365 Days of Spirit-Filled Fruits Challenge-Day 296

Wisdom is not an age thing. It is a gift from God. This is a quote from a seven-year-old boy on what love is: 'Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.' Stop and listen are two of the best commands given to us to help us know that our amazing God is with us all the time.

Zephaniah 3:17 The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.

365 Days of Spirit-Filled Fruits Challenge-Day 33

In the next couple weeks I am going to be looking at the fruit of the spirit, joy. This time of year seems to be the most joyful time of year. Hmmmm, I wonder why? No, seriously we have so much to be joyous about when it comes to celebrating Christmas but this joy needs to be within us throughout the year, not just in December. I guess reality sets back in. You have to go back to work, clean-up the mess in your house, deal with incoming bills, getting sick and all kinds of trouble that will come our way. The bible tells us just because we believe doesn’t mean we won’t face trials in our life. We aren’t immune to the effects of life on Earth as human beings. I have struggled with being joyful in the midst of pain that comes from the after effects of my shoulder surgery. The healing process can be painfully slow but thankfully I feel progress so when I have a particularly bad day I have that hope. Jesus’ half brother James wrote about thinking of our trials as pure joy. Our trials are the catalyst of change. They will help strengthen us and mature us and they will lead to our completion. Think of yourself as a lump of clay and God is working you into a beautiful sculpture. Having joy when you feel depressed, down or angry about life is a challenge that we cannot overcome on our own. We have to call on the Holy Spirit to help us have this fruit especially when those trials hit us in the face. In the trials that lie ahead of us in the coming year, try to remember to call on the Holy Spirit to give you all that you need, especially joy. I will make a prayer card to have at work when I face a lot of my trials so that I will be prepared.

Holy Spirit, The stuff I am facing now is too hard for me to bare on my own. I need your help. Help me to be filled with joy despite what may be happening in my life. Let me have a smile in my heart that God is masterfully working his creation into a beautiful sculpture. With You All Things Are Possible!  Amen.

James 1:2-4 My brothers and sisters, you will face all kinds of trouble. When you do, think of is as pure joy. Your faith will be put to the test. You know that when that happens it will produce in you the strength to continue. The strength to keep going must be allowed to finish its work. Then you will be all you should be. You will have everything you need.

365 Days of Spirit-Filled Fruits Challenge-Day 31

Merry Christmas! It has been a wonderfully relaxed Christmas morning. My kids are the not normal! We are up before them. They weren’t even in hurry up mode once they got up. We had our traditional special breakfast. This time my daughter helped me make a new French toast recipe using Nutella. It was delicious. My son said he loves me when I produced his own carton of egg nog which he proceeded to drink straight from the carton.

My thoughts keep going back to last evening and the sermon Pastor Graham Baird gave for the Christmas Eve service.  We have heard the nativity story over and over again throughout our lives but God in his infinite wisdom showed me once again that we can be shown new things from the same thing we have heard or read over and over again. Our pastor told us in his humorous way of what happened to him recently when his car broke down again. The story goes like this: Car breaks down, disheveled looking man comes by and says he can fix, starts to fix, wife of man says needs to get cough syrup, pastor walks wife to Walgreens a few blocks down and buys the cough syrup because she has no money, man drives car over to Walgreens and it is running spectacularly. Couple walks away and goes and starts to camp out under an overhead bridge. Pastor who just wanted to get home, knows God is up to something so goes over and gets couple and takes to motel. At motel he prays over them and woman ends up in tears because she said she hasn’t been prayed for like that since she was a little girl. Pastor was not in the mood for interruptions or unexpected things coming up; he just wanted to get home to his family but God led him down another route that provided the light of Jesus for this down and out couple. Pastor connects his story to the part in the nativity story when the wise men come and worship the Jesus and than because of a dream decide to take another route home. God will put things along our path that will be kind of like a detour sign. Follow the detour sign and let God do his thing! Just like the wise men, this will happen to us throughout our lives. God will put a little detour sign up and we must follow his light and the new route he is taking us on. May the love and light of Jesus guide your steps.

Matthew 2:11-12 The Wise Men went to the house. There they saw the child with his mother Mary.  They bowed down and worshipped him.  Then they opened their treasures. They gave him gold, incense and myrrh. But God warned them in a dream (detour sign) not to go back to Herod. So they returned to their county on a different road.

365 Days of Spirit-Filled Fruits Challenge-Day 26

I had to take off 8 days of work for my shoulder surgery. My first thought was there goes Christmas but as I got through those days and had to start telling my daughter no can’t buy this or that because I don’t have any money, I found that this is a blessing in disguise.  Although our Christmas may be with less stuff, it will still be filled with family and our time together. Christmas gift giving should be done with love but tempered with some self-control. So, this Christmas God has given me the blessing of forcing me to have self-control in shopping for stuff for my family. Christmas is about God’s love and I am thankful to God for helping me keep that focus. God’s love is all we need and everything else is just icing on the cake that he blesses us with.

