About a week and a half ago we found out a diagnosis on my step-son, William, that we thought could be true but wasn't sure of. Even though I knew it was a possibility for him to have this disorder, it hit me hard to know it was real. God, as He always does, had given me exactly what I needed that day to face this situation. I read in Matthew 2:14-23 how the Old Testament had predicted the life of Jesus, getting so detailed as to say he would flee to Egypt for safety. I read over and over again in these few verses how the prophets had predicted events about Jesus and they had come true. I asked God what I could get from these verses and He told me, "I'm faithful to my Word." Back when the prophets were alive and well, God had told them that these things would happen and they did, just as He had said.
In the event with my son, the Lord brought to mind Romans 8:28, "For we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, those who have been called according to His purpose." I realized God told me here that He was working everything, even in my life, for His good and I knew from the verses above that God is faithful to His Word, so I can trust Him that everything will be ok. Also for the first time I realized what the second part of that verse meant. According to God's purpose, I have been called to be a mother of a child with a disorder. Wow! So there's a purpose to all of this!That's very encouraging. I feel honored that the Lord considers me strong enough for this, that He would choose me for this exact situation. Don't get me wrong, I love my son and feel priveledged to be a part of his life. God picked me to be a part of this boy's life for some reason. It can be difficult at times though, so it's nice knowing God has planned all this out for a specific reason. So right now I'm very glad that the Lord is faithful to His Word because without that knowledge I would be hopeless.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Saturday, May 15, 2010
New beginnings
Lamentations 3:23- "For His compassions are new every morning; great is your faithfulness."
I was so excited about redesigning my blog that I wanted to blog about it! I was trying to think of something that went along with new beginnings and this is the very first verse that popped in my head.It's such a good one too! It's 6 am and I'm finishing up a shift at work so to know his compassions are new every morning is a great thing as I finish/start a new day! Also just makes me think of how every day is a new day and how much of a blessing that is! If we mess up today we have tomorrow to get up and try to do better. Also the Lord sees yesterday and all it contained as our past and today as a new start. How wonderful! I know there are times I am very glad I get to start over from the day before. Also love the second part of this verse and the reminder of how faithful God is. Faithful to forgive and give us a fresh start. This actually reminds me of my date time with God on Wednesday, which I'm sure I will blog about later.It's a good one! It's so amazing how compassionate and faithful the Lord truly is!
I was so excited about redesigning my blog that I wanted to blog about it! I was trying to think of something that went along with new beginnings and this is the very first verse that popped in my head.It's such a good one too! It's 6 am and I'm finishing up a shift at work so to know his compassions are new every morning is a great thing as I finish/start a new day! Also just makes me think of how every day is a new day and how much of a blessing that is! If we mess up today we have tomorrow to get up and try to do better. Also the Lord sees yesterday and all it contained as our past and today as a new start. How wonderful! I know there are times I am very glad I get to start over from the day before. Also love the second part of this verse and the reminder of how faithful God is. Faithful to forgive and give us a fresh start. This actually reminds me of my date time with God on Wednesday, which I'm sure I will blog about later.It's a good one! It's so amazing how compassionate and faithful the Lord truly is!
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Protector
Yesterday I was turning left at an intersection. As I was waiting for the cars to go by or the light to turn yellow, I was doing my illegal habit of text messaging while driving. So the light turned yellow and I looked and all the cars had gone through so I started to turn left. Right when I was turning a huge black truck came barreling through the yellow/red light barely missing the front of my car. The first thing that came to my mind was my "date time" with God yesterday...
Matthew 2:13-"When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. "Get up," he said, "take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him."
I think it's so cool how an angel came to Joseph and told him to flee to Egypt. How cool is it that an actual angel came and talked to him. What's even cooler is that as believers we have someone even better than an angel, we have the Holy Spirit speaking and telling us to get out of situations and to flee when we need to. We have God who speaks directly to us! We don't need a messenger anymore.
I asked God yesterday what I could learn about Him through this one verse and the first thing that came to my mind was "I'm a protector." It's so cool how he sent an angel to Joseph back then to worn him to leave to protect Jesus. It is also amazing how he still protects us today. So this is what I thought about after almost getting cleared right off the road yesterday afternoon. The Lord is the Protector. He not only protected me from that truck yesterday but has protected me on the road so many times in my life. He also protected me alot during my rebellious time. My mentor and I talked about this once, about all that we were exposed to while we were in the pit but the Lord protected us from so much. Why was I not the one who disappeared in Aruba? Or in Starkville or Memphis? The Lord protected me from so much!
This brings some people to the question well why didn't he protect so and so when she or he was murdered or in an aweful wreck. I don't think as humans we can ever answer that question. I just think that's when we have to trust the Lord the most, knowing that he knows better than we do, even though that's very hard to grasp sometimes.
I'm so grateful for the Great Protector who has seen me through so much and protected me from more than I can ever dare to imagine! He protected believers in the Bible in awesome ways like he's protecting us today!
Matthew 2:13-"When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. "Get up," he said, "take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him."
