Romans 12:3-8

Romans 12: 3-8
For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgement, in accordance with the faith  God has distributed to each of you. For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith. If it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

Have you ever thought about what your spiritual gifts may be? The bible only lists several of many that we may have! I am so thankful that each of us has a different gift to help the body of Christ. We are all woven together in God's beautiful, intricate blanket. Each of us helping another!

One of my spiritual gifts is the gift of encouragement, which I have recently found out. I love to send encouragement through the mail. Snail mail!! I know how wonderful it feels to get mail and I always hope that I can help brighten someone's day through that! I just bought 200 cards today and I am very excited to start sending them out!!

Remember that God created you different than anyone else. Your spiritual gifts are different from mine and your friends and your family! You are unique and beautifully and wonderfully made. 

Even if encouragement isn't your best spiritual gift, how can you encourage someone today? Smile at them? Give a compliment? Pray with or for someone? Encourage someone today the way you most like to be encouraged:]

Scraped Knees and Broken Hearts

 

As a mother, it's hard not to notice other mother/child relationships. The way they interact with one another. How they show love. How they talk to each other. Most the time I see other mommies loving and playing with their kids or talking silly. Makes my heart happy.

Then there are the other ones. I say "other" ones as in "grumpy" moms. I am NOT judging because we all have our moments of being pushed over the edge. Irritated, kids push our buttons, we;re tired and kids are acting up. You usually see these grumpy moms at stores ect. Remember, I AM NOT JUDGING! We all know eachother feels!

BUT, when I see mothers continually, week after week, being rude, mean, make your child feel stupid....it's NOT ok.

I see one specifically. Yelling at their 4 year old daughter.

 Week after week I watch them. Same things always occur. Mom is beyond irritated. Putting the little girl down. She doesn't enjoy the moments and she never expresses that she's proud of her daughter. Other moms around along with myself, compliment our girls, tell them they are doing a great job, they are pretty and show how proud we are. Then there is the other mom. "Hurry up and do this. Get over here! Hurry and change! If you don't stop then we're going home because I'm tired. I don't have time for this. I have better things to do." SAD! Makes my heart sad.

Yes we all have our moments. But this has been every week. I'm not judging because I don't know her or her life. But I'm praying for her and their relationship.

It's good to be reminded how precious our daughters are. How they need their self esteem boosted. They want to feel like a princess. They want to feel pretty and that they are loved and wanted.

As  women we want to feel the same. So let's treat our daughters like we want to be treated. Let's rethink how we interact and how much time we really spend investing in them. Teaching them how a woman is supposed to act and how others are to treat her.  Manners and sweetness. Let's think about what we really say to them.

I want the best for my daughter. I want her to not go through things that I did and learn from my mistakes. I want the fairytale ending for my baby. I want what GOD wants for her the most.

 

She is precious, beautiful and unique in the eyes of the Lord.

 

No one was created like her.

 

Her little giggle, smile and the way she sings... it's precious.

 

 

We love them with all of hearts so let's make the extra effort to show them because one day they won't be running to us for scraped knees but for broken hearts.

And you best believe I will be there for both.

 

 

I am a servant

I am a servant.

A servant of Christ.

A servant to my husband.

A servant for my kids.

A servant of my home.

I am currently reviewing a book, Women Living Well, by Courtney Joseph.. It comes out TOMORROW, October 1st. I would highly suggest adding this to your books to read.

 source

This book has been life changing. She is so powerful & speaks Truth about the world us ladies live in & our biblical roles. She was so bold to step out in her faith & say some of the things she has said in this book & it is all biblical truth. 

Let me reiterate, this book has been life changing. I have seen changes in my life already. I have seen changes in my relationship with Christ. My husband has seen changes in me & has mentioned it to me. The ways I am dealing with my children have changed. My view on life, this world, everything, it all has changed.

From a book.

There has been no other book other than the Bible that has impacted me this way. 

I will touch on a lot of things in future posts, but I really want to focus on being a servant because this is the one that has hit me like a ton of bricks.

