teen talk..........

Every Thursday I cook dinner for the teens......they come in fast and starving after a long day.
When I asked what day they wanted to have the study on they all agreed on Thursday's so it would help them to make better decisions on the weekends!

The stand in a line like they are the starved................and I wonder starved for what?
We eat on the screened in porch..... We chew on the dead food first...

 Are we ever really hungry at all? What kind of appetite do we really have for Christ?

I mean,  if we were to choose between sitting and talking with each other, or reading scripture? Would we rather read scripture or feed our flesh with the dead food.

Knowing during my mornings when I should be sitting chewing on the real food I try the hard to cram one more load of laundry in; vacuum one more room, load the dishwasher.......always saying that I will sit with God as soon as____________!

It's always after the Thursday dinner, after the teens are finishing there desert...that they ask me the questions...the questions that give away their appetite.
It's then and the now that I hear him whisper to me............tell them.........tell them that:
 “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. (John 6:35)
These are the words that I keep saying to them over and over again. Hoping, praying that they take hold and that the Holy Spirit takes it deep within them.....and pumps them pure full of hunger for the living Christ!

It's always after the Thursday dinners that we are truly fed with the only food that lasts... the only food that feeds the soul. The eternal food. We eat the word!

Shouldn't we be teaching the young that you never leave the table without chewing on the real bread?
The word of God is alive.....the reading of scripture is life. After all aren't we all really starving? Starving for the eternal life? eternal peace? eternal Joy?

Praying for God's word to be pumped through their blood..........so it permeates deep down into their heart giving them a hunger for more.

Sometimes teens can be loud and there is always interruptions, but I gently push forward knowing that the enemy is knocking.......not wanting us to feed this future generation with the eternal food.
It's the kind of food that saves...........changes us all deep down to the core of who we are.

Wanting so badly for these teens to eat again and again......summer is near and the teen studies have

come to a close..... praying for these teens not to stop the feeding.

Without question I will start a study again for them in the fall.....it's a personal journey that God has me on

to plant a seed..........a seed for a future generation that hungers for the world but has a heart for God!

Wanting them to remember that everytime they sit to eat that they can't live life without the filling of the real nourishment..........the kind that saves...........the eternal food.

John 6:51;

 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

all of grace,
Robbie

The road less traveled.....

John 7:38;
"He who believes in Me, as scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water."

Trying to find who I really am...........not the mom, the wife, or the nurse with all the obligations....but deep down to the core..............the real me the essence of who I really am.

Out of  the busyness of the day...........His grace is tugging.........tugging deep within my soul.
to sit a spell and think about who I am? As I rock..........I see.........and I feel.
The light of the day is warm...........the beauty all around us is a gift.
God can only find me when the old me is the dead.

     Sometimes the old me wants to live.......... wants me to travel down the path of the way it used to be........the young the carefree.
Back to the being............the being of a little girl when the parents were the young and the never wondering of  who I was.
Haven't traveled the road from where I came for the many years...............happy to just hold on to the memories.

I  can still remember the "Granny," walking around in the yard like it was the yesterday.........knowing even if I traveled down that road to the familiar that there would be the nothing left but the green house with the tiny carport..............and mostly the overgrown mess........Nothing ever stays the same........there is always change.
Can we go back down the road less traveled? That takes us back to our roots of who we are?
I am in search of who I am? Maybe it's the me who needs the seeing...........the seeing of where I came from again to really know.......to know who I have become in Christ!

The years fade and the years continue to pass on by............can you really ever go back?

Going back will never be the same.............people change and memories fade.............what was is no longer the now.

We all have a past............memories that are etched in our brains.......to remember where it is we came from is to remember who we are.

The roads less traveled is not what leads us to the now............to the who we are in Christ!

Time moves on and so do we.

Maybe its the now life that we should focus.............focus on the looking.... out of the windshield instead out of the rear-view mirror.

Maybe the past needs to stay in the past and maybe it's the future that holds the secret.........the secret to the who I am!

And it's the Father who is the already knowing..........knowing my name and the who I really am.

