salt and light

Not long ago I was impressed upon to start studying the Sermon on the Mount and compare it to the life that I am living...not an easy thing to do.

As I studied, I found it to be overwhelming, and honestly I did not think that I could live like this in today's world.
How wrong was I? 
We have all been called to higher ground.  We have all been called to serve the Lord in some way.
As I meditated on Matthew 5:1-16 again this morning, I focused on what it was that I wanted in my walk with the Lord and what am I doing to get that? 
     I have been going through a season in my walk with Christ that is a transition from a dark, dry, and cold one into a light, exciting, blooming one.  As I read a new book that Robbie recommended to me, I can see that I am moving from a one season in my walk with God into a new one.  I have been at a place of dryness, coldness, quietness for quite a while now, BUT I see myself transitioning into a season of light, new growth, excitement and smiles, and wind blowing on my cheeks. (Do I sound crazy yet????)
     I say all of that to say that my eyes are able to see now that living a life like the one spelled out on the Sermon on the Mount is in my reach and I am capable of achieving this through Him. 
The verses that opened my eyes to new growth in Him today was particularly verses 13-16.

"You are the salt of the earth.  But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?  It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.  You are the light of the world.  A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl.  Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.  In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven."  Matthew 5:13-16 TNIV

     You see we become light when we are saved.  Think about sitting in a dark room by yourself for years with no way of light to enter.  Then, one day a candle is lit or a lamp is turned on.  You can see the things around you.  You can see a glimpse of what it was that you were missing for all of those years.  Before, you didn't know what was in the room with you or who was sitting beside of you, but with the light, you can see.  We are that LIGHT.  In a room, we should light up the things around us with His presence.  People should see things differently when we are there BECAUSE of HIS presence. 
But, in order to become that light we must make the choice to shine.  What good is a candle if it isn't lit?  What good is it to have a lamp in the room if you don't turn it on and use its brightness? 
There are choices that we have to make to become a light that shines for Him. 
We are also to be salt.  What does salt do?  It adds flavor to your food.  It pulls in water and holds onto it.  The word says that salt that loses its saltiness is no longer good for ANYTHING...throw it out and let it be trampled underfoot.
     I don't know about you, but I definitely DO NOT want to be thrown out and trampled upon.  I want to add life to those around me.  I want to bring hope to the hopeless and give life to the lifeless.  I want to be a light to the darkness.
      We have to make choices to change.  We have to move in the season that we are in right now and still be effective for the Kingdom.  Even in the winter, there is a job to be done.  In the winter is when the farmers are preparing their land for planting.  There is fertilization that takes place in the winter.  Preparation for the planting that comes in the spring and then growth and new life. 
Look at yourself, what is going on with you in your walk?  Do you feel distant from God?  Do you feel alive with hunger?  Are you seeking a new direction in your walk?  Are you feeling lonely and unknowing of what is happening to your future?  Where are you at right now?  In all seasons God is still there and He has so much to teach us in these seasons. 
Meditate on His word. 
Sing songs of Praise.
Fall on your face before the Lord.
Seek Him for guidance.
Be obedient to His voice.

Give Him praise for:
your health
your salvation
your family
your finances
your protection
your growth
your skills
your life

      God bless you all today as I continue to grow in His word and in Him.  As we walk out this day, I pray for an abundance of God's presence in all of the decisions and actions that we take today.  Let us be a light to someone today.  Show us opportunities to be salt and light in this world.  Give us chances to share your word with a stranger today and let them see YOU LORD in us.  Find in us a right heart and if we are not where we need to be with you, then change us Lord.  Give us the desire to change so that you find us fitable to be used by You.  Lord, my desire is to be light for a dying world.  My desire is to bring nations to you and see thousands changed because of your goodness and mercy.  My desire is for Revival Fire to hit our nation and for lives to be transformed.  I love you Father and want more than ever to sit at your feet and soak in your presence. 

jennifer

Happy Fathers Day

yes I had to put our only "boy," in the photos...........oh how husband loves this boy! Except for the collar that I make him wear..............but understanding that he lives with four women and how we think its the pretty!

a husband who loves.

Sometimes its me who's heart swells so full of love that it aches as it pumps me pure full of joy!

wishing................wishing that I had laughed more when we were the young.

remembering that first meeting...........I was only the 18 and you.........had a funny accent. (being from Maine, and me from Alabama)

What is love?..............it is the self-less sacrifice that you yourself have taught me so much about.

You have always been the one who could see...................the beauty of grace...........that out weighs the craziness of our life.

I saw love yesterday in the ICU when a  young man had to let go....................the giving up...........as his wife went on to bluer skies...............with the three little ones that are the left behind.....I had to ask myself the why?