I was completely aware that I am a servant for Christ. I would say most believers do believe this. But my view has broadened of this... I am a servant for my family. And being a servant of your family glorifies non other than our Yahweh!!

I kid you not. Yesterday I was cleaning toilets & in the past year I've gotten in such a great routine cleaning I don't exactly "complain" about it anymore. But just this weekend I've realized what a JOY it is to clean my 3 toilets for my family & any of our friends that come to our house.

Profound right? I get joy cleaning toilets!! But the whole time I was pretty much excited talking to God in my head thinking, if no one else did this.. My family wouldn't have clean toilets to sit on, they appreciate clean toilets, they may take it for granted as I do too, but without me we may not have clean toilets! Now now I am not saying my husband is lazy & wouldn't clean them if he had to, I am just saying for me as a woman, this is what I feel like my role is. Making my house clean & comfy for my family. I want our house to be a house we really call home. 

So next time you are cleaning your toilets, instead of thinking.. Not again, this is such a drag, I hate this.. Think I GET to clean the toilets for my family. 

"What makes a home a haven? It's not the things we have or the things we do not have that make our homes havens. It's you, my dear reader; you are the key to making the home a haven." -- Courtney Joseph, Women Living Well 

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A Few of My Favorite Reads - Christian Book Review

I love to read!  With two busy little boys entertaining me day and night I can't always find the time so it's a treat when I get to sit down and enjoy a good book.  Below I'll share with you some of my favorite Christian books, including a quote from the book and a little bit on why I like it...

1) For Women Only ~ Shaunti Feldhahn

"Men want to show us how much they love us and long for their women to understand what is going on inside, even though they sometimes can't explain it well.  More than once I have seen men tear up as they read the draft of this book, moved by the though that their wife might be able to -or want to- understand them."

This is the most recent book that I finished and I must admit that I cried at the end!  The author, Shaunti Feldhahn, did extensive research with thousands of men to find out how men really feel - who they really are on the inside.  Some of the information was not necessarily new to me, some blew my mind (hello chapter 5)!  Really it gave me a renewed appreciation and sensitivity for the man that my husband is and an understanding of how much he really depends on me as his wife for his self esteem and emotional well-being.

It's broken up into 9 chapters and is a pretty easy and quick read (it took me two days).

Chapter 1: Lightbulb on!
  How I Woke up to What I Didn't Know About Men

Chapter 2: Your Love Is Not Enough
  Why Your Respect Means More to Him than Even Your Affection

Chapter 3: The Performance of a Lifetime
  Why Your Mr. Smooth Looks So Impressive but Feels Like an Impostor

Chapter 4: The Loneliest Burden
  How His Need to Provide Weighs Your Man Down, and Why He Likes It That Way

Chapter 5: Sex Changes Everything
  Why Sex Unlocks a Man's Emotions (Guess Who Holds the Key?)

Chapter 6: Keeper of the Visual Rolodex
  Why It's So Natural for Him to Look and So Hard to Forget What He's Seen

Chapter 7: Chocolate, Flowers, Bait Fishing
  Why the Reluctant Clod You Know Really Does Want Romance

Chapter 8: The Truth About the Way You Look
  Why what's on the Outside Matters to Him on the Inside

Chapter 9: Words for Your Heart
  What Your Man Most Wishes You Knew About Him

2)  Piercing the Darkness~ Frank E. Peretti

"Tal scanned the horizon and could see the thick hedge of angelic warriors that surrounded the town, sealing it off from demonic invasion.  They were there to serve the saints within, responding to their prayers, widening doors of opportunity to minister.  The town was not perfect, not without problems; it still had its taverns and turmoils, its scrapes and its sins.  But the Lord was working in Ashton, its saints were praying, and for Sally Beth Roe it was safe."