Matthew 6:24-25  ”No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.  “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?

365 Days of Praise Challenge-Day 34

What a wonderful weekend it was! And back to work I go... But let me just say I am praising God for all the great memories that occurred this weekend starting with the fabulous and unique version of worship service we had on Christmas Eve with a re-enactment of the birth of Jesus in which any child that wished could dress up as an angel, sheperd, sheep or wise man and come forward to where Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus were at the appropriate part of the story. It was quite the sight to see them all surrounding baby Jesus and all of us singing Joy to the World. Christmas eve dinner was super fabulous thanks to my brother's special taco shell preparations and reading the Christmas story to the kids was a very special moment for me taking me back to my teaching days and pulling at my heart strings to maybe get back to teaching Sunday school sometime and than there are the Christmas morning memories: Faith's reaction when she opened her American Girl doll she wanted, Tristan being taught how to make bacon for breakfast by Nathan and staying in pajamas all day. The weekend ended with a game night with our new Uno Attack game in which there was a lot of laughs and "your mean" by Faith. So, I am praising God for all these memories of my family just being together and sharing in the celebration of Jesus. Now, it's time to get my photos uploaded into Studio J and creating my scrapbook pages before these memories fade.
Luke 2: 19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.

365 Days of Praise Challenge-Day 21

I came home yesterday to a pile of mail at my spot at the kitchen table including a big box from Hobby Lobby with some square picture frames I bought. One of those pieces of mail was a Christmas card homemade by one of my customers using a Christmas stamp set she bought from me from Close to My Heart. It was just a wonderful reminder that what I do with my crafting and sharing it with others does make some kind of difference, does inspire. So I am thanking God for the people that reach out and touch me back. There's nothing like good old snail mail especially when it's homemade! Have you gotten your Christmas cards in the mail? Me either, still working on them but hopefully you will get one in your mailbox this Christmas. Maybe it will be this one.

Matthew 10:8.5 Freely you have received, freely give.

365 Days of Praise Challenge-Day 18

Yesterday was a push through the pain kind of day. Unfortunately, the tincture I started taking for my hormone issues ran out before Thanksgiving and my new shipment of it has been delayed for who knows how long because of customs. It's coming from Africa where it is made. Unfortunatley, my menapausal symptoms are coming back and yesterday I had a vice on my head all day squeezing it. Nothing really helps except my peppermint essential oil temporarily but even that wasn't doing a great job so it was on a scale from 1-10 a 9.5. I was supposed to be doing my Christmas card workshop and I didn't call anyone so I ended up with two good friends coming and that's it. I could have cancelled considering how my head felt but I didn't want to waste my afternoon lying in bed, I wanted to get MY Christmas cards done and was thankful for the company of my friends. What I really want to praise is the gifts that God gives each of us. My friend, Michelle, has a gift in that she is very technically savvy. She has been a technical advisor of mine for a long time and she came to my rescue yesterday and helped me get over 10 apps on my Iphone. I have had an Iphone for over 2 years so this is huge. Some of these apps are going to be so useful like the Christmas shopping list app to keep track of what you bought for who and where, etc. And the What's for Dinner app that will help you get a recipe and create a shopping list, etc. And the Womanlog which will help me track my menapause symptoms or lack of them eventually. So, praise to God for bringing this wonderful lady into my life who has these gifts that she very generously shares with others. If you are not sure what gifts God has given you, Google spiritual gifts inventory and pick a site to use the inventory to help you determine what those are. Be a gift sharer!
1Corinthians 7:7 I wish that all men were as I am. But each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.

365 Days of Praise Challenge-Day 5

I took my daughter to see Arthur Christmas this weekend. It was a sweet movie and one of the good points about it was how the two sons of 'Santa', one the military techie Santa-wanna-be and the other the nerdie Arthur who was totally into and filled with the spirit of Christmas but had no thoughts of becoming the next Santa were not on the path they should have been on. In the end, the military techie Santa-wanna-be sees the truth and realizes he was meant not to be in the spot light but be the support. So, I find myself praising God for the gifts that he gives each of us. Like this Santa-wanna-be, I have struggled to discern what it is God wants me to do with my gifts but I believe I am following down the right path with them now. How about you? Do you know what your gifts are and where God is leading you?

1Peter 4:10-11 Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyon serves, he shoul ddo it with the stregth God provides, so that in all things God my be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.