365 Days of Spirit-Filled Fruits Challenge-Day 15

Okay, so this next one in 1 Corithinians 13: 4-13, I think is driving home the main point of all of these regarding selfishness. Love is not self-seeking. Being self-seeking is taking advantage of opportunities without regard for others, pursuing only one’s own ends or interests, exhibiting concern only with promoting one’s own ends or interests. We keep coming back to this core sin of selfishness. My favorite phrase is “it’s not about me”. If our goals and our dreams are for ourselves than we are not obeying God and doing what he wants us to do. Ultimately, our goals have to have God as the main priority. Everything we do is to glorify Him, to bring those lost closer to being found and to foster our relationship with God through prayer, study and worship. We have to often ask ourselves, I am doing this for the Lord or is this for myself? It will be that time of year soon when most people will set new goals for a new year. In thinking about those goals, keep in mind that it is not about you but about God working through you. Become God-thinking and other-thinking.

Matthew 5:16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

365 Days of Praise Challenge-Day 236

Many of lifes failures are people who didnt realize how close they were to success when they gave up. I read this from a Linked In group I am a part of and was so struck by it. God never gives up on us and so we are to do the same. Don't give up on your dreams, your goals, your calling. Keep at it and God will take care of the rest in his time. Thomas Edison is an example of a man who didn't give up and I am betting there are thousands of examples like him who had an idea and didn't give up on it. When life starts beating at you, throwing obstacles in your way and dragging you down and away from your dreams, think of the light bulb and know that with God all things are possible. Let his light shine on you and through you and his blessings will pour out on you. Thank you Lord for the gift of the words of others that encourage us and help us to stay the course and be persistent as you have always been with us. Give us the strength and patience needed to keep marching around the wall and may we pass on this blessing of encouraging words to others throughout our day. Amen.
Hebrews 11:30 By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the people had marched around them for seven days.

365 Days of Praise Challenge-Day 130

I have much to do in preparing for my upcoming workshops at two different churches starting in April and May. It's so wonderful that I have actually gotten to this point. I was talking with my hair stylist yesterday who has contemplated for many years to take her business out of her home and have her own salon. My question to her was, "what are you afraid of?". She fears it will fail and in the end they will loose money. I told her she just has to dream and write it down like I have been instructed to do from my master mind group. Believing you can do it and with God's help it is possible. So, as I am in the final preparations for my first workshops, I am praising God for getting me this far and am going to continue to beleive that it will be gloriously successful.
1Corinthians 9 However, as it is written: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.

365 Days of Praise Challenge-Day 113

Value. How much do you feel valued? I know that I am of great value to God because of what Jesus did on the cross for me and that keeps me grounded. I realized how much of a struggle it is at my job because I don't feel valued. I don't think they realize all that I do and if I was suddenly not there anymore what that would do. Not that I would ever just up and quit but the time has definitely come to seek out other job opportunites that will not be a hinderance to my goals and dreams for this ministry. I leave for the day with a sense of pride in all that I did but am discouraged at the same time because I don't feel like they care or value me or my work. I feel like God has been slowly but surely trying to tell me it's time to go elsewhere. Have courage and get into a part-time job that will not hinder my ministry efforts and know that God will take care of the financial side of providing. I have to get past the fears of what's next and how will it play out for me and my family. God values me and I will go wherever he leads me.
Luke 12:32 "Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom."

365 Days of Praise Challenge-Day 112

I have been putting together my three designs for a workshop about the body of Christ. Being in fellowship with other believers is one of the great ways that God works in our lives through these wonderful people. We get new incites, see things from another’s perspective, get great ideas and resources, are inspired, encouraged, supported and cared for. We are loved through the body of Christ. I attended my mastermind group last night and our focus was on obstacles that are getting in our way of progressing with our dreams and goals. I have had to re-evaluate my goal of connecting with 5 churches to three simply because I don’t have the time to commit to 5 churches. My full-time job is an obstacle and my dream is to being doing my ministry full-time. So, I have to start the process of evaluating how much money is needed to off-set not having a full-time job. The group already provided the idea of doing an engagement scrapbooking party where the guests come and using kits, put together a scrapbook ready for the bride and groom to fill with photos from their courtship through their honeymoon. It would be another avenue to help me earn the income I need so that I can keep pursuing my dreams. So, I am thankful for the body of Christ and being among them and praising God for providing us with all we need.
Romans 12:4 Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not have all the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body and each member belongs to all the others.

365 Days of Praise Day 86

I think every child out there at one time or another or for some more often than not experience the unrealistic fears of the monster in the closet, the fear of clown dolls or fear of the dark. My daughter had some fears that had her waking me up at 3am last night. Turns out this time it is a fear of the hand that comes out of the closet. Her friends are telling her scary stories about the headless horseman and hands in closets. I crawled into bed with my daughter and she curled up, closed her eyes and said "I feel safe when your hear." I cuddled with her for a little while and than started to get out of bed. She, of course, popped her eyes open and lifted her head up asking where I was going. "I am going back to bed, you have to close your eyes and remember God is right here with you." So, she did and fell back to sleep for the remainder of the night. She told me this morning about her fears and that she made her fears do something funny together in a dream. Her dream was in the bottom of the Ocean in Sponge Bob's pineapple house. I was there with a bunch of other stange people and the headless horseman and the hand and we were all on a dance floor dancing together. I said God is using your own imagination to help you conquer your fears. All of this really made me think about choices and how if we have the holy spirit within us it us up to us to call on the holy spirit to help us. We can conquer our own fears by calling on our helper.
Psalm 91:14-15 I will protect those who trust in my name. When they call on me, I will answer.