Piercing the Darkness and its predecessor, This Present Darkness, are two of my all time favorite Christian novels!  The books center around fictional battles between good and evil, on earth and in the heavenly realm.  The author's vivid imagination of how the Lord's angels and the Devil's spirits look, act and speak are captivating.  We get to see what is happening on earth and how simultaneously the spiritual realm is responding.  I often visualize the spiritual realm as exactly how I've read it in these books, picturing the mighty warrior angels surrounding a city or a room in a house!  I love how, as in the quote above, the story shows the heavenly hosts grow stronger as the people on earth gather to pray and alternately how areas in the grips of darkness and sin have a much stronger presence of evil spirits.  If you love a good read as much as I do you won't be disappointed with this one!

3)  The Case for Christ ~ Lee Strobel

"'I'll be honest with you," I said to Metzger. 'When I first found out that there are no surviving originals of the New Testament, I was really skeptical.  I thought, if all we have are copies of copies of copies, how can I have any confidence that the New Testament we have today bears any resemblance whatsoever to what was originally written? How do you respond to that?'"

This book is a classic book on apologetics.  I actually found this book at a thrift store and bought it out if curiosity.  I was quite surprised at how eye opening it was to me and how much I learned about my faith that I had never known despite being a life long believer in and follower of Christ.  If you (or someone you know) have hard questions about the Bible and who Jesus was, like the one above, this would be a great book to check out.  It was written by a self-described atheist who set out on a journey to find out for himself whether there was any merit to Christianity after his wife came home one day and told him that she had become a Christian.  He was disappointed at first until he began to see the changes that had taken place (for the better) in her life.  Being a reporter, he decided to go on a search for facts to support or refute the legitimacy of Christianity, and after two years put his findings into this book.

4) Rekindled ~ Tamera Alexander

"Larson's heart pounded out an erratic rhythm.  He blew out a steadying breath.  Kathryn's gasp at seeing him had wounded him more deeply than he could have imagined.  Certain she was gone, he raked his hands over his face.  He didn't know which hurt him more - her reaction to him or the raw truth that she hadn't recongnized her own husband."

Aghhhh!  This book, I can't say enough about how much I loved this book!!!  This is a romance novel better than any I've read.  I find it hard to find a romance novel that is clean and not crude but that also makes my heart pound and eyes tear up.  I could not put this book down.  It takes place in the mid 1800's, a story of a husband and a wife, unmet expectations and a journey of discovery.  There are unexpected twists that will keep you turning the pages and wanting more!  

5) The Five Languages of Apology ~ Gary Chapman & Jennifer Thomas

"Without apology, the offense sits as a barrier and the quality of the relationship is diminished.  Good relationships are always marked by a willingness to apologize, forgive and reconcile.  The reason many relationships are cold and distant is because we have failed to apologize."

I would imagine many of you have heard of the book, The Five Love Languages?  This book is written by the same author.  The Love Languages concept had a huge impact on me and the way I strive to relate to my husband so I thought just maybe it would help us in the area of apologizing (not one of our stronger points)!  The information in the book is laid out so simply - it is quite an easy read - and it just makes sense!  The basic concept is that we each speak different "languages" when it comes to apology.  While one person might simply need to hear I'm sorry to really feel the apology is sincere, another person may need to hear, "I know I was wrong, would you please forgive me?"  The book gives many examples of how couples or co-workers or friends got stuck in a conflict because they truly felt that the other was not genuinely sorry.  According to the book in one survey 75% of couples spoke different apology languages!  This means that 3 out of 4 couples needed to learn a different way to convey their apology to make it meaningful to their significant other!  Here are the 5 basic languages of apology:
1) Expressing Regret, "I am sorry"
2) Accepting Responsibility, "I was wrong"
3) Making Restitution, "What can I do to make it right?"
4) Genuinely Renting, "I'll try not to do that again"
5) Requesting Forgiveness, "Will you please forgive me?"

6) Choose Joy - Because Happiness Isn't Enough ~ Kay Warren

"Then I wonder, if all of creation sings, why don't I?  If the trees, the flowers, the oceans, the mountains, the clouds, and the animals are praising God's name every day, why don't I -the crown of his creation- sing praise to him?  Do I hold back my songs of praise for trivialities as small as no parking space at the crowded mall?  My hair didn't curl the way I wanted it to?  It's raining?  The price of gasoline went up again?  All of God's works sing for joy before him, and when I meditate on what he has made, on his stunning abilities as the maker Creator, I too sing.  I too shout for joy!"

