Worship at a whole new level

I love going to church!  I look forward to Sunday mornings because I enjoy my 4th grade class and every time I sit in worship I am so glad I came.  Yesterday was no exception.  I sat down in the worship center waiting for church to start and learned two friends children were being baptized.  It made me smile and so glad I was there.  As the music began I truly felt like I was the only one in the room, I was so captured by the music that it just carried me away.  Then came the baptisms and I was excited.  Watching two young boys stand up in front of all these adults is hard enough but listening to them tell us that they believe Jesus died for their sins and saved them...well it brought me to tears.  As far as I was concerned the sermon was just completed and it was time to worship.  As the music began again and we sang "In Christ Alone"  my eyes filled with tears as I loved the picture those two young boys shared.  Their moms were just glowing with joy knowing that their children are now their brothers in Christ.

All this brought me to a conversation I had with one of those Mom's last Friday.  This kids were playing and we were talking about how so many of the churches in America are becoming Country Clubs for Christians.  So many people are just doing church.  Then we talked about our church and some others that we know who are striving to push their people out of doing church and instead doing life with Jesus together.  I love how our Pastor does not want us doing church.  He does not want us to become a country club, but instead he wants us out in the community, in our neighborhoods, in other countries and states sharing the gospel of Christ and supporting other churches as they strive to do the same.

Kathryn asked yesterday to partake in the Lord's Supper at church with me because she accepted Christ a few months ago.  I told her no and after church I was pleased with my decision.  We have not put Kathryn through a new Christian's class and have not really done any specific discipleship on some of these parts of church yet.  When we got to the car and I asked her why she wanted to participate she said, "because that is what you do in church after you are a Christian."  I asked her what it meant and was about at all and she not only did not know but was not sure why it mattered.  This conversation did two things for me.  One it reminded me it is time for me to get her into our children's new Christians class so that she can learn about these traditions/ordinances. It also told me that now as we are starting a new school year and I am beginning to really disciple her in her new life as a Christian I don't want to teach her to do church.  I want to teach her about her relationship with our Savior.  I want to teach her all the different types of worship from the Lord's Supper to tithing to singing and so much more.  I want to teach her how to take this new little seed in her life and help it grow.

When we got home and she was playing in another room, she had no idea I was listening and I got her hear her sing "God I love you.  Jesus I love you.  God I love you.  Jesus I love you."  She sings like her dad and I completely off tune, but I sat and smiled to the precious heart that was praising her God.  You could hear her love to Him and desire to share that with Him.  Oh how I want to flourish that desire and my prayer is that the Lord would truly give me wisdom to help her grow to love him more and more.  I don't want her to do church.  I want her to truly have a personal relationship with our God and Savior.  I want her to truly understand the words of "In Christ Alone" knowing is is a wonderful picture of the grace we are give each and every day.

Hidden strength

In my 9 years as a police wife I have learned so many things.  I have learned to not watch the evening news or read the media.  They tend to inflate issues and many times are incorrect or missing vial information.  I have learned what the true meaning of trust in other people really is, knowing that each time Craig goes to work I have to trust that the officers on his shift truly do have his back.  Most of all I have had to give my husband back to the Lord and know that being a cop is not a job, it is a calling and ministry for him.  Over the past week or so peoples view regarding the police is sadly declining and horrible things are being said.  Melissa Littles who writes the Police Wife Life blog posted a challenge today and I want to take her up on the challenge.  She challenged LEO wives to post about who our husbands really are so that people would see beyond the badge and uniform to the person who is wearing it.

I have been blessed with a man who cares more for his daughters than anything in this world other than me and his Lord.  He will spend hours putting together all these pink girl toys and castles for presents but then he will also sit with them and build with legos as long as they want to.  He wants to expand their horizons and challenge their thinking.  He wants to raise girls who are not victims but are empowered, strong and independent.  Most of all he wants our girls to love Jesus, have a solid moral compass and hearts to put others before themselves.

