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Sunday, September 8, 2013

Life By Heart....A 30-Day Journey with MY STORY!

The Time is Now!
 
A few years ago, I was asked to contribute my adoption story to a wonderful book project called, Life By Heart, by best-selling author, Elle Febbo.
 
After months and months of the publishing process, the book has finally been released! 

 
 
Those who Pre-Ordered the book have already begun receiving their copy and I am LOVING getting their comments:
 
 
 
 
As a contributing author, my friends and family can order the book directly through me in a few weeks for $14.95 + S/H/Tax
 
OR you can purchase the book right now through Amazon by clicking here
When you receive the book, please give the book your Five Star review to help promote it.   
 



See a book promotion by Elle Febbo here:
 

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Prayers and Our Purpose

God spoke to me this morning through His word, and I want to share it with you.

First, this is the verse that spoke so clearly to me: (I’ve heard/read it many times in my life, but this time…I got it.)

Jeremiah: 29:11-14:
“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. 12 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity.[b] I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and I will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”

Ok.  So here’s what I got:

In the past, I have always considered a “purpose” to imply something I am to work towards, or to accomplish (in the future).  It’s almost scary to think, if I have ONE purpose, when I fulfill that one purpose, what happens to me?  Is that when God decides to take me Home? Am I finished here?

But this verse changed my way of thinking.  Our purpose is not one thing to accomplish in the futureIt is ongoing, and present and active. Our purpose is NOW!  Our purpose is to SEEK HIM and through seeking Him, we are seeking His kingdom…which IS our future.  (And by seeking his Kingdom now, His kingdom is also our present.)

Think about what that looks like for you.  It is different for everyone at different times.  Sometimes,  seeking Him may involve searching for His guidance in all that you do. (This is praying.)  Other times, it may involve seeking Him in other people. (This is compassion and Love.)  And other times, it may involve seeking His desire for you to accomplish something in the present moment…where you are….with the people around you. (This is action.)  

…and by Seeking Him, we are praying…we are asking….we are searching for His guidance…for HIM, Who is LOVE. (1 John 4:8)

Jesus says it says is very clearly in  Matthew 6:33: “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Read Matthew 6:34 for even more awesome comfort.)


I really want to know what you think about all of this.  God is so amazing, and I just Love Him and you!!!

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

In Honor of our New Pope, Francis I

Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury,pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.


O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen

A New Spin on Prayer Requests



“…You do not have because you do not ask God. James 4:2

Update: Within one week, one very clear blessing was given.  Within two weeks, two other prayers were clearly answered.  This prayer board isn't going anywhere....

 

                My husband and I heard God calling and answered Him.  He wanted us to lead a couple’s prayer group in our home.  So last night, two couples joined us in our living room to discuss our spiritual backgrounds, our goals for the group, and some nitty-gritty passages from the Bible. 
                I am pleased to say that, although a small gathering, God brought the people He wanted to hear His message to our home last night.  I am looking forward to growing together, with one another, and hopefully, I can be a vessel he is calling my husband and I to be.
                One of my husband’s strengths as a leader is his ability to concoct some pretty out-of-the-box ideas.  When one of these ideas comes to fruition, the results are always beautiful.  Last night, at our first small group meeting, he introduced a new spin to the typical prayer request format.  When we were wrapping up our evening, my walked into another room and returned with a dry erase board.  He announced that instead of going in a circle, stating our prayer requests, he wanted us to each think of one thing we have been praying for.  He encouraged us to consider a prayer that is easily measurable, so that we can easily see the prayers answered.  The idea is to erase the request once it is answered, even if the answer isn’t what we had desired, and write a new one.  As each of us took our turn writing our prayer request on the board, we were able to explain it further, which allowed us to understand one another and connect to each person’s request. 
                When the board was finished, I took a picture with my phone and texted the picture to each person in the group, so we can remember to pray for each request as possible.  My husband and I even changed the wallpaper on our phone to the picture of the prayer board, so we will remember to pray for everyone in our group as often as possible. 
                I cannot remember where I heard this or who said it, but recently I heard of a man who stated that he never prays longer than five minutes, but he never goes five minutes without praying.  I hope to at least pray fervently for each person’s request each time I pick up my phone. 

