Live Like You Were Dying

Our Church is doing a series by the same name and while I was reading through the biography of Matthew Henry I came across this excerpt of a sermon made by an influential teacher in his life. It seems they did the same series also.

...Let the thought that you will be brought to death call off your affections from the things below. Redeem the time. Make your peace with God, and be reconciled to Him. You should not go to bed in wrath against others; and will you go to your graves in enmity against God? Be content with what you have. Be frequent in thinking of your removal. If you do but remove on earth you take care. Be as useful and profitable as you can, for when you are brought to death your work will be over. Be careful to be making preparations for it. We live to learn to die. Our business is not to get riches, honours, or pleasures, but that we may depart in peace with God. Every corpse is a sermon; every tomb a teacher; every funeral an oration- to persuade you to learn to die.

-Thomas Doolittle September 19, 1680

Books

I just finished A Long Way Gone: Memiors of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah. I highly recommend this book. Beah is one year younger than myself. As I read through his ordeal of surviving through civil war attacks on numerous villages and his eventual joining of the ranks of boy soldiers I could remember back to what I was doing during that time. While I was dealing with typical Jr. High drama Beah was fighting a war which had claimed the lives of most of his family and friends. His childhood was one filled with unimaginable suffering and loss. This is a book I consider to be a must read.

I am just diving into Field of the Fatherless by Tom Davis. We will be offering this book as part of a preparatory study which is aimed at launching our Orphan/Adoption Care Ministry at PVC. I have read Red Letters: Living a Faith that Bleeds by the same author and know that this title won't disappoint.

Retreat, Retreat!

I am heading out tomorrow for the women's retreat. Yes, the women of Palm Valley will descend upon the city of Scottsdale in a swarm of Fuscia (100 of us will have matching tee shirts for the occasion.) and it should be a blast if last year's retreat is any comparison. I am really looking forward to it.

My good friend Brooke S (not to be confused with my other good friend Brooke F who happens to be in Ethiopia right now) has been heading up the planning for the retreat and has done an awesome job. When we were in a meeting with some ladies who will be small group leaders at the retreat Brooke cracked me up while making a comment about how the tee shirts will be so great for bonding because, "You know when you're out and you see someone wearing the same shirt you have you think, Yea, there's my peeps."

I had to hold back laughter as hard as a could as I scanned the room of women 10 or more years older than me and Brooke. All of them were looking sorta confused by the expression "there's my peeps." I wondered to myself if they were picturing the fuscia Easter candy chick peeps.

Yesterday as I was out shopping the Lord blessed me and caused my hands to fall upon a shirt that had a chick on it which said "Where my peeps at?" I thought it could be destiny and when Dustin agreed we realized that Brooke is the rightful owner of that shirt... she just doesn't know it yet. Unfortunately, it's brown with gold writing so she may never wear it in public but I KNOW Brooke will love it. I plan to present her with the tee when she drops her kids by for me to babysit this afternoon. Maybe I can get her to pose for a pic just for fun. If I can I will add it to the bottom of this post.

Look for pictures of the retreat to follow (if i can take a break from all the fun long enough to remember to use my camera... we PVC ladies know how to PARTY! ;)

**** Update: Brooke loved the tee shirt and proclaimed that she will be wearing it tomorrow on the first day of the retreat. I didn't take a photo because I will get one of her at the actual retreat and post it later.

One Prayer

I mentioned in a post the other day about Greg's sermon last Sunday. I am posting a link to watch it online if you'd like. Go here and click on the video link for One Prayer: Lord, Make Us Believe.

Here is a link to the One Prayer Web Site go check it out.

Red Letters Campaign- What to Say?

I am still more busy than words can express and the list of things weighing on my heart is too long to mention right now. One of the most pressing issues tonight is the news delivered to me by my friend Kim who told me that our dear Pastor Surefel was up until the wee early morning hours discussing the urgent need for funds for the Hope for the Hopeless Orphanages in ET. The kids are now only eating injera and food costs have risen so drastically. The news is that the famine is taking it's toll. Kim and my friend Brooke will be traveling in just over a week to see first hand the situation. Please pray for the children. Please pray for funds as there are several opportunities we are pursuing right now. Pray that the need is met. Pray for deliverance.