     I think of my husband and the life that slips on by...... I stand with the Doc. as he tries to find the words that will be the good bye.............. My stomach knots the hard........and I think how fast the decades fly. I think about how I want to hold on to you and make it the forever in my arms.

 Her husband bends the hard now the kind of bend where......he's gasping........gasping for air knowing that when he breaths in the only air that enters his lungs will be the pureness of pain.........of the forever changed. I want to speak...............I open my mouth but the nothing comes.

I start to say that "His ways are not our ways." but the words never came.

My own grief swells within me...............as I fight back the tears. I bite my lower lip and pray that the ugly cry doesn't come. I say kindly "excuse me,"  as I make a mad exit to the right................ I proceed to collapse in the arms of another nurse who cries the long and the hard with me.  Knowing we were the seeing today..........the seeing of us and them as the same.

Luke 12: 4-7;
4;“I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. 5 But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him. 6 Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. 7 Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.


So I wanted to tell you on this day;
      It's the you these days that so easily believes and sees the goodness of God. You have grown so open and so willing to do the receiving.
We aren't the entitled to the guarantee of the longevity of the happily ever after........but GRACE............His grace...............is what we are the given in the now.
     It made me the wondering as I watched the spouse of the dying young............isn't it all of us that our days are the numbered that we take for granted.
Life is full of twists and turns................even the kind that can be the hurting. It can come at us fast and hard. 
Sometimes the letting go..........is the only way to surrender.
You have always been the remembering kind.................remembering to put the me and the girls first!
The way you have lived your life.................says so much about who you are.
You are the strong.........the kind that puts family first................knowing that living with four women can be the hard kind of living! You are the real.............the real kind of man......... always laying your needs aside...........to see that our needs are the first.

      I ask my-self another WHY? Why haven't I spent the last 17 years of our marriage...........pulling you the closer...........laughing until it hurts more and.............telling you more that the love I feel is the indescribable!
     Wanting you to know more than ever that it is you that has split me the wide open and caused my heart to swell with a love that has pumped through my veins the deep............. the deepest kind of love.
You are the one who has made me a better woman!
      Wanting to live life like everyday is the last kind of days...........so that you will know that through these years of being together..........I have never learned so much as I have learned from the you.

     Even the little things have melted my heart while the house is sleeping and you are too but yet your hand can find mine in the darkness and give me calmness...........the calmness of being joined together as one.
You are the faithful............and the years are slipping by........wanting to make it the counting kind......and not the wasteful.

     Her husband starts the leave..........he opens up the wide and says he doesn't know the how...........it is at that moment that I take his face into my hands and whisper it's all about grace...........his grace.........it is then that I tell him how he self-lessly loved her..............that he surrendered the strong............that it is going to be the OK. He says he is going to miss her and I hold him as he cries...........and I tell him again to go ahead and fall the hard right into the arms of the saviour.

     It's by God's grace alone that the years have made us the one. Not the knowing when our time will come.
We are the older now and praying for us to never waste a second of love.....wanting to never have those regrets............of the missing of what it could have been. Here I am again with the no words.............the words that cannot come............but the knowing................knowing when I look at you I still come completely undone.
Wishing you the most Happiest Fathers Day ever!
Loving you has been the easy,
wanting you to know I would walk down that altar with you again and again and again.
Robbie

Stillness

May your weekend be one filled with stillness.

May your soul be stirred in ways that only solitude in Him will do.

May you be swept up in His grace....by being still....and knowing that He is God.

Blessing my sweet sisters!

