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Riding Lessons

Having two boys makes for lots of fun memories and this is definitely one of them!  Solomon and Gio pretty much play outside everyday and I usually hear them making noise and running around.  This day I noticed they were unusually quiet so I thought for sure they doing something they shouldn't be doing.  To my pleasant surprise Solomon was actually teaching Gio how to ride his bike.  He was also boasting about how much of a good big brother he is :)

He Keeps His Sheep

         Hebrews 13:20-21-"Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, the great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the eternal covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen."


  Man is not at peace. He's not at peace with God, and usually not with anybody else. It's amazing how we sin and pursue the satisfaction of our desires and our pleasures and we'll sit there, and if we think about it long enough we'll say, "I'm not any happier than before I did this."  We are in this condition of sin which brings ruin, disorder, chaos and destruction, and into that kind of a world the Son of God came to make peace. He is the God of peace. Through Christ and the gospel He made peace with sinners, and they are able to make peace with each other. Christ can make peace and He gives peace (Romans 5:1). 
          This is the grace of God: it doesn't matter how far down you've gone into your sin, He's greater than your sin.  The One who the hostility is against is the One that takes the initiative to go and get the one who is at war (John 10:16). We can't fix our state; we can't pick ourselves up; we can't free ourselves. Only He can break the hold of our own sin and self destruction. That sheep on that cliff is going to fall off and is going to be destroyed if the Shepherd doesn't grab it (Luke 15:1-7)! 
         I don't care what age you got saved. Have you ever thought about what you would've become and what you would've done to yourself if He hadn't of intervened? He keeps His sheep! I don't care "super christian" who you are, I'm gonna tell you why you've been sustained and haven't destroyed yourself, even as a Christian: He's kept you! He has kept you!

One Thing is Needed

              The last few months God has been burdening my heart to learn what it truly means to worship Him.  I've been blessed to inherit many of my dad's books from his library and quite a few are specifically written on worship.  You may think of worship as the time you sing songs at church or a biblestudy, but I have come to find out it springs out of your heart and shows through every day of your life.  One of the books that I read is titled, "How To Worship Jesus Christ" by Joseph S. Carroll, so many of things I will write is from that book.
            The first chapter is focused on Luke 10:41-42 which goes, "And Jesus answered and said to her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her."
           As a busy mother and wife, many things are necessary to manage our home, be a helper to my husband, and bring up our children in the Lord.  By the time you are done with cooking, cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, disciplining the kids, getting them off to school, or homeschooling you have little hours left in the day.  This doesn't even include the things you need to do for a ministry you are serving in at church.  Helping with a ladies meeting, going to a biblestudy, bringing someone a meal, planning a baby shower, discipling a younger woman.  There are a lot of things that demand our attention!
             I would venture to say that most of us women, if not all of us, can relate to Martha.  Now all the things I just listed are good things.  God calls us to make disciples, study His word, serve in the church, give to missions, pray for others, but if we do all those things and leave out what is the most needed, then we will always fail to truly worship Him in our daily activities.
             Now if we go back and look at Luke 10:39 it says Mary was "seated at the Lord's feet, listening to His word."   
              John Macarthur comments on this passage,"Most people, unfortunately, are exactly like Martha - preoccupied, distracted, too busy serving to sit at the Savior's feet. Living in a high-tech age, we tend to be driven by time clocks, deadlines, schedules, appointments, obligations, assignments, and urgent things beyond our control. Few people feel they can afford to put worship at the top of their "To Do" list.  The truth is, we can't afford not to. Worship is ultimately our first priority. Nothing on anyone's agenda is more important."
                 The Lord isn't saying to not be busy. As women we will be busy and we will always have a lot on our plate. If you read Proverbs 31:10-31, you see that this woman who is said to be excellent and fear the Lord, is a very busy woman. In vs 13 she is working with her hands, vs 14 and 15 she is preparing food for her family, vs 16 she is making a profit to help financially, vs 19 to 22 she is making her family and others clothing and vs 27 she is not idle.  But if you notice in vs 25 her intimate relationship with the Lord is shown by her trust and confidence in her God, in good times and bad. We may be "busy" with many things tugging at us from all different directions, but may we not be anxious and troubled by them, and may we never leave out the most important, the most needed thing of all.
                Joseph Carroll writes in his book that, "the best time to worship is, of course, in the morning, in that time that we call a quiet time."  But what is a quiet time?  I used to think it was a time when I would read a few chapters of the book of the Bible I was going through and pray for the people on my prayer list.  That is not a quiet time, that is a study time and a time for intercession, but not a quiet time.  
                Matthew 6:6 says, "But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you."  You need to be alone. Whether you are in a closet, a room, a forest, or a car. The main thing is you get alone with you Father.  When we pray, we enter into the very presence of God only by the blood of Jesus.  May that great truth never grow dull to us. We need to be in awe of not only what God has done for us, but who He is.  These are the things we should think on when we are having our quiet time.  Instead of looking at the clock and saying, 'I only have a few minutes to get through my prayer list and read these few verses and then I can go on about my day', we should simply be bowing down and worshiping the Lamb of God who was slain for us.  The only One who is worthy of our worship.
                 Psalm 27:4 says, "One thing I have desired of the LORD, that I will seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to meditate in His temple."  David was a great man, a great leader, a king, an amazing psalmist, but the only thing he desired was to behold the beauty of the Lord and have intimate fellowship with God.  We must seek Him with all our heart!  
                Now back to Martha and Mary.  Martha was not the only one busy - Mary was busy too, just in a different way. Martha was allowing all the "things" in her life to swallow her up and spit her out. She was complaining against the Lord and then commanding Him to do something about it. She was so distracted by the world around her that she completely missed the most important part.  I used to read this story and think the difference between Martha and Mary is their personalities. Martha is busy and involved in a lot of things and Mary is quiet and reserved.  I've come to see that that's not it at all.  The difference between these two women is this: Mary made a choice. Martha did not.  It's natural for women to be looking after our home, cooking up dinner in the kitchen and ordering people around to help in this way and that way.  We must make a choice to seek the Lord. And it's not an east choice. As we fulfill our calling to the Lord, may we not forget the one thing which is needed to set the foundation of a Christ glorifying life. May we consciously make a daily choice to seek hard after the Lord with all our heart and cast off every hindrance that is weighing us down. May we sit at His feet and adore the One who gave His life for us and experience a personal love between you and your God. May we commune with Him in complete aloneness, almost as if there were no one else in the world.  May we pour out our love on the Savior's feet, just as Mary poured out the costly oil.  
              
