I HOPE...!

I use this phrase a lot!

I hope you have a great day!
I hope you feel better.

"Real Bible hope is not 'wishing.'  It is earnest, intense, expectation that what God has said will come to pass." Pursuit of His Presence, Kenneth Copeland


The Word says that Faith is the substance of things hoped for!  Hope in this context is not a feeling it is an action. It is a real expectation of knowing what is to come.  In my devotion this morning, I read that "if people would just expect God to move as much as a child expects his grandparents to arrive, He could move on their situation and change things drastically by the power of His Spirit."

Do you have young children?  I don't know about your children, but if my kids hear that their grandparents are coming by to see them they STOP whatever they are doing, get everything together that they want to show their grandparents (artwork, dolls, clothes, etc), ask every 2 minutes -or less- WHEN they will be here even if we've told them it will be 4 more hours.  They KNOW their grandparents are coming to see them, they EXPECT their grandparents to come through that door any second even though they know it might be longer, they ANTICIPATE the excitement of hugging them and playing with them, they LIVE for that moment, and NOTHING ELSE MATTERS!!

Whew!  What a revelation this is to me.  I HOPE for God to move, but it often is in the form of "wishing" rather than pure expectation with a KNOWing that He will do what He has promised.  What has he promised?  Find his promises in the Word.  I have promises I have been standing on...with expectation that the fulfillment of His promise will happen any second!  Well, I wish I could say that was always true...sometimes doubt can cloud my hope.  Sometimes fear can make my hope turn to frustration.  Is my hope pure like a child waiting for their grandparents to walk through that front door?  No, not always.  I should have such strong hope in the promises of God's Word that NOTHING ELSE MATTERS!  Circumstances do not matter.  What people say does not matter.  What the bills say does not matter.  What the doctors say does not matter.  Are you hearing what I'm saying here?!  God's Word is more powerful than anything we can say or do.  His Word is alive and sharper than any two-edged sword.  Faith is the SUBSTANCE of things that you truly HOPE for.

Let's get our minds in gear.  Let's focus on the promise and not the problem.  Boy is that hard to do!!  How do we do it?  We get IN the Word.  Read it-Speak it-Think about it-Believe it.

Your Spirit man is like the muscles in your body.  If you do nothing, you lose muscle and gain fat!  If you are active & eat right, you will gain muscle and lose fat!  Not only that, but the muscle you build will be so full of life that it will continue to burn fat even when you are not working out.  Oh man, this is good....  Well, when you feed on the word and speak and act on the Word you are building your spirit man -with FAITH- like those muscles, and burning up the FAT, aka: doubt and unbelief.  And if your spirit man is built up, then even in those moments of discouragement that will inevitably come, your spirit "muscles" will still be working to burn up that doubt!!

I don't know about you, but I needed to hear this today and just had to share it with you.
So, I truly HOPE you have a great day! ;)

Repost: "So you STILL think God is a merciful God?!"

Like so many others, I am horrified and disheartened at the senseless tragedy that occurred in Aurora Colorado on Thursday night.  I know we will ever understand why bad things happen to good people.  My heart and my prayers go out to the families of those who were killed or injured, and the survivors who witnessed this horrific outpouring of foolishness.

I watched an interview with the mother of a young lady named Jessica on 20/20.  Jessica was in the shopping mall during the shooting in Colorado just a couple weeks ago and survived.  However, she was at the theater with a friend the other night and did not make it out alive.  These things break my heart!

But! I know God is good.  And as the survivor posted in this blog below, "God is always good.  Man is not."  No matter what you are going through: tragic loss, illness, financial struggles...we serve a merciful God!  This world is full of hurt and sadness, but regardless of how circumstances around us may look you must find something bigger than yourself to trust in. And God is there with arms open wide ready to give hope to the hopeless, father the fatherless, and love without condition.  Trust Him with your heart and hurts and you will not be disappointed.  I pray you will be encouraged by Marie's story...

http://aminiatureclaypot.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/so-you-still-think-god-is-a-merciful-god/

Everything I need to know about life, I learned from The Andy Griffith Show

Andy Griffith passed away this morning.  This kinda makes me sad.  The Andy Griffith Show, the black & white ones at least, were a part of my childhood.  That's all thanks to my dad!  They were a part of his childhood and he made us watch them with him...but we liked it. :)  

I don't know a whole lot about his personal life, but as for the "lessons" he portrayed on The Andy Griffith Show, they will stick with me forever.  After all, "everything I need to know about life, I learned on The Andy Griffith Show".  Okay, so that's not entirely true, but it is something my dad would say a lot -jokingly- when we were young.  I think he even had a little devotional that provided Biblical application to lessons from Andy.  Maybe that's a stretch, but maybe not.  

