Your Word Is Truth

It's cliché, but true--we don't really learn to appreciate many things until they're taken away. It also demonstrates the truth that we are generally an ungrateful bunch, taking God's great blessings for granted as if they ought to be there every day...as if He owes them to us somehow. Of course, unbelievers have no capacity to be truly grateful to God. But in the body of Christ, so many of us, while we may  not be actively complaining (which is a sin...addressed very clearly in this  sermon by my pastor last week--causing much conviction, I might add), we really don't actively give God thanks for His blessings. We live under His daily mercies with the assumption that they will always be there for us. Sun. Rain. Air. Food. Sleep. Family. Clothes. House. Friends. Neighbors. Church. Health. E-mail. Income. Job. Doctors. Transportation. And infinitely more. You should turn from these vain things to a living God,  who made the heaven and the earth and the sea 

A year and a half ago, my world seemed securely rooted, established, and flourishing. Our family was settled. We had figured our schooling out and carved out our niche. Our children were growing and had we had finally graduated from diapers and bibs and cribs and endless little mounds of crushed Cheerios, and I had mentally moved myself from the chaotic and unpredictable  "mother of small children" category to the more stable "experienced and involved" category (not personally being able to conceive of belonging to both). We were rather comfortable. We were happy with our school curriculum, our neighborhood, our co-op, our church, and our extra-curricular activities. Yet last summer, I found myself restless, and, if I'm honest, a bit... ...well... ...bored. But that wasn't the worst of it. I felt that I had taken the reins of my life and it was all going the way I liked it. And therein lies a big problem. God ought to be holding the reins, not m

It's a rare moment when the house is quiet. I'm thankful for those moments, but also giving thanks that it's not always quiet. My children and husband are blessings, teaching me patience, reliance on God alone, and what it means to love. I praise God for humbling me, convincting me in areas I am blind to. I am embarking on a journey of encouraging my husband with my words. That means refraining from any kind of criticism, to him personally, complaining about him to someone else, or (hardest of all) complaining about him to myself. That also means daily telling him something I love about him or am grateful for. I need prayer in this. I am quick to speak with a cutting tongue. My prayer is to become like that much-venerated woman of Proverbs 31:11-12: "The heart of her husband safely trusts her; so he will have no lack of gain. She does him good, and not evil, all the days of her life." I am also praying I can do a better job of taking care of our ho

My family has gone to a church fellowship, which I am sorry to miss, but couldn't handle today, being very pregnant and sorely exhausted from yesterday's bustle of shifting everyone's bedrooms around to get ready for our newest member's arrival. Thanking the Lord for the quiet. As I sit, this overcast, quiet Sunday afternoon, my thoughts are on all the things I am waiting for. I am awaiting this new one's birth with greater and greater anticipation, as discomforts become greater and our preparations become more complete. I have to remind myself how like Christ's incarnation pregnancy is...how He gave up His place, His glory, His form; set aside some of His divine attributes (like omnipresence); and confined Himself to a human body, restricted in many more ways than I am in this pregnant one.  "...Christ Jesus; who being in very nature God,  did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of