I think it's so cool how an angel came to Joseph and told him to flee to Egypt. How cool is it that an actual angel came and talked to him. What's even cooler is that as believers we have someone even better than an angel, we have the Holy Spirit speaking and telling us to get out of situations and to flee when we need to. We have God who speaks directly to us! We don't need a messenger anymore.
I asked God yesterday what I could learn about Him through this one verse and the first thing that came to my mind was "I'm a protector." It's so cool how he sent an angel to Joseph back then to worn him to leave to protect Jesus. It is also amazing how he still protects us today. So this is what I thought about after almost getting cleared right off the road yesterday afternoon. The Lord is the Protector. He not only protected me from that truck yesterday but has protected me on the road so many times in my life. He also protected me alot during my rebellious time. My mentor and I talked about this once, about all that we were exposed to while we were in the pit but the Lord protected us from so much. Why was I not the one who disappeared in Aruba? Or in Starkville or Memphis? The Lord protected me from so much!
This brings some people to the question well why didn't he protect so and so when she or he was murdered or in an aweful wreck. I don't think as humans we can ever answer that question. I just think that's when we have to trust the Lord the most, knowing that he knows better than we do, even though that's very hard to grasp sometimes.
I'm so grateful for the Great Protector who has seen me through so much and protected me from more than I can ever dare to imagine! He protected believers in the Bible in awesome ways like he's protecting us today!
Monday, May 10, 2010
God's in the business of changing lives!
As I look back on my life, I see a girl who was so consumed by what others thought of her. I thought as a Christian my goal is life was to be as perfect as I could be. It caused me to look down at others and judge them. It also caused me to fall completely apart whenever I did mess up.
As I reread the genealogy of Christ in Matthew 1, I saw not only Rahab, who was a prostitute, but many other messed up people. I saw King David, a murderer and an adulterer. I saw Abraham who didn't trust God enough to fulfill his promise so he decided to try to make the promise of a child happen his own way. I also saw Judah who broke a promise to his daughter-in-law, she then dressed like a prostitute and slept with Judah to produce the twins that would be in the genealogy of Christ. There were alot of messed up people in Christ's genealogy. In Matthew 2:6 I also saw how God had promised that Jesus would be born in the city of Judah. So God did not choose the most "perfect" people to be in his genealogy, he chose the most messed up people He could work through. It hit me that God's more interested in redeeming lives and changing people than he is about us looking "perfect" and being "perfect". The "perfect" people don't need him. Only the ones who know how messed up they are see their need for a Savior.
It was cool how a chapter that usually puts me to sleep with all the names I can't pronounce suddenly is a huge story of God's redemption and grace. I know I will probably struggle with caring too much about what people think of me for the rest of my life but I feel like I'm finally getting the point that I'm not here to be the "perfect" Christian but to love others and pour into them. The more I focus on pouring into others the more I want to do the right thing not for my glory but for the Lord's. It's not about being "perfect" but about showing others God's love.
As I reread the genealogy of Christ in Matthew 1, I saw not only Rahab, who was a prostitute, but many other messed up people. I saw King David, a murderer and an adulterer. I saw Abraham who didn't trust God enough to fulfill his promise so he decided to try to make the promise of a child happen his own way. I also saw Judah who broke a promise to his daughter-in-law, she then dressed like a prostitute and slept with Judah to produce the twins that would be in the genealogy of Christ. There were alot of messed up people in Christ's genealogy. In Matthew 2:6 I also saw how God had promised that Jesus would be born in the city of Judah. So God did not choose the most "perfect" people to be in his genealogy, he chose the most messed up people He could work through. It hit me that God's more interested in redeeming lives and changing people than he is about us looking "perfect" and being "perfect". The "perfect" people don't need him. Only the ones who know how messed up they are see their need for a Savior.
It was cool how a chapter that usually puts me to sleep with all the names I can't pronounce suddenly is a huge story of God's redemption and grace. I know I will probably struggle with caring too much about what people think of me for the rest of my life but I feel like I'm finally getting the point that I'm not here to be the "perfect" Christian but to love others and pour into them. The more I focus on pouring into others the more I want to do the right thing not for my glory but for the Lord's. It's not about being "perfect" but about showing others God's love.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
How can God use such messed up people?
So the Lord told my mentor to tell me to start over in my reading. I just started over in August so I haven't really read that much so not too big of a deal and if that means that He's goig to reveal even more to me, that's awesome!
So I went to Genesis at first and my heart just wasn't in it at all so I went back to Matthew. The beginning of Matthew is the geneaology of Jesus. I got to verse 5 and stopped. Rahab, a former prostitute, go to be in the geneaology of Christ. Amazing! Also I don't think I knew Boaz was her descendant. It says her son here but not sure if that means actual son or descendant. I read Ruth and some of Joshua and still not sure. I remember Boaz being the type of man we all wanted to marry in Bible study. We would all talk about finding "our Boaz". So this man who we all wanted to marry was the descendant of a prostitute.