This book...  This book had a huge impact on me just a little over a year ago and ever since, "choose joy" has been my mantra.  At the time I was going through some trials in my life (which I wrote about here) and realized that I had a choice to make.  I purchased and read this book as my church was doing a message series based on it.  I highly recommend it to anyone who has ever faced any trials of any kind in life (um, hello... EVERYONE!).  Kay writes from such an honest place and is so encouraging about being intentional when choosing our attitude towards life.  We ALWAYS have the ability to choose joy and the Lord longs for us to experience joy in our lives - the fullness of his joy, not just situational happiness.

*** We would love for you to share with us what your favorite Christian books are! If you've read a book that you would like to share with us, leave us a comment... it might just be the next on our reading list!!  

Thankful to be Blessed

Today marks one week since my husband, our son, and I moved into our new house in Indiana. I have been unpacking boxes non-stop it feels like and searching for things all the time saying, "I know it's somewhere around here... probably in a box." My body is sore and tired from lifting and moving and placing. I've been fighting a cold and sinus infection along with a one year old's teething and cold. My mind just wants to tune out from the unpacking and whining. Yes, I've complained. But I continuously am hearing God remind me through it all to just be thankful for my blessings.

The Bible talks about being thankful, giving thanks, and thanksgiving numerous times throughout Old and New Testament. David writes in Psalms, "I will give thanks to the Lord", "we will give thanks, for your Name is near", "give thanks to Him and praise His name." 1 Thessalonians says, "give thanks in all circumstances."

Philippians 4:6 spells out exactly when and how to be thankful, "Don't be anxious about anything, but in EVERYTHING, by prayer and petition, with THANKSGIVING, present your requests to God." God knows us - He created us! He knows we will complain, whine, be tired, not be content, worry, etc. And so He says through The Word to come to Him with those anxieties and complaints, but to also do it with thanksgiving in our hearts. Thanksgiving is the "cure" or antidote to worry.

Being thankful reminds us of all the blessings we have. It's like flipping a switch in our heart. When we are complaining or worried, turing on that "thankfulness switch" is like God saying, "Remember when I took care of you in this time... see how wonderful your life is... look at all the blessings you've been given... do you know how much I love you and care for you?" It's hard to complain when we remember how much we've been given.

In the next few days, I'm challenging you: Every time you want to complain, even for the littlest reason, stop, flip that thankfulness switch, and remember the blessings you have given. Be thankful to be blessed.

Choose Joy

~Psalm 19:14~

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of me heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock, and my Redeemer.

Choose joy. You may not feel it, but God has appointed it.

Sometimes we have to choose to be joyful. God created us to be emotional beings and he made no mistake in doing so. The choice is ours, go with the flow of our emotions not having any control over it or we can choose to obey God and honor him with the words of our mouths and the meditation of our hearts, our emotions. Sometimes that is not easy. But guess what!!!! We have Yahweh on our side! He is our Rock! He stands strong and firm when we feel weak. Lets melt at his feet. Break our walls and let him in! Let's honor him in all we say and do and FEEL!!! 

Live in His Presence

 

 

(soaking.net)

 

Live first and foremost in my presence.

 

 

Gradually you will become more aware of Me than of people and places around you.

 

This awareness will not detract from your relationships with others.

 

Instead, it will increase your ability to give love and encouragement to them.

 

My Peace will permeate your words and demeanor.

 

You will be active in the world, yet one step removed from it.

 

You will not be easily shaken, because my enveloping Presence buffers the blow of problems.

 

This is the path I have set before you.

 

As you follow it wholeheartedly, you experience abundant Life and Peace.

 

 

Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you, who walk in the light of your presence, O Lord. They rejoice in your name all day long; they exult in your righteousness. -- Psalm 89:15-16

 

I have set the Lord always before me. Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. -- Psalm 16:8

 

 

-Jesus Calling