 As I look back over the years with our family I am amazed at how blessed we truly are.  He is our protector and our strength.  He is the calm one when I am worried or scared.  He brings me back to focus when my emotions are just getting beyond me and most of all he loves us.  He loves us BIG!

Do I worry when he goes on shift, sometimes I do but I have learned to trust him and trust his training.  I have learned to trust that his #1 goal is to come home each and every day.  I am amazed at how he considers his job a ministry and calling.  He strives to not be a hot head but walk into situations with focus and understanding, however, having heard what I call his "cop voice" when he is unsure about a situation he takes nothing for granted and with him, trust is earned.

So when you read the news or get angry at a cop for writing you a ticket you know you deserve. (I used to get mad too...and I deserved all of my tickets)  Remember that not only Craig's goal but the goal of all the officers out there is not to write tickets to tick you off but to keep the streets and cities safe for our families.  Part of that job is tickets, part of that job is dealing with domestic disputes, robberies, burglaries, accidents, shots fired calls, crazy people calls and so much more.  If you pause and think about it most people do not say, "boy, I want that job".  However, when you talk to a cop most will tell you it is not a job, it is a calling.

So here is a picture of the man I love and am so honored that God gave him to me.  May the Lord protect all our officers out there not just in Nashville but nation wide.  Please pray for them for each of them have families who want them to come home at the end of each and every shift.

Blessings to all our family and friends blood and blue!

Living where there is no real truth

I love to write and share my thoughts.  I also love to sit and discuss varied topics with my father when we get the chance.  Numerous times I have told him he should blog because he has so many great thoughts, but I understand that writing in this manner is just not his thing.  When we were there visiting he gave me a thought he had and said that someone should blog about it.  I wrote it down and it has been stewing in my brain.  When I wrote it down I loved it and as I have let it stew in my brain it has grown.

In imagination there is no truth...

but in meditation on God's word, truth can be found.

-Buck Buchanan

I added (on God's word) because that is where my brain has been going ever since I began thinking about this statement.  I loved adding that because I am a worrier and I tend to worry about the littlest things instead of laying them at my Lord's feet.  I also have a huge imagination and if I am not careful it will completely run away with me.  One of the ways that I battle both of those is through my scripture memory and little notebooks I have with scripture in them.  These are tools I use to help reign in my worry and my imagination when it is running away with my mind.

The Lord began to direct my thoughts to my girls.  My oldest especially has an imagination like mine and she is also a worrier.  I think she has the potential to worry even more than me and that is a lot!  My girls have just restarted their Awana program at church and I just love this program.  It helps teach children the importance of scripture memory, it challenges to memorize scripture and rewards them as the accomplish these goals.  As I was thinking over Dad's statement I began to think of my girls and how I don't want them growing up thinking that there is truth in the wilds of their imagination.  Dictionary.com defines imagination as the product of imagining; a conception or mental creation, often a baseless or fanciful one.  This definition describes what happens when I am not careful.  My mind begins to create things out of nothing and then if I am not careful the enemy takes those worries and runs with them like a freight train and I don't want this to happen to my girls.  I want to equip them to know and seek truth.

Another side of this statement that hit me was all of the information that we get through the media, tv, other people, stores, etc.  Advertising can really influence our thoughts, what we think of ourselves, our contentment and what we think of others.  These ads are very creative and inventive but 99% of them are not based on the truths of the Bible.  These things tell us we need certain products to be beautiful or we need a new remodeled kitchen to be content and organized.  What I have learned is that when you turn off these things you allow the Lord to really bring you and your mind back into perspective.  7 months ago our family decided to get rid of our satellite TV and just use our Xbox 360 and a roku to watch tv.  This limited our shows, we only get commercials with Hulu and those are limited.  It took a while but after visiting with my parents and watching regular TV again I began to realize all the things that were influencing me from TV.  It was affecting my mood, my contentment and the reality of how blessed I truly am.  An example is HGTV.  I love watching HGTV but when I was watching and then came home I spent time dreaming of all the changes my house needed and the upgrades it could use.  Then I came across a blog post called Give Me Gratitude or Give Me Debt.  This post really helped me get my brain back where I needed it to be.

