Feeling empty

I am learning the longer we homeschool that there are times I need to get out and spend time with adults.  Last night when we got to church I did not want to go sit and listen to the Romans study, I was desperate for some adult interaction.  So Craig and I decided to sit in the lobby and spend some time just visiting.  A friend Angela came by and also sat down.  I was so excited and had the most wonderful time just sitting and chatting about life, our families, homeschooling and so much more.  I did not realized how empty I was.  Then this morning when I got done with my Jesus time I realized how sad I felt not knowing when I would get the opportunity to do that again.

The Lord intended us to be social and interactive people.  He intends us to fellowship with one another and allow us to encourage and fill each other through encouragement and support.  I am a very naturally social person and I realized that in our goal to pay debt, we have really trimmed our time outside the house.  Yes, there are tons of places to go for free but it is hard to be the Mom in the car on the way home continually saying to my girls..."no we are not buying lunch or no you can't get a treat from Sonic."  By the way this conversation does not change if we pack a lunch that includes treats, the conversation still occurs.

What I love most as I think back on yesterday was how the Lord knew that I needed someone to really chat with and connect with and he sent me someone.  He reminded me that He knows my needs and desires before I do.  Now it is time this homeschool Mom be intentional in finding some time with other friends just to have the opportunity to visit and hang out.

Parent Fail

In my last post I talked about the wisdom of children in their simple understanding of salvation and Jesus.  As I type this I am smiling because this post is so very different.  There are some things in this journey called life I wish there were easy answers to.  Like how to make your children listen the first time.  How to get them to respond to you when you are speaking if they are not nose to nose with you.  How to get them to brush their teeth daily without them arguing with you...yes it happens in this house.

Each morning before we start school I sit down in my office, check email and have my "Jesus Time".  This is when I spend time in the Bible doing my personal study, do my blog writing and enjoy following different encouraging bloggers or magazine articles.  Lately it seems that the moment I sit down to really give my heart to the Lord, my children come barreling through.  I remind them it is my Jesus time and they say OK...until 5 minutes later and the other does the same thing.

Part of the reason I am smiling as I write this is because for the 5th day in a row this has happened and my scripture today was James 1:19.

"Understand this my brothers and sisters: 

You must be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to get angry."

After reading this my girls began to fight with each other right in my office over whether one would play with the other.  Never mind they needed to make their beds, get dressed, brush their teeth and prep for school.  In that moment I wish I could say that I calmly spoke to my girls and sent them on their way...uh no.  I totally lost my temper and let frustration get the best of me.  Then once I they had left I turned back to my study and realized exactly what my lesson was about today.  Oh my...parent fail.  

As I sat frustrated with myself, desiring the calm measure to respond in a more constructive manner I realized how broken my life is.  My girls and I have spent the last few weeks talking and focusing on our need for Jesus.  How our world is broken with sin and only Jesus can save us and make us pure before the Lord.  It was a moment where all I could do was tell Jesus that I am failing right now with my frustration and I need His help.  I am broken and with out His grace, wisdom and guidance I will continue to fail as a parent.

So I realized that I have also not given my girls the structure they need in the morning to keep our house running as it needs to.  I realized that I have let our homeschool life slack to such a relaxed level that my girls are pushing in areas they should know better.  So as I have been typing this the Lord has given me a plan.  When I have my Jesus time in the morning I will close my office door and they will be told that unless there is bleeding or injury they are not to interrupt.  On the flip side I think I will use Kathryn's love of lists and begin making them a morning check list and once it is completed, then they can have their free time before school.  I am all about rewards and consequences and I know that if I do these two things and tie them with the girls use of electronics as a reward, then we may just find a happy medium.

I am learning that taking the life of our family off the beaten path and striving to not let it be driven and manipulated by this world's broken culture is hard.  Our children today are blessed with so much that I am beginning to think that there are times it is a hindrance and not a benefit.  As you can see from today's post I don't have it all figured out.  I am far from the perfect parent.  What I am is someone who is willing to lay my life out there to share all that the Lord is teaching me and my family, hoping that through our crazy life you might just find some tools and encouragement. 

The faith of a child

As a parent there are moments in your children's lives that you will never forget.  Right now I have the privilege of walking both my girls through a children's study for new Christian's.  They both accepted Christ and want to be baptized.  It is important to Craig and I that they are grounded in their decision and that it is not driven by what a friend did, what church said you are to do or what we told them to do.  This is the most important decision they will ever make and I want it to be something they truly own.

One of the hard parts of this process is to allow them to express their knowledge and me not expect them to communicate it or know it as I do.  My girls are 6 and 8, I am learning to step back and allow them to think, talk and process at those levels.  The Lord is also helping me remember that their salvation is not tied up in their ability to say the "Roman Road" or the "ABC's of salvation" to a tee.  As we have begun working in their books I smile as I hear the Lord reminding me that they are walking this in the understanding of a child and we as adults tend to complicate more than simplify.  Yesterday when they were done and I was thinking over all their activities, I began to smile because you can't miss their love for Jesus.  You can't miss the fact that if you ask they KNOW he saved them from their sin.