In other news we are certain that we will be waiting through the court closure this year. We will need to have our biometrics updated (that's fingerprints in laymen's terms). While we certainly aren't looking forward to more paperwork or additional costs related to the adoption we knew this could come with the territory. We certainly feel the sting of the prolonged wait but we know that we can't feel too sorry for ourselves. God is certainly working out the details and He knows so much better than we do. His plans are good. I've gone rounds with the enemy this week and last fighting discouragement but I feel the Lord has set our hearts in stone this week placing a new found strength to resist the temptation to feel forgotten about during the wait. I sense the call to more fervent prayer for our son. My heart is ever so heavy thinking of the famine and what he might experience. In all of this God has blessed us with the ability to rejoice with our friends as they are preparing to bring home their kids.

Sunday at church was awesome. Greg delivered a sermon which was, I am sure, difficult to share but He was blessed of God and was full of His truth. It rocked the house. Dustin and I looked at each other with jaws dropped. We sure love a good talkin' too ;) Waves of good, healthy conviction swept over us. Greg didn't pull any punches. He straight up preached. Dustin and I agreed it was as much needed for ourselves as for anyone else there as we set about asking God to remove the planks in our own eyes before we picked at the speck of another's. Ah, the joys of working out our salvation and what it truly means to be a servant of Christ. That's something to chew on for a lifetime!! I will have to share more about the sermon and what PVC is up to at a later date. Possibly even link to Greg's podcast or something. For now I am off to bed.

Why do we go to Palm Valley?

Because the pastors do things like this (I love this one): Check out Pastors Ryan and Daniel spittin' the rhymes.

Nobody takes himself too seriously:

Oh What a Day!

Church was awesome today! I was so filled with joy. Just looking around at familiar faces, people I know well, and others that I have grown to recognize after months of attending the same service hour. I was enjoying watching them get their praise on! It was so uplifting to my soul. Everyone was getting down to thepraise music. We had a darling couple in front of us, which included a woman I got to know at the woman's retreat, she and her hubby were dancing and clapping together in a way which just filled my heart with joy. To our left (mine and Dustin's that is) were the parents of a child we've had in the 4/5 class and whom we adore. They were doing just like our friends in front and booging down. To the right of us was a couple I recognized from seeing them around church. The husband gave a huge whistle and a hoot after our Praise Band gituarist performed a great solo and once again I couldn't keep from smiling. There were others too. Too many to list for you. All of us in Christ. Praising His name together.

What fun! God is so good. There's nothing like the fellowship of Christ! Oh that all the world would join together in this way!

I forgot to tell you that on Fri we girls were having a designated "Praise" day in our house. We decided to sing our prayers instead of just saying them. Miss Allyse was singing her luchtime blessing and was on quite a roll singing to the Lord that He was "wonderful, beautiful," and my favorite after a tiny pause she added "Praise-i-full." I just loved it! Too cute!

All we need is Love, 72 women, and a bunch of Kleenex

The women's retreat was awesome! Had such a blast!
I have no time to fill you in fully but let me just say that God was so gracious to us ladies who attended the retreat!! I have so much to chew on from that weekend that I am sure it will take me weeks, possibly months, to feel like I've digested all the spiritual food presented to us. Really Loving Well is an endless topic. It is such a lifelong journey to learn how to love others (and allow ourselves to be loved) with Christ's love!
For me this Loving Well retreat tied right back into the call to obedience I have been hearing God speak to me over this past year. I don't know how all these message quite fit together for my personal life but I am so excited to move forward and find out. God is so good.

Our Gift Giver

I want to tell you the story how how it was that Dustin and I made it down the isle and are actually married today. It's seems like a weird topic but trust me is has a purpose.

