What will 2012 bring?

What is it that you desire?

The wind whips the hard through the night.............and it's me who wonders what will the new year bring?

The New Year does stir excitement within...........that maybe this thing called self can truly die!
Jesus who gave no thought to ease or pleasure or WORLDLY enrichment.............but filled His life with DOING..............FOR OTHERS.........always SELF-DENYING!

Winter is truly unfolding this day...........with a glimmer of hope that this year can be the year to know Him better.

2011- Was the year of learning to give thanks in every situation.............finding gratitude.-  “eucharisteo."

EUCHARISTEO - - Greek Verb

MEANING: To be grateful, feel thankful; give thanks

NUMBER OF TIMES USED IN THE BIBLE: Used 39 times in Scripture in the following ways: Give Thanks = 26 times Thank = 12 times Thankfulness = 1 time

EXAMPLE:

He that regardeth the day, regardeth [it] unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard [it]. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks. Romans 14:6 God has been circling me for a while with the word.............."desire." 2012 will be my year of DESIRE..............desiring to know Him better. greek word for desire= Eros --meaning a longing! I long to know Him better. Longing only to seek the pleasure or desire of Christ! Ask yourself today;  "What is it that you desire?" (for 2012) Standing at that cross-roads in life............which path will I take? Which path will you take? The road less traveled is going to be steep..........one with bumps and bruises.

I want to connect with God.............no more half-hearted commitment!
PSALMS 42:1-2;
¹ As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, my God.
² My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?

I need Him................I desire that personal intimacy with Him......we are a living incompleteness.......a gap, and emptiness that longs.............for fulfillment!

So this year 2012 will be a year of prayer! Prayer leads to intimacy with God.  That's how we will connect!

Over 75 million Christians go to church every Sunday.........falling into two main groups:
1)  wanting a personal experience of God's presence or
2)  to have a better understanding HOW to live the Christian life.

(Although over 75 million Christians are going to church less than 1/3 have an actual relationship or even DESIRE to have a relationship with Him!)

I need to KNOW Him............I can't settle for the feel good experience......the day will come when brokenness happens.....................pain...........even death and I can't rely on my feelings! I have to know Him in order to trust Him! And the only way to know him better is to spend time with Him.

Prayer is the door for knowing Him better!

Sometimes God will bring you to the door but He can't make you go through it................you have to step out on your own free will and MOVE forward! Your real encounter with God may behind that door! Prayer is your heart!!!  Asking myself today; "What are the desires of my heart?"
I am tired of being the Israelites wandering in the wilderness............with trials and hardships that can literally kill me! He sat me in front of a dead forest..................He is telling me that I am in the wilderness..................where it is consistently....BARREN, DRY and DESOLATE. I am asking Him today;  "how can I so infested with SELF fit into His plan?"

EROS............ I whisper over and over again.............wanting that DESIRE to seek Him with all my heart, soul and mind.

I look out the window and I see it........the sun glistening through the trees in the 20 degree weather.....and I wonder how........how do I take my eyes off of me and place them on Him? Trying harder is only putting hope in self.......being the better mama..........friend............sister and wife only comes from Him. From A daily EROS for more of Him. Peace cannot be found................because He is our perfect PEACE.

James 8:8a “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you”


Psalm 73:28 “But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge that I may tell of all your works.”


Romans 12:12 “Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.”
Might this year for me EROS be the year that changes everything?

Draw near to HIM.............Desire HIM.......................prayer is an expression of who we are!
What you desire is who you will become...........and what you become is what you will leave behind for the next generation!

Want you join me?
Let this be your year of DESIRING more of Him!


all of grace,
Robbie

Storms for the Broken

asking for your grace today;  a quiet repost

God's Assuring Voice Sings Love Across The Storm.

"For God hath made me fruitful in the land of my affliction" (Gen. 41:52).
The summer showers are falling. The poet stands by the window watching them. They are beating and buffeting the earth with their fierce downpour. But the poet sees in his imaginings more than the showers which are falling before his eyes. He sees myriads of lovely flowers which shall be soon breaking forth from the watered earth, filling it with matchless beauty and fragrance. And so he sings:
(Hasn't Ann VosKamp taught us that emptiness does SING)

"It isn't raining rain for me, it's raining daffodils;
In every dimpling drop I see wild flowers upon the hills.
A cloud of gray engulfs the day, and overwhelms the town;
It isn't raining rain for me: it's raining roses down."