One who is saved by grace.

all of grace,

Robbie

Thankful today for:

the used cups that are always in the teenagers rooms

spring cleaning

for flipped mattress

 cleaning out closets

piles of books everywhere

for teens that always slam the front door

for fresh cut green grass

for a husband who works the hard

for the fish that no-one ever feeds

for the crumbs in the kitchen

ABANDON...............

Oswald Chambers;
"My utmost for His highest"

     Jesus summed up commonsense carefulness in the life of a disciple as UNBELIEF.
If we have received the spirit of God, He will squeeze right through our lives, as if to ask, "Now where do I come into this relationship, this vacation you have planned, or those new books you want to read?" And He always presses the point until we learn to make Him our first consideration. Whenever we put other things first there is confusion.
     ".............do not worry about your life........"Don't take the pressure of your provision upon yourself. It is not only wrong to worry, it is unbelief: WORRYING,  means we do not believe that God can look after the practical details of our lives, and it is never anything but those details that worry us. Have you ever noticed what Jesus said would choke the Word He puts in us?
Is it the devil? No---"the cares of this world" (Matthew 13:22). It is always our little worries. We say, "I will not trust when I cannot see"--- and that is where unbelief begins. The only cure for unbelief begins. The only cure for unbelief is obedience to the Spirit.
      The greatest word of Jesus to His disciples is ABANDON..............

Matthew 6:25;
.......do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on.

Israel...............

Israel's children......they have it a little harder than most.......oh how my heart aches for this place.

Can you imagine living everyday of your life looking over your shoulder?

With evil shooting missiles at buses and blowing up children?

Can you really sit down and reason with your enemies when their only desire every day is to extinguish you from the planet?

Do you have a right to protect yourself as a nation?

Do you have the right of peace that was given by God to every man, woman, and child?

Matthew 25:40;
Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

Appeasement is not the answer....Appeasement, as president Eisenhower said, is nothing more than SURRENDER on the installment plan!

 please turn our music off first.....this is just beautiful.....taking the time to remember........

Exodus 4:22;
‘This is what the Lord says: Israel is my firstborn son.......

Numbers 24:8-9;
8 “God brought them out of Egypt;

they have the strength of a wild ox.
They devour hostile nations
and break their bones in pieces;
with their arrows they pierce them.
9 Like a lion they crouch and lie down, like a lioness—who dares to rouse them?
“May those who bless you be blessed
and those who curse you be cursed!”

We are constantly hearing the calls to appease the enemies of Israel and the Jewish people.
Let me be very clear on this:  ISRAEL IS NOT THE PROBLEM.......The problem is the REJECTION of Israel's right to exist......
God is saying to "Christians," just as Mordecai said to Esther, "If you remain silent at this time, I will see to it that deliverance comes to the Jews from another place. But you and your house will perish!"

"BREATH," on us now Father.........we are desperate for more of you.

The sin of omission, the sin of remaining silent bystanders, is just as serious as the sin of commission, of actually committing the crime.......

If we ignore the events of our world today....we are no better than our ancestors who ignored them in the reign of the Nazis........history will repeat itself......we cannot remain silent!

"SILENCE IN THE FACE OF EVIL IS ITSELF EVIL:  GOD WILL NOT HOLD US GUILTLESS.

NOT TO SPEAK IS TO SPEAK.

NOT TO ACT IS TO ACT."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Jerusalem

The Gate.............

I prefer to stay at the entrance of the gate instead of the wanting..................wanting to enter entirely into the Christian life!

Why am I finding it the hard to move......move on through the gate into the newest..........................the new life.........................that God has placed within me?

Maybe it's me...............with my me-ism the dead-woman walking?

The ignorance of it all............not giving God the creation credit.

It so easy to place the blame...................the blame on the someone else.........like it is the me with the no free will!

I am asleep......in my own me-ism world.............missing it.

Jesus is the gate but the cross is the doorway....why can't I walk on through?

The dying of thy self..................is only for a time...............then the resurrection comes.

 Out of the darkness comes the death.................but out of the death comes the new life.

We Christians are the fully dead walking around only the ALIVE in "Christ."

We are born into this world as flesh first.

Sin is not what you do but who you are!

Then the second Adam came into us with "LIFE."

It was Grace..................abundance of Grace...................it was the free................the free gift!

The last Adam is who resurrects us! Raises us from the dead.