 "We were created to worship Jesus Christ. We were created for Him, to become something to Him in order that He might find pleasure in us. But this demands discipline. This demands self-renunciation. This demands the mortifying of the flesh. This demands the taking out of our lives everything that does not contribute to the one great objective."

Excited To Learn

                         Well, I never thought it would come to this, but yesterday was Solomon's first day of school.  Oh, and it was also my first day of school too :)   Troy and I have decided to home school (ahhhhhh!).  So, as many other moms in our church have done and are currently doing, we are going through a charter school Visions.  Trust me when I tell you, there is NO way I would ever be able to do it independently!  Ha now that would be a sight to see!  So anyways, Visions provides you with a Certified Teacher that you meet with once a month, they guide you along the way and are there for you whenever you need them.  I am very thankful for the opportunity to be able to do this.  I know the last few days leading up to this I started to get a little anxious, just thinking about how in the world was all this going to pan out?   Especially when people would ask me the dreaded question, "So, are YOU ready to home school?"  Well, if you REALLY want to know, the answer would be no and yes at the same time.  NO, of course I'm not ready, I've never done anything like this before!  And YES I am ready because I have God on my side and He promises that "I can do ALL things through Christ who strengthens me."  So the night before the big day, I cried out to the Lord and asked him to wake me up early the next morning, give me energy for the day, give me wisdom on how and when to start the school day, to multiply my hours to still have time to run an errand and cook dinner all before Troy gets home.  Yesterday morning I woke up to my alarm I set and I felt refreshed and ready to go.  I started my day with communion time with the Lord, just being quiet before Him and talking with Him. I can't express to you how much fun the first day of school was for Solomon and for me.  God answered all my prayers and then some. I even got a workout in before school started!
         A few verses come to mind when I think about how blessed our day went.
Psalm 37:5, "Commit you way to the LORD, Trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass."
 Also Psalm 34:4, "I sought the LORD, and He heard me, and delivered me from all my fears."  
                So here I am, ready to start day 2 of the unknown path of home schooling and my way is still being committed to the Lord.  I pray all of our school days will be joyful and that most importantly I would use those days to continually point Solomon to Christ or it would all be in vain.  Here are a couple photos of how much fun Solomon had testing out his cutting skills, and of course a picture he drew of himself.  Hey, he got the curly hair right!

John the Baptist: A Model Preacher and the greatest man that ever Lived

Luke 3:1-9

                    "John the Baptist was a man governed by the Spirit, a God-centered man.  He had a commitment to fearlessly, powerfully, uncompromisingly preach.  He spoke the truth whether people liked it or not.  He spoke the truth whether it was received or not.  His goal was not to get and keep a large crowd, like many preachers today.  He didn't think his job was to be as positive and "feel-good" as people wanted him to be.  His job was to speak the truth for God's glory and to be helpful to people by telling them the truth for their own good, whether they understood it or not. 
                     He was a model preacher.  Many preachers today try to make you feel as good as they possibly can, even if it means not telling you the whole truth. What if you had a doctor like that?  Now say you have blood where you shouldn't have blood, pain in your chest where you shouldn't have pain, numbness in your body where you shouldn't have numbness, you've got severe headaches.  So you finally go in to the doctor and he smiles and says to you, "everything's gonna be alright!" even though you'll be dead in two years.  People that won't accept that with doctors, will accept that with preachers.
                    The people were telling themselves, "I'm Okay! Abraham's my father, I know that the scriptures are from the prophets and they're from God.  John says, "Don't even begin to say to yourself because you know all that, that you're okay! I can tell by your life that you are not okay.  If God has done His work in you, you'd be following Him and have left all that behind. The axe is laid at the root of the tree!" 
                    John the Baptist was also a good news preacher (vs 3). His aim was not to judge them or condemn them, his aim was to get them to see, "you too need to repent, you too need to be forgiven".  He preached  God's grace and mercy and pardon in Christ. The glory of Christ captivated John beyond any man that ever lived (John 1:24-27).  He clearly saw the glory of the person of Christ ( John 1:29-30). When he preached forgiveness, he understood that the forgiveness of sins would be because of the atoning work that Christ did on the cross.  He says in John 1:29 when he say Jesus coming to him, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" 
                     This is the greatest man that ever lived."