Perchance some one of God's chastened children is even now saying, "O God, it is raining hard for me tonight.
     "Testings are raining upon me which seem beyond my power to endure. Disappointments are raining fast, to the utter defeat of all my chosen plans. Bereavements are raining into my life which are making my shrinking heart quiver in its intensity of suffering. The rain of affliction is surely beating down upon my soul these days."
     Withal, friend, you are mistaken. It isn't raining rain for you. It's raining blessing. For, if you will but believe your Father's Word, under that beating rain are springing up spiritual flowers of such fragrance and beauty as never before grew in that storm less, unfastened life of yours.
     You indeed see the rain. But do you see also the flowers? You are pained by the testings. But God sees the sweet flower of faith which is up springing in your life under those very trials.
     You shrink from the suffering. But God sees the tender compassion for other sufferers which is finding birth in your soul.
     Your heart winces under the sore bereavement. But God sees the deepening and enriching which that sorrow has brought to you.
     It isn't raining afflictions for you. It is raining tenderness, love, compassion, patience, and a thousand other flowers and fruits of the blessed Spirit, which are bringing into your life such a spiritual enrichment as all the fullness of worldly prosperity and ease was never able to beget in your innermost soul." --J. M. McC.
(Devotional From Steams In The Desert).

           I was visiting another blog the other day and she had posted this devotion as I read it I wept. It was then that I remembered that I have this same devotion book.  ("Streams In The Desert,")  I quickly flipped it open to the current date and read it aloud on my prayer bench. Amy keeps telling me to just sit and be still. But I continue to allow myself to be pulled in 80 different directions....Not stopping to just breath....... It is only after reading this beautiful devotion that I realize that maybe I am in a storm to be the broken!

Haven't we all been wounded? Sometimes by our own fleshing blood!
       Maybe even left...........with your heart split wide open.........where you actually do bleed the kind of blood that can't be replaced.....the kind that tears...........at you and spills the real you out on the floor.
Because out of the mouth the heart does speak.
The reaction that causes the fear to react.............and then it's the head that bows the low........and it is then that I am in the need...............the need for a saviour........a lifter of my head........by His grace alone!
Why isn't it enough what JESUS did for us on that cross?
How easily I am ensnared...........in the tangled web...........of LIFE'S lullabies.
It is the now the world (Babylon) in which I live.............no home-schooled teens here. We can barley mumble a prayer of thanksgiving out before the teens have taken their first bite out of their meal.
     The mission trips that are coming up fast...........the preparing............the leaders that keep the saying, "you will have a new child when they return!"
Pipe dreams I think when I feel disappointment that has pierced me the hard...........right through the heart.
But where is the forgiveness? The longer I bow the knees and hang the head down low.........is where I find I am tucked into the wings of pure grace.
Where is the grace that I so gladly take? Does it not apply to the ones who pierce my heart the hard?
If we are the given.........given the door of grace.......then shouldn't we be the first to open up our door of forgiveness?
What if we saw grace through His eyes?
      I am the broken mama with the broken girls......but do I really want to be the fixed? All these years I have tried to do the fixing myself.................is it because I am my own God? Is it the control that I so madly crave? The anger that has hurt much and little has been healed.........Is it that thy wounded self has open sores and when brushed up against it hurt others?
     But in all thy brokenness comes the whisper; " Thy Redeemer Lives," He has taken His own body and broken it for us the broken:  and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; (1 Cor. 11:24)
     By His wounds we are healed. It is by our brokenness that God himself does His best work. 
The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. (Psalm 34:18)
     Knowing that I am the broken but also the called............the called to mimic the life of Jesus....so I give a little more.................I pour out even more and forgiveness...............forgiveness is given the ever more.
Because the broken will see healing.........and be showered upon by our redeemer who lives.

by grace alone,
Robbie


thankful today for;
long walks with the hubby
for the sunlight that comes across the tile floor
the purple butterfly that stayed with me on my walk
the cooler temperatures
the wind blowing through the trees
for a God who really does answer prayers
for a changed heart
for the teens who always fight
for the wet bathing suits in the floor

Mercy and Grace----New Years

All sacred breaths that are gone........................although I want to inhale them back they have disappeared into the memory box of the past.

 My warm friends, may 2012 be one of simplicity and stillness........ knowing that He is God!

Remembering:   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. 



all of grace,
Robbie