Why is it the so hard for me to see?

Am I the thirsty? I can't buy anything to quench my thirst.......I can't bargain for it......I can't beg for it..................I can only RECEIVE it!

     This beating of my old heart is pumping the memories up all the over again to be the breathed in kind..............the memories shimmer their shine back into visions of thy old self.
Vision of the darkness lingers.....................after all we all have our own dragons to slay.
Years of conflict within my very own soul has taught me this:
     You can't forget where you come from.............from where God bought you with a price and brought you home.
And His nail scarred hands.................placing us in the cliff of the rock...............the rock of our salvation.
Covering our sins..........................not always changing our circumstances........................but changing us down deep.................down to the core of who we are..................placing in us a different spirit.
The second Adam...............the last Adam............This is the Adam who brought us out of the what we were born into......and caused a Resurrection........................a Re-birthing..............of a new us!
1 Corinthians 15:45-47:
⁴⁵ So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”^[f]; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. ⁴⁶ The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. ⁴⁷ The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. ⁴⁸

     Grace leads...............always more fresh grace..........God himself is willing.............willing to start the new......with us...........letting the old die..............and the new will resurrect...
The goodness of God...........God is love.................let us not forget for the power of the cross is at stake!
all of grace,
Robbie

moving things around...

A few weeks ago as I was cleaning I found myself wanting to move things around in our office.  I've always felt that it was too crowded and as the years have passed it has become the place for everything...the computer, my sewing stuff, school supplies, book shelf, a couch, pictures (not in frames), even bills and old computer monitors and scrapbook stuff.  It catches everything that has no other home.
BUT, my daughter started taking guitar lessons and I needed somewhere for them to get away to so they could focus and not be distracted.  So, I went into the office, started cleaning, cleaning led to rearranging, and rearranging led to movement.  Before I knew it I had moved a deacons bench (that had no home in my house yet and was just stuck somewhere in a corner in my living room) into the office, I had moved the couch off of one of the walls and onto another, I had moved all of the school supplies and a lot of my sewing into the deacons bench and I had moved the table that I sew on onto another wall.  I moved the rug around and then cleaned it all.  I moved the lamps and the light that comes on with the switch and just did an entire makeover of the room.  When I stood back, it was such a change and I loved it. 
I find myself in this room a lot. I like to turn on my praise music and just sit on the floor or the couch and pray and spend time with God.
See, I need a retreat place.  I am not one that likes to be out in the middle of the living room overwhelmed with the space of it all.  I like to be in a room, with comforts like a couch and small lamp and things that I have created lying around, and I like to get down on the floor and find God there. It is my sanctuary.  I find peace in that room.  I find comfort in that room.  I find answers to life's questions in that room.  I find God in that room.  Don't get me wrong...God is everywhere in my home and I work hard to make my entire home a welcoming environment for the Holy Spirit to reign.  But, that room is my special place. 
We all need a special place that we can retire to, somewhere that is familiar to our spirit.  Some people lock themselves in closets to get away and rest in His presence....I've done that too. 
I challenge you to find a place in your home that you can make your sanctuary.  Put your bible there with your journal and a pen.  You may even want to put a candle or nice lamp in there. 
And then, spend time there getting to know the Father, spending time praying and worshiping Him.  You will begin to feel a peace as you walk into that area and you will know that it is the place where you have spent time with God in. 
It will bring you comfort and you can run to it when you are hurt and lonely.  He will meet you there. 
I have found peace in so many places over the years as we have moved from home to home, and there has always been one place that stands out in each of our homes...where is that place for you? 
Rest there...
Jennifer

god is love..........

 God is love..................

Giving thanks today...............for in the midst of all His ascended glory.....the Lord Jesus comes to speak to such an insignificant disciple...............simply saying........."Do Not Be Afraid." (Revelation 1:17)
His tenderness is inexpressibly sweet!

Me the one who craves the easy....... comes in begging for the more............ more grace please...me with my me-ism.........am I hearing? hearing Him speak? Or am I to wrapped up in the me?

The patients wife who holds the hand high..........the praise.......the seeing of one who hears..........
     The long skirt gave it away........the no make-up.... the simplicity of life.........the one who is ONE with the father.
She looks the tired from the living in a hospital room..........the husband who is on the breathing machine for a muscle disease.........can't protect the airway for the breathing..........