I was just turning 20 as our wedding neared. Dustin was 23. We were broke! Can I say FLAT BROKE! We knew the Lord was calling us to marry and we knew that some people would think it a bad decision. We were young, and to be honest we had NOT previously been very responsible. We really could not afford a fancy or dream wedding, but we both thought ( and I more accurately insisted) that we ought to have a decent wedding (i.e in a church and with a reception hall, a nice dress and some kind of catered food. I wasn't asking for the moon here.) so as to assure our families that this would indeed be a legitimate marriage and that just because we were young and had made some mistakes we truly were seeking the Lord and heading in a direction we knew He was pointing us.

Right before it came time to book the reception hall and place a down payment to reserve our date Dustin had all of his tools stolen from the back of his truck. This was the hugest financial blow to us! He needed tools for his livelihood and we had no choice but to pay every penny of our wedding cash towards the replacement of his tools. I was crushed. He was in a panic trying to figure out a way to earn enough money to give me this appropriate wedding I was so desperate for.

We had faith that the Lord was in control and that even if we had to have a back yard wedding with dixie cups and (goodness grief) a pot luck, or something of the sort, that it didn't matter. We loved each other and that was all that mattered.

But you know God is so good! You know God is so gracious. He cares about our hearts! He wants the best for us.

We never saw it coming when we were given a Bank One money envelope from an anonymous giver/s full of cash. Cash we desperately needed for our wedding. Let's be clear this was NOT from a family member of ours. The best we could figure was that someone in a small group of people we had prayed with ONCE must have felt led to give to us. Someone we didn't know!

We were speechless. I mean utterly humbled because to us there was nothing more important at that moment in our lives and nothing more treasured than that gift. We were amazed that someone out there (an anonymous someone at that) cared for us enough to give their own hard earned money for our personal enjoyment. What!? Who does that? Worse we couldn't even thank them profusely! It was if they, in their anonymity, chose to say, this is really from the Lord. (I have chills just remembering it!)

Needless to say we have NEVER forgotten that moment! In fact the true gift we received from our beloved gift giver/s (?) was the lesson in sacrificial giving. Their gift truly was an eternal one. The quintessential gift that keeps on giving! I shudder to think what kind of giver I would be if I hadn't been on the humbling receiving end of their generosity. Praise God, He is a good teacher!

I started out this post with the section of writing that begins in the purple. I decided to put this story first because in the end it's always about Someone else's sacrifice, which came first. In the case of the funds for our wedding it was the anonymous giver/s (?) who by their simple act of obedience have laid a foundation for us and set a standard for giving that we have never been able to ignore.

I want to tell you that the original Giver is Christ Himself. He is the foundation for our giving and is the ultimate Teacher! His act of obedience is SO profound! We will spend eternity experiencing the profoundness of it. Let's not wait until then, though. Let's begin to live by His example. Let us, by our own acts of obedience, pass on the Gift to those who have not yet come to believe.


Yep! Pastor Greg isn't a liar! Tonight was a so much fun! I just had my socks blessed off!

God called. I believe that as far as it goes for me and Dustin we have said "Here I am Lord."

As I look back over the history of our walk with Christ through the years of our marriage I am amazed at how far the Lord has taken us! I am so thankful for His redeeming power and His transforming Holy Spirit at work in us. (Read that sentence again. Those are not idle words I just wrote.) He has saved us! I mean truly and utterly saved us!!!!!!!

I am overjoyed that we are able to give. To give freely and with full confidence in the Lord. With confidence that we have been blessed to be a blessing to others. We wait in confident expectation on our Lord! I began this blog with my very first entry entitled Believing God for BIG things. I am so glad that we cannot ever get to the end of God! He never runs out! There's always so much more, and deeper yet to dig..... if we are willing. Let us all say "Yes! We are willing Lord!"

SOOOO Excited

Tonight is a big night for Palm Valley Church. That's because we are having a leadership committment event to kick of the financial contributions for the building campaign. True to Biblical form, those in any leadership capacity are asked to give first.

We have already been involved in a church-wide spiritual gowth campaign. Pastor Greg told us at one of the desserts that this committment event is gonna be tons of fun. I am stoked. I am looking forward to praising Jesus tonight and, together with my husband, bringing in our sacrifices to the Lord.