praying that His peace seeps in through your very veins

all of grace,

Robbie

God has a plan

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God never ceases to amaze me! His plan is not ours- and when we "stop" trying to "fix" things and just surrender and trust in him- it is then that we see his plan more clearly!
I woke one Sunday morning tired and sleepy- I had already sent a text to Robbie, telling her that I was  going to late service. I was just too tired to get up early. My husband, who is rarely off on a Sunday, was up ironing his "church clothes". The whole "going to church" issue has been a battle with us for sometime now. When we first started dating- we went to church- when we were first married - we went to church, even when our kids were small. But with his job, he works 90% of Sundays. And this made it easy to " skip" church. So when he is off, he sleeps in. And oh how the devil has a hay day with that!!
So I asked him- What are you doing? Going to Mt. Harmony- church that he plays softball with. Are we all going? I wondered out loud. No, just me. OK- if you were there you would have seen steam coming out of my ears. Whatever!!! I just laid there- still- until he was gone. Oh how easy it would be to lay in the bed, sulking!, but I needed to go to church. I needed to have my cup filled.
A few screams and rushing later, the three boys and I were ready to go to church. I think the devil works overtime on Sunday- Right before I walk through the church doors, and as soon as I walk out of them- I am attacked the strongest.
I rush downstairs- military like- " Get your shoes, and lets GO". And there he stood- my husband- the boys stand around him like little ducks. I soon find out- from my 8 year old- the one we call " little preacher"- that we are ALL going to church. Didn't you just go to MT. Harmony, I asked?. Yes and now I am going with you guys. OK---- No fight- No pouting- No Arguing. We all get into the car- everyone silent-But you could hear the grin on my kids face- as they watched their dad lead them to church. WOW I was shocked. Oh how little we trust God- His plans for us are to take care of us, not to harm us.
It wasn't til days later, that we actually talked about  him going to church, not once- but twice in one day. A miracle- And days later he told me what the sermon was at Mt. Harmony-
Ephesians 5:22-" Wives summit yourselves to your husbands, as unto the Lord."
Great- I thought- more about what I need to do for you!!!!
Then- he continued-
Ephesians 5:33 " Nevertheless let everyone of you in particular so love his wife even as himself, as the wife sees that she is reverence to her husband."
My husband- who I am still learning about- said - Per the Bible, you are to summit to me, but I am to love you more than I do myself.
For once I was speechless! God is full of miracles- everyday we can see them- be apart of them- especially if we pay attention!. Keep our eyes on him. I am seeing miracles everyday with my husband, the pilot, the father, the one that God is working on- I will share those miracles with each one of you- Slowly- I don't want to miss anything- God has a plan- And his plan includes me! That is the miracle!!!!!
In his Service:
Amy

counterfeit christian........................

Sometimes life can feel like you are hitting a brick wall.

It only takes a second and I forget who I am......
God wants us to be the CHANGE we want to see in the world............so why have I allowed the world to change me? I become affected with whoever and whomever I am with. I forget so quickly who God says I am. 
I just can't get it....get the fact that everyone is watching. It is almost like a dog that you can't keep in a fence. You do everything you can to protect that new puppy. You add to your already existing fence to try to keep the dog in so that he will not be hurt by being run over by a car or get lost or stolen. 
  God does this with us. He gives us boundaries to stay within and He has done everything to keep us inside of those boundaries but every time we think He is not looking we bust right out of that fence into the WORLD and start worshipping our own golden calf. 

We are the broken......the world is the broken...............and when we are the broken.........are we being the seen.....seen by Jesus?
A broken and humble heart God will not despise....Psalm 50:20
and Jesus........Jesus is the grace............the abundant grace that runs deep............deep into our veins........the kind that pumps the blood.............the blood of the one true sacrifice........what must we do Lord.........drink your very blood?
We want a transfusion...........the kind that only the "great physician," can give.

Are we placing our minds before the mirror of eternity?

      We here are the spiritually starving? Whispering more please...........more of your grace.
But do we really want the grace?  For all my yearnings for grace, longing for it and even begging for it-
what is the truth?.......the truth of it all? What if the truth is preferring the empty? Maybe is the me with my me-ism that enjoys the darkness.........maybe the reason I continue to do the things that I say I don't want to do is because I am the fake...........the pretend kind of Christian........the one who screams for the easy.........the one who claims that I want the Jesus more than the anything.  It is me that is the always testing.........testing Him who is the eternal.........testing Him into the now!
It feels like I eat but I am still the hungry; I drink and I still thirst.  What is it that I really want?
I am suddenly feeling it................feeling the storms of life slapping me in the face. The old me returns....and the new me the one in Christ lays dormant........in fear........becoming the frightened. And it is then that I sink....sink to that low..........that lets the old me resurrect.
I am the knee deep in a river...................searching............searching for the water..........the living water and I find it...........but I don't drink from it.......why?

 God blesses those whose heart is pure......for they will see God.(Matthew 5:8)

The tears that continue to fall.....................I am the lost..............begging to be the found. But do I really want to see............see the WELL that is right in front of me.   I must want to see it to drink from it?
    Sometimes it's the me wearing my anger like armor................but only to hide my fear. And it's the me who is continuing to ache........aching for the only one who can quench my thirst.
      I don't like the old me............wanting to become the someone else. Learning..........learning to express my gratitude in all things; ( thanks to Ann Voskamp).  I am the slow kind of learner. Wanting to take my eyes off me and my circumstances and put them on the KING.
     When will I ever get it? knowing I am in the fight for my life.............fighting for the JOY that only God can provide. Learning that the fight for JOY will be God's GLORY in the end.

all of grace,
Robbie

humbly whispering thanks today for;
Ann Voskamp (who through her words of wisdom is teaching me to count the ugly as grace; and helping me to find God in every moment)
dishes piled the high
toothpaste on the mirrors
the closets that need cleaning
for our precious Belarus child that arrives this evening
clean clothes that are not folded
the dogs that need a bath
the phone that never stops ringing
for the mother who calls and prays
for the husband who loves me even when the old me resurrects