Her eyes were the lovely the kind that had lived the life.......with the stories to reveal...............

A greeting that started with the:  " let me ask you a question?"  Something about the will of God.......I continued to gaze upon her as I starred deep into her eyes to search for an answer that she would want to hear.

Me with my me-ism..... it is oh so clear to me now that I am to resolve..............resolve from my own evil heartaches and be with the people who are the most vulnerable................to be where there is the something.............the something tragically broken that is not of me.

To feel someones else's pain.

I need to exist........................exist out of my own..............me-ism world.

Maybe its the me who really does need the fixing...................the fixing of self...................the self that I cannot forgive..........................and a past that I cannot forget.

There is the something that happens...........when walking into another's life...........and listening...........really listening to their story.

     The Dr. walks in and tells the wife the one with her hand held high................its a choice that's coming.

It has to do with surgery....the kind which they cut for a trachea (which is an opening in the neck so they could move the breathing tube from the patients mouth to give him more comfort and it is used for patients who are going to be on a breathing machine long term); the Dr also stated that the patient would need a PEG tube! ( PEG is a surgery where they place a tube directly into the abdomen to feed the person)

The whole time the Dr. was speaking to the wife, I kept the looking at the wife deep....trying to see if I could see a response..........as I searched inwardly for my own answer.

The wife looked back at the Dr. with grace and poise.....she smiled a faint kind of smile and humbly thanked the Dr. for his time.

After he left the room I stood their with the no words.

Trying the hard to exist out of my own.................feeling the nothing..............watching this women who drew me in by her simple child like faith!

I quietly asked her if she had any questions? She raised that short little hand up to praise the Father..... the one she had become ONE with.....the one where the father had seen the something different.........a different kind of spirit.

She exclaimed by FAITH we are going to say NO..... to the cutting....and claim that it would not happen.

After all isn't Heaven the happily ever after?

Don't we all have darkness to walk through? With our own battles to fight?

She had faith! She believed....

As the days quickly turned to two......we had the bond!!! I to saw a different spirit in the her....

I even had the Amy come and meet her.....we sat at her feet looking and listening to her story.

She told us that years ago in a different kind of life.............she was the praying and felt the Lord speak directly into her soul.............he told her that she would never DIE! Never ever experience death! And she looked at the Amy and I and said, "girls I am 69 years old!"

"He's coming back and He's coming soon!"

Amy and I had the chill all over....the different spirit we could feel......felt like we sat down with Jesus himself.

She cried the long and hard when I told her I wouldn't be back for a week!

But on Sunday night my phone rang! I didn't recognize the number and didn't answer.  As I was listening to my message my heart skipped a beat as I heard the wife with the different kind of spirit say; "Robbie, please call me as soon as you can." I called the Amy,  me with my little faith knowing that they are wanting to do the surgery and thinking that she must be so upset. What am I supposed to say? After-all she had prayed and believed God!

I dialed the number back with the expecting.....expecting to hear the worst....she picked up the phone and I could barely understand because she was the shouting.......shouting HOLY, HOLY IS THE LORD.....he gave us a miracle today at 11:08am.......husband was taken off the breathing machine and was doing the great! I couldn't get a word in..........no surgery!!!! Here she screams you have to hear him speak!!!! You have never heard him speak!!! I know that God sent you to us...........you must HEAR his voice!!!

Husband on the phone..........."God gave me a miracle today!"

The tears that stung my face..........the humbleness that I felt.................the still small voice I could hear in my own heart...

Numbers 24:15-17:

the prophecy of one whose eye sees clearly,

 the prophecy of one who hears the words of God,
who has knowledge from the Most High,
who sees a vision from the Almighty,
who falls prostrate, and whose eyes are opened

I want so badly to have a different spirit..............like Caleb and like my new friend.........I want so badly for my eyes to be opened. Have I heard Him? Have I really ever listened? Listened to His still small voice? I must really listen and hear him speak! God is saying, "Here I am, over here, do you recognize My voice?"
"Have you ever heard Me speak?"  "You must HEAR my voice!"

all of grace,
Robbie