365 Days of Praise Challenge-Day 82

My daughter asked me yesterday if I could have a million wishes or a million and nine wishes which would I choose. "The larger number", I said. What would you wish for if you had a million and nine wishes? Wow, where do I start? My first thoughts were health, peace on earth and Jesus. It was facinating to hear my daughter's top three wishes and it was wonderful to tap into a child's perspective. Her top three wishes were: Her Girl Scout friend to be the owner of Water World so they could go and play there whenever they wanted, Dad is President (LOL), a pet cheetha that could play in the backyard. The cheetha got changed to a baby saber tooth kitten. Now those are some wishes!! I can imagine that each of us as children had some grand detailed wishes like that. Somewhere along the line, life seeps in and puts a damper on those dreams but anything is possible with God. We went on to discuss heaven since a baby saber tooth kitten here on earth where they are extinct wouldn't be very likely but she said after giving Jesus a hug she would go look for the baby saber tooth kitten. Dream and dream big! No matter what may come for us on earth, our dreams in our hearts will be filled when we get to heaven.
Matthew 6:19-21 Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Faith Goals

Everyone talks about New Year's Resolutions at this time. I don't want to beat a dead horse but setting goals whether you do it the beginning of the year or anytime in between is a first step towards successfully getting those goals met. You can visit this site to listen to or read a transcript on a webinar they had about Faith goals to help you decide on where to start. It's always good to put your goals in writing where you can read them everyday to help keep you on track. Better yet, create a scrapbook page and share your goals on the page. It will be a great visual reminder and it's fun to look back on 5 or 10 years later to see how your goals succeeded or changed. I created this layout back in the fall to document some of my goals and dreams. It's only months later but I can look at them and see how I need to tweek some or re-define some goals to ones that are attainable within this next year.

365 Days of Praise Challenge-Day 27

God's word is amazing! I have SO many times read a passage again and again and every time it is read I see something different. I think a lot of it has to do with the season of life you are in. This is a very good reason to never stop reading the Word of the Lord because He will speak to you wherever you are in your life. I am praising God for His word and how it is eternal. You can go on and on reading it and always come away with something new. In church on Sunday our prastor spoke about Matthew 2:13-23 which in a nutshell is about the escape of Mary, Joseph and Jesus to Egypt and about him coming out of Egypt and ending up in Nazzareth. I have heard this part of the story many times but our pastor brought out a very interesting thought as to why Matthew included it in the story. Jesus is living out the old testament. He is exhiled to Egypt because a certain king wants to see him dead and when that king is dead Jesus comes out of Egypt like Moses leading the Isrealites out of Egypt. We are doing the same thing! We are in exhile because of our sins. We cannot be near the Lord but Jesus like Moses leads us out of exhile into eternal life. My exhile was the sins of my past abortions and my secondary infertility issues I had brought a light onto those sins and made me face them for what they really are. I was led out of the darkness I faced every month when my period would show up again into the light and a relationship with God. I am not happy about where I was but I am very grateful and delighted with where I ended up. What drove you into exhile and how were you led out of it to Jesus?
Matthew 2:19 After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, "get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Isreal, for those who were trying to take the child's life are dead."

365 Days of Praise Challenge-Day 9

I read the book The Three Trees to my daughter last night before bed. This book brought out the lesson within the genelogy of Jesus even more. The three trees have big dreams for themselves but in the end they become the manger, boat and cross that Jesus is in and on and they discover that despite their dreams that what really happens to them is the best thing ever. I am sure the women in the geneology of Jesus also had big dreams for their lives too and didn't plan on the sins they commited but the Lord took their lives and used them for the bigger picture. So, today I will ponder on who in my genelogy is like one of the women and one of the trees, who had dreams, sinned but were forgiven and part of the bigger picture of Jesus. I am thankful for the Lord's guidance in discovering even more treasures and truths in his Word.
1 Timothy 2:3-4 This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who want all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.

Attitude of Abundance

I have been reading a book called 10 Godly Keys to Success and Prosperity and got super inspired to do a scrapbook page for each chapter so I would more fully take in the knowledge and be able to start applying it to my life. The second chapter is about developing a prosperity consciousness. In other words, it's having an attitude of abundance. Meredith Bromfield, the author, makes great points in the fact that we live in a country of abundance. Most of us have been blessed with countless blessings and there are probably tons and tons that you don't even think of because we take them for granted living her in the good old USA like indoor plumbing, a hot shower, freedom of religion, our homes and more. We have an abundance of blessings to be thankful for and the more we keep this in our focus the better our attitude will be. Bromfield also points out the abundance of opportunities available to us. This is the country where dreams are made. You can write a book, invent something, create beautiful artwork and so much more. We just have to be open to seeing the opportunities available to us and grab onto them with both hands.

I wanted to create not only a scrapbook page on this but something to remind myself everyday so I used some products from my Close to My Heart business and created this pin to wear everyday. It was intended not only for my reminder of my attitude but as a visual curosity point on myself that people would ask about. I planned it to just be my reminder but I am making it a part of me. It is my way of branding myself in the business world. Every time someone meets and sees me I will be wearing a pin with a letter. I will create a new one every month that reminds me about the things that I am striving to be consistently. So when people ask me about my 'A'pin, I tell them, this is a pin I created with some of my Close to My Heart products to remind me that I have an Awesome God who has given me and abundance of blessings, provides me with an abundance of opportunities and I have to keep my eyes open and my Attitude that Anything is possible with God.