It is so easy for us to let the influences of this world, media, circumstances and other people affect our imagination.  You may not agree with me but I know for me all these things are tools the enemy uses to make me believe his lies and not the truths of the Bible.  So here I am back in my routine, working on Awana with my girls, living the homeschool life and resetting my brain as I study the book of James.  I have found my contentment and I have been able to step back from my crazy imagination driven truth and refocus on the truth found in meditating and spending time in God's word.  Don't let your imagination determine truth in your life but instead spend time mediating and studying the Bible where you will find truth so amazing it will change you life!

Am I a country club Christian?

Yesterday my sister posted a status on Facebook that really hit me. Here is what she posted:

It is interesting to me that Christians here in the United States (myself included) are all of a sudden horrified by the life-threatening persecution that believers in Iraq are facing. I have seen many of my friends and others ask for specific focused prayer for the Iraqi Christians.

Don't get me wrong -- that is what we should absolutely be doing! However, I find it ironic that it takes something like to be in the news to get us to act when there are more Christians martyred being for their faith around the world than at any other time in history. Why aren't we praying this fervently for the persecuted Christians in other parts of the world -- China, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia...just to name a few.

Jesus told his disciples that they could expect to be persecuted, but that the rewards for remaining faithful are great. In Matthew 5:11, he went so far to say, "blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me."

So the questions on my heart this morning are these:
- Is my faith strong enough to endure the kind of persecution that these Iraqi believers are enduring?
- Is the fact that I have never faced genuine, ongoing persecution a hedge of protection from the Lord or an indication that the enemy does not consider me a threat to his plans?
- Am I willing to make radical, long-term changes the way I pray and the things that I pray for?
- Will I remember to for these people when they are no longer in the news and my own problems come back into focus?

These questions are a whole lot easier ask than to answer.


This post was really timely for me because as I read what my sister had to say and the questions she posed I began to think about the Sunday school lesson I had just prepped for and taught my class.  The lesson was out of Ezekiel 37 when God spoke to Ezekiel in a valley of dry bones.

"The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. 3 He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”

I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”

4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! 5 This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath[a] enter you, and you will come to life. 6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’”

7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. 8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.

9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.

11 Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ 12 Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. 14 I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.’”

As I prepared for this lesson I kept thinking to myself, "am I like this valley of dry bones?  Is my view of this world, politics, government, wars and violence so overwhelming that I have given up? Am I truly living each day with hope?  Am I like Ezekiel trying to share this hope with people who have none?"  When I studied this passage I thought about America and all our freedom and all we have available to us compared to so many other places, yet there is so much here we take for granted.  Many times our churches are like country clubs and we get so caught up in attending and participating that we forget that if lost people are not coming in then we need to be going out.  The valley of dry bones was a picture of what we look like in our sin and to me it was a picture of where our world is and all the people who are lost with no hope.  Jesus is our hope and many times it is so easy to get tunnel vision and we lose sight of all that God is calling us to do that is right in front of our faces.

I loved my sister's call to fervent prayer and it made me want to not only work on my prayer life but strive to pray with power and conviction.  Seeking the Spirit as I come before the throne of God.  When a plant is not growing...it is dying.  I don't want to be a Christian who just gets by, I want to strive to impact those around me.  I want to pay attention to those the Lord puts in my path.  I want to be deliberate when I pray and I want to be so devoted and passionate to my Lord that I would have the heart and bravery of all these Christians in the middle east standing for their beliefs and running for their lives.  I don't want to be a country club Christian, I want to always be on mission looking for where I can bring hope to lives that are as empty as the dry bones God showed Ezekiel.  I want to close with the questions my sister posed and I completely agree with her that these are much easier to ask than answer.

So the questions on my heart this morning are these:
- Is my faith strong enough to endure the kind of persecution that these Iraqi believers are enduring?
- Is the fact that I have never faced genuine, ongoing persecution a hedge of protection from the Lord or an indication that the enemy does not consider me a threat to his plans?
- Am I willing to make radical, long-term changes the way I pray and the things that I pray for?
- Will I remember to for these people when they are no longer in the news and my own problems come back into focus?