Tonight, for me, will be a super exciting kick-off to a new season of my faith walk. Dustin and I are ready! We are going for "it" with gusto! We're running after Jesus, and praise God He lets us catch Him!

Come on guys! Let's offer all of ourselves and every inch of that campus to the Lord and watch what He does!

My heart is ready, now it's time to live out James 1:22 in a fresh new way.

The Beginning

Today was the first day of our study and I was definitely nervous. Thankfully it was just opening jitters and they passed quickly. It is good for me to remember Who it is really all about.

It can be difficult to brake that barrier of unfamiliarity but I pray the Lord will bond us supernaturally and quickly, so we can bypass all the awkwardness and jump straight into growing friendships. I hope to lead the way in this by example. True to form I shed a quick tear after reading scripture! WOW you can always count on me for that.... I think the Lord likes to keep me humble by making me look like a fool in front of people constantly! Oh well, He knows best!

Isaiah 55 has held my attention for about a month now and last night the Lord just infused my mind with new appreciation for those words. I don't know about anyone else, but I am a woman without spiritual currency of my own and the thought of buying without cost is liberating to me! I also LOVE verse 11 which reminds me of Jeremiah 29;11- For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." We can trust His Word to accomplish His will for us and what good plans He has!

Isaiah 55:
1 "Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. 2 Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare. 3 Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you, my faithful love promised to David. 4 See, I have made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander of the peoples.
5 Surely you will summon nations you know not, and nations that do not know you will hasten to you, because of the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has endowed you with splendor." 6 Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near. 7 Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon. 8 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. 9 "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
10 As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, 11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. 12 You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.13 Instead of the thorn bush will grow the pine tree, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. This will be for the LORD's renown, for an everlasting sign, which will not be destroyed."

Believing God for BIG things

So my first blog..... am i really doing this? i am so not techno savvy! i gave Dustin a hard time about buying a DVD player once upon a time. SAD I KNOW!!!! "Hey Dust this VHS player is totally fine, it's still gonna be around for a while....... what about the kids starving in Africa"...( can't you just hear me saying that!?)

i have no clue what i will write on this here blog, but be assured that most of it will just be whatever runs through my brain on any given day (which, often times, can be a LOT of random junk) and whatever i feel the Lord is pointing me to at that moment.

My intention for this blog is to chart the adventure i believe God is about to take me on. i am sooo excited about all the amazing work he has been doing in me and i know that it's all for one reason: To create in me the ability to pour it all back out for His glory and for the benefit of others. i am super stoked to get to work. God is doing SO MUCH at Palm Valley Church (you will hear more about all that soon) and in our friends lives, He is moving all around us. i could write on and on and on about all the work he has been doing within me and all the grace he has lavished upon our family recently but i want to get to the purpose of this blog.

i have committed the women's study which will be meeting in my house beginning Wed the 31st over to Him and there is this bubbling anticipation in me which is eagerly looking forward to and expecting great things from the Lord!

i want to share the verses which are constantly swirling around in my brain and the foundation for my actions as I move forward facilitating this study of the Patriarchs by Beth Moore (by the way, i am so glad there is a study like this for people severely lacking in OT understanding! This one should rock!!!)

Prov. 16:3- Commit to the Lord whatever you do and your plans will succeed.

James 1:22- Do not merely listen to the Word and so deceive yourselves. DO WHAT IT SAYS (emphasis mine)

1Peter 1:13- Therefore prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given to you when Jesus Christ is revealed.

i have been praying for the members of this study and am so excited to discover the uniqueness each of them brings to this group. i look forward to getting to know these women and learning from them. i look forward to collectively believing God for BIG things.

With all things being said i need not say anything. It's really not about me, is it? i don't want it to be either. If i can serve others on this journey to grow more intimate with my creator than I'd love to, but all i really know is that i want Him so much! i want to be where He is. i want to know His heart and share in His passion. Let's buckle in for a wild ride! YEAH!!!