A few simple lessons I learned from The Andy Griffith Show:

1. You have to take responsibility for your actions.  When Opey shot the momma bird and had to take care of the babies, then release them when they were ready..."but aren't the trees so nice & full"...ugh, -tears-

2. Drunkenness is not cool.  Barney would accidentally sip on some moonshine now & then, which was really funny.  And Otis Campbell was a sweetheart citizen in Mayberry who would lock himself up when he had a few too many.

3. Guns are not toys.  Barney wasn't allowed to have a bullet in his gun because he had an overeager trigger-finger.  

4. If you need help, just ask.  "Call the man!"  Aunt Bee was so stubborn and never wanted to admit when she was wrong. Didn't she read the script? Andy was always right. ;)

Andy, you were a television legacy.  I don't know where your heart was, but I do hope we get to see you again one day.  Thanks dad for instilling Biblical principles in our lives when we were young, and for introducing us to good, uncontaminated television (and music) classics, as it should be.  I love you!

Me & my Dad .circa 1979

Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.

True Woman | I'm Not Reading "Fifty Shades of Grey"

I'm so glad to see this blog, True Woman | I'm Not Reading "Fifty Shades of Grey".  I am truly not writing this to judge those who are reading the book.  I just know that for me, I want to preserve the sanctity of my marriage.  That does not mean "anything goes".  I wouldn't want to fill my mind and heart with lust any more than I would want my husband looking at provocative pictures or movies.  The writer of this blog expresses it well.  How do you feel about it?

Baseball First Birthday, but a memory.

Wesley's first birthday has come and gone.  And all I have left to show for it is this sad little instagram picture...

Wesley's 1st Birthday Cake

I made the tragic mistake of clearing my memory card without triple checking to make sure I had successfully imported all of the photos from my camera.  These photos were well over the 300 mark, including everyday silly pictures of my three little ones, Wesley's first haircut, his monumental first birthday, and our annual trip to the Riverbank Zoo.  I was devastated to say the least.  Thankfully I have a picture crazed family who, I am certain, has enough pictures just of Wesley face first in his cake to fill an album. Album, ha, remember those? [Al-bum noun: A blank book for the insertion of photographs, stamps, or pictures.]

I love making special cakes for my kids birthdays.  My mom always did it for us when we were little: choo choo trains, cabbage patch kids.  That is, until we were older and realized that substance-trumps-appearance and began requesting her chocolate chip cookie ice cream cake!  The instagram picture above shows my horrible icing skills, but it was fun!  The bases were made of little graham crackers I coated in white chocolate.  And the billboard was a regular sized graham cracker coated in white chocolate.  I carefully stuck toothpicks into the side of the "billboard" to hold it on the cake.  The baseball didn't stay on the cake so well.  It began to slide off a little and was melty and skewed by the time we made it to the ball field pavilion where we had the party.  The little figure was an afterthought of my husbands, it is actually a little collectors figure of Phil Niekro, who I had the privilege of meeting once upon a time.  Thankfully, despite its appearance, it still tasted really good!

Wesley's First Birthday Keepsake Baseball

I had lots of pictures of this little memento we made at his party (which are long gone), so I snagged this pic out of his room for you to see.   Since I had his handprint on a baseball in the hospital when he was born (see here), I thought a ball with signatures of all of the guests at his first birthday would be a fun idea.  I should have used a better pen for the signatures, because some didn't show up as well as others.  But it is till something special that can stay in his collection for years to come.  

Pictures remind us of the moments we don't want to forget.  Aside from the big milestones, there are moments like these everyday. When my baby boy runs to say 'bii bii' to daddy on his way out the door, or when all the kids shriek with excitement when he is home.  When the kids race through the house chasing each other giggling with joy.  Or when our girls make us sweet notes that say 'I Love You' for no reason at all.  It's moments like these that get me through the whiny, fussy moments that can seem like an eternity at times.  As for the pictures that I deleted into oblivion, I will have to cherish those memories in my heart and be thankful I had those times and that there will be many more to come.