Spiritual Warfare

 It was quiet- all the boys were in the bed. I had a few minutes of peace before I too went to bed. I walked through the back door to the patio outside. I looked around- it was dark- the air was warm, but not too warm. I heard my 70 lb puppy running to me, to  nibble at my hand. I took a deep breath and let the air slowly out of my lungs. Peace and quiet- I am so thankful for that at the end of a busy day. Oh how I love the craziness of my boys and my life, but at night- the quiet revives me. I sat down in the swing- pushing it with my feet, I felt as if I could be "rocked to sleep". I laid down on the swing- with one foot still pushing me slowly. I closed my eyes- very relaxed- but only for a minute- because then I remembered, earlier in the day I saw in the corner of that same swing,  a very large spider and a huge web. I begin to think.... what if that spider is crawling on me? Am I near the web? I laid very still trying to decide whether I was going to jump up, or just chance it and lay there.

The Holy Spirit suddenly reminded me of my protection from the battles in the spiritual world. We have no idea what goes on in the Spiritual Realm. And how we are protected from evil beyond our wildest imagination. So as I lay there very still - I begin to list ways we are protected. First- we must rely on God's power to defeat evil, not our own. Second- We must rebuke Satan in Jesus' name only. Third- We must protect ourselves with the Armor of God. fourth- We must wage warfare by the Sword of the Spirit- which is the Word of God. And finally- we must remember that while we are protected from the enemy, by the Full Armor of God, not every sin or problem is a demon that needs to be rebuked.
God is in control- And once we remember that and lay ourselves and our problems at his feet- we will have the peace and comfort we all long for.
So with all those thoughts running through my mind- I jumped up, shook my head, and moved around quickly, like a crazy person- trying to get that spider (as if it was crawling on me) off !! And then I ran inside- so much for the peace and quiet! It is over rated anyway.
Amy

Shedding

Shedding the old me is the hard..........wanting only to simplify.
Like the sea shells that wash up on shore.
Wanting to physically shed.........shed the things of this world;  pride, vanity, and insincerity..........not wanting to worry about impressions anymore.
What do we really need in this world anyway?
Couldn't we live with a little less?

The most exhausting thing in life is having a costume closet!
The being......insincere.
Social Life in Babylon can exhaust you...........resolve.........is the only way to grace.
Shedding the mask.......surrendering.......being who God says you are is the way to feel His grace.
Simplification can bring forth the shedding.......the kind that is spiritual........spiritual freedom.

We have a choice..............between simplicity or complication of life.

What will we choose? Simplicity? or Complication? Most of us choose the complication?

Is it because we crave the drama?

Love the fight for control instead of surrendering? The wanting..........wanting to be our own god?

Does it really boil down to unbelief?

Do I not believe God can and will give me grace regardless of my undeserving self?

Then that is a slap in the Savior's face.

      The time is coming that could enforce upon us simplification.

The world is changing and until we get it....until we start the seeing..........seeing the beauty of God all around us........in the wind that blows through the trees, in the leaves that fall like God's grace,  in the sunlight that spills in from the glass...........even to the pollen that collects on the porch.

To the crumbs on the counters................to the unmade beds and the laundry that piles up daily.

Beauty that is all around us. Life that can be raw sometimes and hard.....it can come at you fast. We must learn to glorify by:

seeing the world through the new kind of eyes............God's eyes.

 God is the one who teaches us that when your eyes are bad.....your whole being is filled with the darkness.

Satan is trying to keep us from the seeing............causing the darkness to spread like a virus....that leaves our souls feeling the empty.

Am I begging for the grace but preferring the empty?

Am I blinded by my own me-ism?

God's Word is our glasses....................to see the world from His lens.

We have to shed our me-ism..............laying down the pride..............the selfishness...........the vanity and start the simpler living..................by the reading................the reading of God's Word which causes us the seeing again....through the lens of God..............  the kind of lens that the great physician ordered................ones that are prescription..... ones that keep us from being the blinded by our own self........the me-ism syndrome that can complicate life.

When looking at the world through the eyes of God (His Word), then you are the light.........the light in the darkness. No longer does the darkness dwell inside of you. The change starts from the inside.

We have the choice for now....................the choice to change..........to shed ones shell knowing that

shedding the old you is the beginning of grace......................... shedding starts by losing yourself.

We will only find ourselves when we lose ourselves.

God is faithful...............wanting to pour out His Grace...........everywhere. You have to want to see it.........in the everyday moments...............praying for my eyes to be the open wide.......by the opening of His word.

all of grace,

Robbie

Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

(Matthew 10:39)

Thankful for :
Sunday night dinner
for a pastor who speaks the truth
for mason jars to drink sweet tea
summer storms
for the choir woman who hugs me the long and hard and whispers are you OK? And we don't even know each other's name.
for the trash that is always overflowing
for my daughter coming home to tell me about her night
for a church service that makes you cry the hard