogs out so we chose a dark green wire fence that would blend in and not be so distracting.

      The things for the garden just seemed to come together, there are some metal wheels from my dad's farm that my sister was wanting to get rid of, so we took them and put them up on the privacy fence for a little country charm. They were getting rid of some golf cart seats at work so we used them for a little bench where I can sit while I work on the garden. We've had the tomato cages for years and years and while we were living in Tulsa we had bought an old gate at a garage sale and it worked perfect for our garden! (It had just been laying in the garage while we moved around,( I'm sure Lane wondered what we needed an old rusty gate for but he never complained, he just loaded it up at the garage sale and hauled it with us for a long time!)

      Now we have a garden where God has told me we have an open heaven~ well, He told me to remember that for our whole yard is an open heaven and I know we have open heavens everywhere we claim them, but I really enjoy it in the garden!

      I took the pictures starting while I was sitting in one of the two metal chairs we keep on the patio. (Lane was able to get them painted at work too! They had originally been rusty old black chairs, but now they're spiffy shiny red ones!) I took pictures to my left, starting with a big pot our neighbor gave us from her yard because she's moving and I planted Yellow Crook Neck Squash in it, then down and kind of behind it I planted a tomato plant that was left over from our planting, along with the tomato plant is another orphan Squash plant that was left over~ that garden bed was supposed to be for Okra and we did plant about 15 plants or so in it but we had a bunch of volunteer sunflowers come up too, I let some of them grow but I'm trying to keep their leaves trimmed back so they don't overshadow the Okra too much. At the end of the Okra bed are a couple of Potato plants and then a Hollyhock that we transplanted from the farm and and an Iris on the outside of the bed.

      From there is the vegetable raised bed, we planted a lot in it! It's about 4 by 8 and we put onions, turnips, beets, carrots, radishes and spinach in it for the cool season, now I've added some peas, beans, cucumbers, zucchini squash and jalapeno peppers. We have some herb plants tucked here and there in other parts of the yard too~ some lemon thyme, basil, rosemary, pineapple sage, dill, chives and mint. It has been so fun! I'm like a kid in a candy store to be able to plant and grow so many things!

      Carol, my sister gave us a lot of Iris starts, they sold their farm and have moved to town now, so she was digging up a lot of her flowers for starts at her new house and shared with us. After we planted the Iris' we saw some at Lowes and saw the price was $10 a bulb! We came home and counted up that we had planted a value of over $200 dollars of Iris' that Carol had given us! We've transplanted Hollyhocks and Peonies from the farm too. and our neighbor that is moving gave us starts from her plants too, We're creating an oasis! Thank You Lord!

     This has turned out to be pretty long, but it seems like our garden has had God's hand in it all along, even from the gate in Tulsa, so I wanted to do it justice! and Lane has put a lot of labor in on it too!  Our dog, KC, snuck into a couple and the one picture from the start has Lexi, Luke's Dog and KC with Lane.

Hope you enjoy the tour and that it's not too long!

 

 

This is how it looked when Lane first dug out our patio, that was hidden under grass.

 

These are volunteer Sunflowers that came up, they're trying to take over the area for the Okra!

                                   Looking down the patio to the raised bed vegetable garden.
                                    (We've since added mulch to all of the walking area around
                                     the raised bed and the tomato cages to fight the grass back!)

                                                            Pink and purple Petunias.

One of the wagon wheels from my dad's farm.

The flower bed down one side of the patio.

Our Patio and Garden from an outside view.

It's still a work in progress, but I love our little garden area!

Thank You Lord for this blessing!