Kathryn my oldest was stunned when I told her I had been praying for this since the day she was born.  Her face was full of amazement at the thought that I had prayed so hard for this.  However, when I asked her why she chose Christ in her own little words she could tell me.  As she did...she then wanted to know why I was crying.  In all my life this will truly be one of the sweetest moments ever!

What I have taken away from this process is the reality of how we tend to complicate something that is truly so simple a child can understand it.  We get ourselves so caught up in religion and ceremony that we forget how basic and raw salvation really is.  My girls are reminding me of this and I am enjoying as they teach their Mom to let go of all the excess and just allow God to strip it down to the essentials.  Oh how I love the wisdom our children truly have.

Being carried by the surf

Have you ever been to the beach and as you walked along the shore line picked up sea shells.  Our family loves to go to Edisto Beach in South Carolina.  It is quite and not filled with all the tourist attractions.  One of my favorite parts of this beach is that it is truly filled with sea shells.  My girls collected a bucket full in just a couple of days.  They ended up collecting more than I was willing to bring home.  As we collected them some were very beat up and broken.  You could tell that their journey to the beach was not an easy one at all but full of many storms and obstacles.  Then there were a couple that you would have thought were gently placed on the beach because there were no imperfections and they were in beautiful condition.  Yet, it was apparent that both shells came to the beach via the same method, being carried in by the surf.

As I read through my James passage this morning I thought of these shells we collected at the beach. In the first passage James 1:2-3, we were told to consider it all joy or a sheer gift when trials come because it produces endurance and out of that endurance the Lord produces His perfect result.  However, in the next section that I read today it started out really encouraging, but had a stipulation on the request.

 " But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. 6 But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord,8 being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

James 1:5-8 (NASB)

As I read the phrase, "...when you ask, you must believe and not doubt..."  I began to wonder if that was possible for me.  I am a worrier and I tend to worry and doubt things that are really pressing in on me.  The thought of the God of the universe desiring to give me wisdom was encouraging and overwhelming at the same time, but when you are to do it without doubt I began to wonder if it was possible for me.  So I decided to look at this passage from another perspective so I read it in the Message version.  What I like about the Message is it is written in what we call everyday language.  For me it is not a version I would study on it's own but I like to use it along side other versions to allow the Lord to stretch my thinking and perspective.

"5-8 If you don’t know what you’re doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You’ll get his help, and won’t be condescended to when you ask for it. Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought. People who “worry their prayers” are like wind-whipped waves. Don’t think you’re going to get anything from the Master that way, adrift at sea, keeping all your options open."

James 1:5-8

I loved the phrase "people who worry their prayers" because as I read it I felt like it has described me at times.  The other part of this version that jumped out at me was the last phrase "adrift at sea, keeping all your options open."  How often in life do we let the things of this world, opinions and culture influence us to a point where we are like that broken sea shell being tossed back and forth, banging against things as we strive to make it though our current storm.  It is so easy to allow the world to influence our spiritual walk, however we can guard against this by doing several things.

• We can guard against the world's influence by being grounded in scripture and spending time in the Word each day.  Hiding these verses in our hearts so that when we are being tossed around or are unsure we have the ability to speak the truth and there is such power in speaking scripture.
• We can guard against this by limiting the world's influences on our lives.  We need to make sure the spiritual teaching we sit under is Bible based.  It is real easy to get caught up in listening to ministers who tell us what we want to hear, instead of what we need to hear.  It is important that anything you impress on your heart has been measured by the Bible to make sure it is grounded in the Lord's teaching and not the world's.
• We can guard against this by making sure we are putting on our daily armor.  "Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. ..." Ephesians 6:10-12 (NASB)  In this passage it reminds us that we need to be ready for struggles and prepared to battle against the influences of this world.  You can read about the entire armor of God in Ephesians 6:10-18.

The last phrase of the Message version makes me think about how religion today has become like a buffet.  People take what they like and toss out the rest.  The Lord wants our hearts and minds completely committed to Him.  To me that is what the verse is talking about when we ask God for wisdom and not doubt, it is not being unsure but knowing that in our state of not knowing acknowledging that the Lord is the one with the answers.  We are not expected to be perfect but God does not want to share our hearts with the world and it's teachings.  If we live our lives worshiping God until we think something better will come along then we are that double minded person who is unstable in their thoughts and beliefs.

I don't want to live my life looking for the next best thing to come along.  My salvation through Jesus Christ is the best thing to ever happen in my life and I want to live my life allowing the Lord to teach, encourage, stretch and minister to me as I strive to manage to storms that come in my life.  Below I have added a video of one of my favorite songs and to me it is a wonderful picture of if we place all we have in Jesus as James is talking about here the Lord will give us wisdom and endurance as the manage the storms of life.

When your faith is forced into the open

How often when life gets hard do we find ourselves griping and complaining.  If you are like me then you are trying to figure out a way to fix your problem or improve your situation.  It is really hard for me to "let go and let God" as some would say.  For the past little while I have been drawn back to the book of James.  It is one of my favorite books of the Bible because to as I read it I feel like James is speaking directly to me.