These questions are a whole lot easier ask than to answer.

Are you willing to pray this prayer??

One of my favorite things about Facebook are the quotes and sayings that people will post.  Some are funny, come are encouraging and some will cause you to pause and think.  When I was on Facebook I was scrolling through my news feed and read a statement a good friend posted.

Spirit, lead me where my trust is without borders.

As I read that statement it immediately caught my attention.  I will admit I am a total control freak and truly releasing trust is something I work on daily.  As I read this over and over I could hear the Lord ask me..."Are you willing to truly pray this?"  

So many times we tell the Lord we trust Him and that he is in total control, yet we are always trying to help, find a solution or worry ourselves to a frazzle.  Our human nature causes us to be naturally selfish instead of being able to truly let go and trust the Lord in all we say and do.  This morning I had the privilege of listening to my father preach and that is a rare treat for me.  In his sermon this morning he was talking about the church and how we can live each day in a godly manner.  In the process of listening and I wrote down in my notes, "Am I willing to truly submit to God no matter the circumstances and trust him for the outcome?"    

I know that the Lord is really been pushing me lately to change my perspective on trust and realize that I need to truly seek the Lord to lead me  where my trust has no borders.  There are not conditions, I am not including my own personal safety net.  How many times has the Lord encouraged me to pray for a stranger or approach someone and I was too scared about what they might think or do.  As Christians it is easy for us to live our lives and ministry in the safety of our "boxes", when the Lord is calling us to step out of where are are comfortable and allow him to do something great.

Below are the lyrics to one of my favorite songs by Twila Paris.  It is called, "Do I Trust You Lord?"  This song really sums up times in my life where the Lord was asking me to trust him without strings or borders.  To step not only up to the cliff but step off trusting that he is there to hold us up.  You see no matter what is happening around us whether good or bad, the Lord is still in control.  In moments of disaster or extreme sadness where you are not sure you can function, we need to remember that the Lord is in control.

Several years ago my husband and I tried to move to South Carolina and we truly thought it was all coming together.  I had a 3rd interview and we felt sure I would receive a job offer.  When I did not get the job and suddenly all the plans began to fall apart I got so mad at God.  I thought he failed me and I spent two weeks telling him how mad I really was.  I would listen to this song below and just cry because I did not understand.  I desperately wanted to trust him, yet I could not see beyond myself.

Sometimes my little heart can't understand

What's in Your will, what's in Your plan

So many times I'm tempted to ask You why

But I can never forget it for long

Lord, what You do could not be wrong

So I believe You even when I must cry

Do I trust You, Lord? Does the river flow?

Do I trust You, Lord? Does the north wind blow?

You can see my heart, You can read my mind

And You've got to know, I would rather die

Than to lose my faith in the One I love

Do I trust You, Lord? Do I trust You?

I know the answers, I've given them all

But suddenly now, I feel so small

Shaken down to the cavity in my soul

I know the doctrine and theology

But right now they don't mean much to me

This time there's only one thing I've got to know

Do I trust You, Lord? Does the robin sing?

Do I trust You, Lord? Does it rain in spring?

You can see my heart, You can read my mind

And You got to know I would rather die

Than to lose my faith in the One I love

Do I trust You, Lord? Do I trust You?

I will trust You, Lord, when I don't know why

I will trust You, Lord, till the day I die

I will trust You, Lord, when I'm blind with pain

You were God before and You'll never change

I will trust You, I will trust You

I will trust You, Lord

I will trust You, I will trust You

I will trust You, Lord

I will trust You, I will trust You

I will trust You, Lord

Now I can look back and see how the hand of God was on our family, protecting us and preparing us for a new chapter in our lives.  It was after that point that the Lord opened the door for us to change churches, begin homeschooling and he has brought people into my live who I did not realize I needed in my life.  So my challenge to you is are you willing to pray this prayer?

          Spirit, lead me where my trust is without borders.