Prayer Board...Requests are blurred to protect our privacy

I was blessed to share my testimony in www.lifebyheart.com.  Reserve your copy today!

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Life After NICU: Reve's Birth Story

With beautiful poignancy and faith, my sweet little sister tells the story of her precious son, Thomas, and his birth story.  My guest post for today is...

Life After NICU: Reve's Birth Story: To Thomas: The Story of Your Birth On July 12, 2010, Daddy and I found out the most wonderful news. We were expecting! I simply cann...


To Read More about God's Divine plan in our lives, hurry and reserve your copy of Life By Heart at www.lifebyheart.com.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

When God Speaks...

         When God speaks to you, you listen.  How strange is it that when we hear of instances of God speaking to someone, our humanness leads us to question whether it was truly the voice of God.  For me, flags begin to go up in my mind and it's like, "Biblical Radar!  Activate!" While I listen with an open mind, there is always an inkling of protection, preparing for something that does not align with what my Bible says.

But I wonder...who do I think I am?  Through years and years of selfish prayers, asking, talking, rambling...I have finally learned to be quiet; and in the quiet, I have begun to hear God's messages to me....and He has a lot to tell me.  There's a lot I need to hear. So why do I think God will only speak to me through my own meditation?  How presumptuous of me to assume that God wouldn't speak to me through others?

So what do I do with these messages?  Are they all for me, or does He call me to share them?  Yesterday, in the midst of very slow moving 5:00 traffic, God started speaking to me.  The message needed to be recorded, written down, but I was driving.  So I pressed the handy "speech-to-text" button on my phone and began saying out loud what God was speaking into my heart.

I didn't even really grasp it until later, when I read it to my women's prayer group two hours later. Maybe I still do not grasp all of it.  So in the spirit of faithfulness, I will share these words here.  I invite discussion.  I encourage comments asking, debating, whatever you feel compelled to write in response.

You need to find out for yourself what God expects of you. You need to do some research. Get out your Bible, go on the Internet, ask other women what do you think God expects of me? Then, make a list. But you must remember, that first and foremost you will never be able to do everything on that list every day. You will always fall short. And God expects that from you. Because that is why he sent his son to forgive your shortcomings. So if you want to know where you should go, what you should do, and who you should do it with, go to your list that you made your self based on your own research. Just remember it is not a list you expect to live up to. But it will form your decision-making process, and hopefully it will ingrain in you the character that you wish to develop.

If God expected us to be perfect, He would not have sent his son. There would not have been a need for Jesus to die on that cross for our sins.

In other words, if God expected us to be perfect here on earth, he would not have had to come in an earthly form as Jesus. We are perfect in God's eyes. We are forgiven for everything we've ever done or will do. We were given that when we decided and chose to believe in Jesus. That is Grace.

To learn more about my journey, read my story at www.lifebyheart.com.

Monday, February 25, 2013

How My Child and I Made a Biblical Behavior Plan Together


I’m definitely not the type of parent who lives in some kind of my-child-is-less- than-perfect-denial that indicates others are at fault when I hear of my child misbehaving.  I know my kid.  I know that, more often than not, he doesn’t listen to adults.  I know that he tends to have a ‘tude with adults, too.  Of course, I don’t blame anyone else, but myself.

                He’s a child; a six year old.  I ultimately believe that it is the responsibility of my husband and I to train our child in the way he should go, and he will not turn from it (Proverbs 22:6).  If our child is speaking in an unacceptable tone, my husband and I should start looking at the way we are speaking to each other.

                With that said, it is also my responsibility as a parent, first to Love the Lord with all of my heart, soul and mind, and then to teach the words of God to my child.  (Deuteronomy 11: 13-19)  So this weekend, when I got over the embarrassment of the fact that  my six year old son was being disrespectful to adults volunteering in his Sunday school class, I decided to approach this situation by turning to God, my Father, and let my son in on it.

                Because I must be very calculating in how I approach important topics with my precious little opinionated ball of love, I asked my son a series of questions. 

“Who created you?”

  “God did,” he said, as if he thought I might be a little dense.

“Do you think since He created you, He knows what’s best for you?” I replied.

“Yep.”