So this week I have jumped back into this book and love how the Lord is already bombarding my mind with thoughts, lessons, questions and encouragements.  Along side of my reading through this book I am working through a abbreviated study of James by Beth Moore done for the Master Work Sunday school material Lifeway puts out.   I have done the full study with the Beth Moore videos but I love how this material challenges me, and works  beautifully along side my studying the Bible.  It is important to me to be in the scripture and not just make all my study time a structured lesson someone wrote.  So as I am working my way through James I am using this material as a supplement, but my goal is to spend time focusing just on the verses and what God has to say to me.

This morning I was reading and focusing on verses 2-3.

"Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials,

 knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance." 

James 1:2-3 (NASB)

In my supplemental material Beth says this, "If I were James, I'd tend to want to chat a while before counting it all joy when life pitches you into the food processor or breaks one foot and sprains the other.  If I was going to say it at all I would save it for the end.  Not James.  He wrote like a man scared of running out of ink."  I love this picture she paints because when life gets hard this is how we feel and then being told to consider it all joy makes us want to hit the person telling us to be joyful.  I also looked at the verse in the Message version and love how it added to my perspective.

"Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. 

You know that under pressure, your faith is forced into the open and shows it's true colors." 

James 1:2-3 (Message)

As I read this version the Lord really began making my brain think.  The end of that passage that says my faith will be forced into the open and it's true colors will be shown.  I began to ask myself what would that look like?  What would people see in me?  

As James calls us to joy through trials and struggles I realize that it is through these times where our endurance is built and made.  It is through these times where no matter how we try we are forces to let go and allow God to mold, change and make us into tools for His glory.  Endurance is not something you just have but it comes through hard work.  Take a runner for example.  I have a friend Jennifer who love to run and has done numerous marathons.  When she is preparing for a race she spends lots of time running.  Some of it is longer distances and some of it is shorter.  Over time she is able to push her body further as she gets stronger and builds up her "endurance".    Dictionary.com defines endurance as the ability or strength to continue or last; especially despite fatigue, stress or other adverse conditions.  Anyone who wants to run a marathon knows it is not just something you show up for to do but you need to plan and train for.

So as I looked at this passage with that perspective I began to ask myself, what am I doing to prepare my spiritual self for hard times?  What would people see if I was thrown into the food processor as Beth Moore describes?  As my spiritual / true colors come out what would people see.  On one of my praise CD's Beth Moore states that people don't care what we look/act like when we have it all together.  They look at what we are like when we don't.  

I realized as I read and meditated over this passage I realized that I want to live my life ready, knowing that hard times will come.  I will experience difficulties that I can't control or fix.  I want to be ready know that I have trained my head and my heart to truly let go and let God work.  I want the Lord to be the one I run to.  I want my heart full of scripture for those times I don't know what to say, feel or pray.  I want to use my praise music as a tool to spend time allowing the Lord to minister to me, encourage me and strengthen me.  As you read through James he is honest when he says that hard time WILL come.  It is not a question of it but when.  Are you ready?  I don't think I am but I know that my walk with the Lord is just like a runner.  It is daily training and time and as I grow and learn I am preparing my heart and mind for what the Lord knows is ahead.

I am excited for my journey through this book.  It really helped heal my heart and soul after a period during my life where I blazed a trail of wickedness behind me.  A time where I cast the Lord aside for the things of this world.  As I came back to my Lord seeking grace and forgiveness I found a book that ministered to me, grew me, helped me heal and learn that no matter how hard life seems that the Lord is always there to walk beside me each step of the way.

My 8 yr old speaks truth!

As a parent there are times where your children not only surprise you but amaze you.  Yesterday I was surfing Facebook because I had not been on in a few days. (I am working hard to cut back)  I came across a video of Victoria Osteen that everyone was posting and commenting on.  I clicked the link and it showed a clip of her making a statement about praise to God. She said this...

"I just want to encourage every one of us to realize when we obey God, we’re not doing it for God—

I mean, that’s one way to look at it — we’re doing it for ourselves, 

because God takes pleasure when we’re happy. 

That’s the thing that gives Him the greatest joy.

"So, I want you to know this morning: Just do good for your own self.

Do good because God wants you to be happy.

When you come to church, when you worship Him. you're not doing it for God really.

You're doing it for yourself, because that's what makes God happy. Amen?"

Before I could click out of the link my oldest daughter Kathryn was sitting behind me in a chair, she turned around and said, "Momma...that is not true.  The Bible does not say that!"  I could have lept out of my chair.  I love how she knew in her spirit that what she heard is not of the Lord but of the world's teaching.  She is a new little Christian and has not even been baptized yet,  but you can see that God is teaching her and she is writing it on her little heart.

As a parent I worry about the spiritual growth of my girls and in this crazy broken world it is easy to get lost and confused.  I loved the whisper of encouragement I got today from the Lord as I was able to see my daughter not only call out what is blasphemous but to hear her confirm that we get our truth from the Bible.