This then lead me to think that might be the reason he was such an awesome man to begin with. He knew God's grace and mercy first hand through his family. He heard a story of a woman stuck in sin who risked her life for spies and the Lord saved her and her family. He heard how the Lord changed her and gave her a second chance. This could be why he was so merciful to Ruth, a moabitess. He knew about second chances. When I reread Ruth it was evident why we all wanted to marry a Boaz. His character is awesome.
I then started to think about how we Americans, especially Christians, try to make our families look perfect. We don't want anyone to know that our families are struggling to stay together or members of our families are having problems. Why is that? It seems like God uses the most messed up people in the Bible. Why do we hide our messes? We can let our messes be our message if we let God work through us. Why do we think because our families have had issues in the past that we can't be used by the Lord? It seems like God uses the most messed up families for His glory. He used a prostitute and His Son came from her family line. Abraham is the man we as Christians look up to but he slept with his wife's servant to have a baby, not trusting the Lord's promise. He uses our mess ups to reach others and bring glory to His Name. How amazing and refreshing is that!!!
So I went to Genesis at first and my heart just wasn't in it at all so I went back to Matthew. The beginning of Matthew is the geneaology of Jesus. I got to verse 5 and stopped. Rahab, a former prostitute, go to be in the geneaology of Christ. Amazing! Also I don't think I knew Boaz was her descendant. It says her son here but not sure if that means actual son or descendant. I read Ruth and some of Joshua and still not sure. I remember Boaz being the type of man we all wanted to marry in Bible study. We would all talk about finding "our Boaz". So this man who we all wanted to marry was the descendant of a prostitute.
This then lead me to think that might be the reason he was such an awesome man to begin with. He knew God's grace and mercy first hand through his family. He heard a story of a woman stuck in sin who risked her life for spies and the Lord saved her and her family. He heard how the Lord changed her and gave her a second chance. This could be why he was so merciful to Ruth, a moabitess. He knew about second chances. When I reread Ruth it was evident why we all wanted to marry a Boaz. His character is awesome.
I then started to think about how we Americans, especially Christians, try to make our families look perfect. We don't want anyone to know that our families are struggling to stay together or members of our families are having problems. Why is that? It seems like God uses the most messed up people in the Bible. Why do we hide our messes? We can let our messes be our message if we let God work through us. Why do we think because our families have had issues in the past that we can't be used by the Lord? It seems like God uses the most messed up families for His glory. He used a prostitute and His Son came from her family line. Abraham is the man we as Christians look up to but he slept with his wife's servant to have a baby, not trusting the Lord's promise. He uses our mess ups to reach others and bring glory to His Name. How amazing and refreshing is that!!!
Sunday, May 2, 2010
"Taste the Rainbow"
I am constantly amazed at how the Lord chooses to woo his children. Yesterday we had at least four tornadoes in our city. After one of the afternoon storms, my husband, son, and I were driving home and there was a perfect rainbow across the sky. You could see the beginning and end. Beautiful!
I was immediately reminded of the story of Noah after the ark had landed on the mountain (Genesis 9) where God makes a covenant to Noah that He will never flood the earth again. He then seals the covenant with a rainbow. The rainbow I saw yesterday reminded me of all the promises God made to his children in His Word. It was like God was saying "Mary, I love you and I'm still keeping all those promises I made to you from even back when Noah was alive." It touched my heart to say the least. God definitely knows how to get to my heart and show me His everlasting love.
I was then talking to my husband about how God had to have that rainbow perfectly planned out. The light and moisture have to be perfectly right and reflect just right to be seen. It's amazing that He would think of me yesterday, on a rainy afternoon, and decide to show me how much he loves me. Also it amazes me that people still don't believe in God when you see something like that, a perfect arch with gorgeous colors. How could there not be an amazing God who makes things just right to produce something so beautiful?
My challenge to anyone who may read this is to look for ways that the Lord is wooing you and trying to show you how much He cares for you. If you have never seen anything like this or haven't in awhile, then ask Him to show you through nature or events how much He cares for you. You will be blown away by his love!!
I was immediately reminded of the story of Noah after the ark had landed on the mountain (Genesis 9) where God makes a covenant to Noah that He will never flood the earth again. He then seals the covenant with a rainbow. The rainbow I saw yesterday reminded me of all the promises God made to his children in His Word. It was like God was saying "Mary, I love you and I'm still keeping all those promises I made to you from even back when Noah was alive." It touched my heart to say the least. God definitely knows how to get to my heart and show me His everlasting love.
I was then talking to my husband about how God had to have that rainbow perfectly planned out. The light and moisture have to be perfectly right and reflect just right to be seen. It's amazing that He would think of me yesterday, on a rainy afternoon, and decide to show me how much he loves me. Also it amazes me that people still don't believe in God when you see something like that, a perfect arch with gorgeous colors. How could there not be an amazing God who makes things just right to produce something so beautiful?
My challenge to anyone who may read this is to look for ways that the Lord is wooing you and trying to show you how much He cares for you. If you have never seen anything like this or haven't in awhile, then ask Him to show you through nature or events how much He cares for you. You will be blown away by his love!!
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