Questions~

     Several things have come together to create this post.
     This morning in my study time I had a praise CD by Misty Edwards playing (I almost always have praise music playing, either a CD or the radio or streaming online). The lyrics that stood out to me were "people get ready He's coming".
     This last weekend was the Shekinah Glory conference at our church in KC, we weren't able to attend, but we did watch all that was available online. The last days message was that the glory will usher in the return of Jesus.
     Our Pastor was teaching that we, as the church, are the Bride that Jesus is returning for. And that as the church we are to be spending this time of waiting to prepare ourselves for His return! We shouldn't be waiting for Him to return and then expect Him to prepare us for heaven, but I believe that many people are waiting for just that.
     Many American believers have bought into the idea that there will be a rapture and that everyone that ever said the "sinner's prayer" will be zapped into heaven. But there are several verses that have over the years caused me to worry and now seem to be congealing with the last conference's teachings. There is the parable told of the men that had lived doing things like healing and casting out of evil spirits in Jesus's name, but at the end when they approached Jesus He told them to leave and that He had never known them. What a horrible shock that would be! And there's the parable of the 10 virgins waiting for the bridegroom, 5 have oil and 5 have run out of oil. When the bridegroom shows up the virgins without oil miss it because they had to go back and get the oil! Another horrible shock! All 10 of the virgins were waiting for the same event and believed and had faith, but 5 ran out of oil and missed it.
     Is it possible that everyone that has said the sinner's prayer is waiting for the bridegroom? What percent of  "sinner prayer" repeaters even know the bridegroom is returning? And how many people know who the Bridegroom is returning for? *Hint, His bride!* Okay, who is His bride? And then who are the virgins that run out of oil? So many questions! (In my life everyone says I'm the person with the most questions and I often find that nobody else has even considered half of the things I have questions about! Even my granddaughter told me that I have "a lot of questions!". (It's rare for a child to tell an adult that! I feel honored!!)).
     I have mostly focused on how to live after recognizing that Jesus is the Son of God and Lord of my life, so I have many areas of the future days that I have not spent time studying. I do believe that if I live each day as Jesus wants me to, that He will take care of me and my future. However with all of that said I've recently developed a concern that a lot of people are living in a false sense of security just waiting for that day they get to cash in the "Rapture" ticket. So I'm tackling the part of the message that I've learned so far~
     Okay, back to the basics of what I have begun to understand ~ Jesus is the Bridegroom, He has promised to return for His bride, the church is His bride, the church is supposed to be growing more beautiful with it's growth as it waits for the return of the Bridegroom, and the bride should be waiting for the return of her groom with great love and expectation! Now the part that will probably shock a few people~ the church that is the bride is holy, set apart from the sins of the world, it is a corporate body, it should be growing in loveliness. If a person is not living a life dedicated to being the bride are they one of the virgins that runs out of oil? or are they one of the ones that Jesus said "leave Me, I never knew you"?  See, more questions to be prayed about~

The Path Less Followed

     As a christian I am to attend to my own moral path, not that of the world. I am to share the truth of my path, why I seek this "moral path" and that my God is love, He is full of loving kindness, He is sympathetic and paid a great sacrifice for us and has a narrow path that leads to the life He desires for me and you. However I am not to try to force others onto the path.
     God's moral path does have requirements for me and others, but I can't put my requirements on other people, that's between them and God. God will complete the work He has begun in each of us if we yield to Him. I don't want to be "that" child in school that is always telling the other children "but the teacher said to do this..", the teacher is quite capable of making themselves understood, they don't need me tattling! God is quite capable of dealing with His followers, He doesn't need me fixing them! I know I am to "love the Lord your God", to "love others as myself", then there are a lot of shall nots about things I should avoid~ shall not murder, shall not covet...judge not... of course there are a lot more in each group of "do and do not", but you get the idea right? These are things to apply to myself, not to others!
     God does have enemies-Satan and his followers, but we end up creating enemies of our Father when we don't walk as we should. We cause people to despise us and worse yet to despise our Father because of the things we do and say when we're not following His leading!  Jesus said that He did not come to judge, so let's not put ourselves in the place of judge either...just see to the log in our own eye and trust God to see the to splinter in our brother's eye!(Matthew 7:1-5)
     If we seek to walk in God's authority, doing His will, hearing and following His voice, doing His work then people will be drawn to us and to our heavenly Father. Then we will be the salt and light that He created us to be. We will draw people to our Father, not repulse them!
     The path is narrow that leads to eternal life- unfortunately many who claim to be Christians are not on the narrow path (this is according to God's word, not my judgement! Matt 7:13-14) and there are some "tares" that have been planted by the enemy in with the wheat, the wheat are God's followers, (For non-farmers the tares are weeds that look like wheat, but aren't.). The Tares cannot be separated until harvest and the tares lead many people astray and repulse others away from our Father with their pretense of being Christians.
     When I think about it I have to wonder "How does God tolerate us?". Many come to Him and fall away, back to their own desires or to their ways in the world and some never come -- and yet He is patient and long suffering, even knowing that few would find the way He sent His own Son to die as a sacrifice for our sins!
     Thinking of these things I encourage you beloved, choose the narrow path, walk uprightly, set your standard to His standard, look to be pleasing to Him, seek Him as your "True North" ~ seek for His will ~ try to get to know Him!  

Matthew 7-13 & 14 Amplified Bible
Enter through the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and spacious and broad is the way that leads away to destruction, and many are those who are entering through it. But the gate is narrow (contracted by pressure) and the way is straitened and compressed that leads away to life, and few are those who find it.

 

or same verses in the everyday language of The Message~

 

“Don’t look for shortcuts to God. The market is flooded with surefire, easygoing formulas for a successful life that can be practiced in your spare time. Don’t fall for that stuff, even though crowds of people do. The way to life—to God!—is vigorous and requires total attention.

     Or, choose the path less followed and don't be surprised that there are few on it with you~

Life Goes On~

Just an observation~
     Life goes on, things we expected to happen never do and things we didn't expect are what we're living with today. No wonder God says to not worry about tomorrow...we can not possibly see what tomorrow brings with it.
     Yes, there are some things that we can prepare for, like buying groceries for tomorrow because we know we'll want to eat, but to worry or plan for much more than clothes to wear, food to eat, what more can we really know will happen?