“Hmmm,” I thought out loud, “So how can we find out how God wants us to behave?”

“Ummm…maybe…look in the Bible?”

“Wow, son, That sounds like a really good idea!  How about you and I get out your Bible and a notebook and see what God says about how little boys should behave, okay?”

“Okay!  Sounds great!”  And Voila!  In a fifteen-second conversation, I convinced my son that he came up with the idea to look in the Bible to see what God has to say.  I hope this lays a foundation for him for the future when he has difficult decisions to make.

So I fixed both of us a bowl of Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream, grabbed his Bible, a notebook, and my phone, which has my Bible app on it for easy reference, and we set up camp on his bed.   The first thing we did was to set up the notebook in three columns.  The first column I labeled “Behavior”; the middle column I labeled “Expectation” and the third column, I labeled “Consequence”.

With chapter eleven of Deteronomy in my heart, I asked my wide-eyed, ice cream-eating little man if he knew that God has commandments.

“Yes!  Listen to my father and my mother!”  Jackpot!  The only one he could remember is the one I needed to focus on today.

I told him, “Did you know that’s the only one of God’s commandments that also comes with a promise from God?  ‘Honor thy father and mother so that you may live well and have a long life.’ (Ephesians 6:2-3)”

                So we went on to discuss how important it is and what it means to honor your parents.  This established our list of expectations: Listen to Mom and Dad, Obey Mom and Dad, Don’t Interrupt when they’re talking to each other.  Then we talked about how the bible says what will happen if we honor our parents, and we put “live well and have a long life” as a positive consequence in our consequence column. 

                His reaction to the next part really surprised me.  It was time to talk about what would happen if he didn’t do what we expected of him.  At first he suggested being punished for a week, but I suggested that we check to see what the bible says about that. To my surprise, when I explained what Proverbs 13:24 meant, “Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him,” he opted for getting a spanking if he didn’t honor his parents.  

                We talked about how we find in Hebrews 12:11 that when we are being punished, it feels bad instead of good, but later, we learn what is right because of it.  We talked about how not all discipline means that he’ll get a spanking and sometimes, a time out might work, too.  When he asked what the bible says about “time outs”, I told him that sometimes, we need to just take the time to go by ourselves and ask God to “come into our heart and to make it clean” (Psalm 51:10-12).  So we decided that when he must go into time out, whether it’s at home, at school, or…gasp…at church, he should take that time to ask God to come into his heart and to show him the mistakes he was making.   

                We went through the same process with one more behavior we wanted to address, which was his stubbornness when it came to listening to his teachers or other adults.  We that  found Proverbs 4 really illustrates the importance of wisdom and how we should get wisdom and get understanding and hold on to it like it is one of the most special gifts he could ever receive.  We talked about how at home, mom and dad teach him but at school and at church, it’s his teachers who give him wisdom.  We talked about how we need to listen to the people who want to teach us important things that God wants us to know and how if he ever listens to someone who tries to tell him or teach him things that he thinks in his heart are wrong, that he will end up hanging out with bad people and he’ll have lots of trouble in his life.  (Psalm 1:3)

                When we got to the consequence column, we talked about the good consequence to listening to your teacher is to gain wisdom, good judgment and to be successful. (Proverbs 4:7).  The negative consequences involve not learning, and not moving on in life.  Of course, a six year old needs immediate consequences, which are usually handled at school with the “moving of his color.”  Certain colors of the rainbow indicate certain types of behaviors.  We decided that if he makes a few mistakes at school and just moves his color down one level, that we’ll talk about it at home, but if it happens more than three times a week or if he moves it two or more spaces, then he’ll be punished from his favorite activities for one week. 

                The whole process lasted about an hour and he listened intently the entire time.  I finished up our time together by reading the story of Jonah and the Big Fish to help him to see what happens when we don’t listen to God and what we should do while we are punished and how God makes everything right.

                I hope to update this post with many positive reports about how this behavior plan is going.  For now, I will end by saying that we had a wonderful night, with listening, and respect and obeying.  Sometimes, just one night makes all the effort worthwhile.  And, I got to spend some very precious time with my sweet boy.

 
To learn more about my relationship with my child and how God blessed our lives with him, please visit www.lifebyheart.com.
 

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