Examine Yourself

 

2Co 13:5  Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves.

Gal 6:3-4  For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.  But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another.

John 15:8  Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.

2Pe 3:18  But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

James 1:22-24  But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.  For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:  For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.

Deu 28:9  The LORD will establish you as a people holy to himself, as he has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the LORD your God and walk in his ways.

Col 1:10  so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.

 

Examine yourself…

Are you growing? Are you walking daily with God or standing still? Are you applying God’s Word to your life or is it in one ear and out the other? Are you closer to God today than you were yesterday?

In looking up those verses, I found this one…  2Ch 12:14  And he did evil, because he prepared not his heart to seek the LORD.

King Rehoboam did not prepare his heart to seek God… and he did evil. We don’t grow in truth by accident, purposely seek God and you will find Him… or don’t and do evil in the sight of God.

My Purpose

 

Children do not accidentally become righteous leaders or emotionally healthy and productive adults – any more than seeds thrown randomly to the wind grow to be part of a thriving garden. Simply throwing children into a cultural tornado and hoping for the best  gives them little chance of living up to their potential or coming out unharmed.  Someone needs to take responsibility for their nurture, protection, nourishment, intellectual development, manners, recreation, personal needs, and spiritual development.  Someone needs to commit time and energy into staying close to them as they grow, encouraging and correcting and teaching.

                        - Sally Clarkson

               The Mission of Motherhood

Hi There…

Wow… life keeps getting in the way of my blogging! I tell myself I’m going to update more often, but it’s just not happening!

Somehow we’ve made it through our first 6 weeks of school, time sure flies!! After a bit of a rocky start the boys are doing great… not counting today, but daddy’s on vacation this week so all bets are off. ;) They’ve all settled in and are really working hard, thank goodness because with the way we’ve been sleeping in around here we’d never finish if they were lollygagging!!

We finally cleaned up the yard and moved all the farm implements back to the pasture, yea! There’s still a logging camp out by the road, but since that provides part of our income I guess it can stay.

Tomorrow Brian and I go to Tyler to have his head examined… praying there’s a simple answer to what’s causing his headaches. After putting up with them for years I am thankful he’s finally agreed to see a doctor.

Seems like there’s been more going on around here, but short of telling the horrible story about the cow getting it’s head stuck in the squeeze chute today, I can’t think of anything. And don’t ask… you truly don’t want to hear the cow story, it was pitiful.

Testimony

I’ve debated on giving this testimony for several months.  God keeps putting it back on my heart so I think now is the time to give it.

A couple of years ago I went through a trial that I honestly never thought I’d have to face.  Call me naive or whatever, but this was the first time I’d prayed for something so important and not gotten the answer I expected.

I read something a while back that talked about the difference between faith and trust.  I’ll paraphrase but it gave the illustration of a man pushing a wheelbarrow across Niagara Falls on a tightrope.  Suppose you’ve read about him doing this before, maybe seen him do it on TV, so when he asks if you believe he can do it you say sure, you believe he can… that’s faith.  Now suppose he asks you to ride in the wheelbarrow while he’s pushing it across the falls on a tightrope… that’s trust!

As a consequence of what I went through my trust in God was shaken.  I still believed He could provide, but my trust that He would answer my prayers was weak… and I didn’t like that feeling one bit.

I’ve always relied on God to see me through storms and to protect me and my family, and the feeling of being alone was horrible.  I take comfort in knowing that someone bigger than me is watching over my kids and has them right in the palm of His hand, feeling that He might not was scary.

Even in the darkest days I still knew deep down inside that even if I didn’t feel like He was listening, those feeling could lie.  So I cried out to God and laid it all on the line to Him.  I told Him my trust was shaken, told Him that I still had three more children that I needed to feel I could entrust to His care, told Him how disappointed I was, told Him how alone I felt.  I even told Him that if I thought there was anywhere else I could go to meet those needs I would, but that I knew He was the only way.  As the apostle Peter said when Jesus asked if the disciples would leave Him too, “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.”

As I was pouring all this out to God the Holy Ghost spoke to my heart the words to a song we sing sometimes.

“Though God slay me, yet I’ll trust Him.  I will then come forth as gold.”

Those words touched me. They showed me that even though I didn’t feel God’s presence He was still with me.

Not long after that I was talking with Travis.  He was mad at me about a decision I’d made to not let him do something and wanted me to explain myself to him.  We were standing in the kitchen and I’ll never forget the words I said him…

You may not always understand the decisions I make and I may not always explain myself to you.  There are some things that you are not yet mature enough to understand and there are some things I know and see that you don’t yet.  But always know that everything I do, I do because I love you and every decision I make, I make because I want what’s best for you.

As soon as the words came out of my mouth I knew they were for me.  The Holy Ghost was speaking those words through me just for me. And I stopped right there and cried and thanked Him.

I wish I could say the road back was easy, but we’re never promised an easy road.  We are promised that we won’t be alone on that road.  I can be thankful for one thing though, in the end my faith and trust in God is stronger than it ever was.  Before, my faith came from seeing the miracles and feeling Him with me… and that’s good and I thank God for those miracles and feeling His presence… but now I come to God trusting Him just because HE IS.  I don’t know if that makes much sense, but He told Moses “I am that I am”.  Hebrews 11:16 says “…he that cometh to God must believe that he is…”.  It’s just that simple, just believing that He is who He says He is and will do the things He says… no matter what the circumstances may say.

When I first thought about writing this out I went looking for a video of this song.  I couldn’t believe it when I found this one, I’ve know Bro. Jason for years.  Back in their younger days he and Brian could pass for twins!  If you have time to listen to some of his preaching clips you won’t be disappointed.

Jesus Saves

I woke up this morning with this song on my mind…

 

Also, an update from my last post…  Not only did God bless us to be able to pay all our bills this month… He abundantly blessed so that we will be able to pay extra!  What a mighty God we serve!!

Lazy Days

 

We stayed out way to late last night visiting with friends… luckily we don’t have to get up early for school!!  Reason #357 we homeschool!

The kids rolled out of bed at the crack of 10 a.m., ate brunch and we got to work.  I decided reason #358 to homeschool is that we get to set our own schedule so today was a lazy day.

We start with bible/devotions/prayer… this week we’re learning to listen more and talk less… it’s a work in progress, but I’m sowing seeds!

Snuggling up and reading on this gray rainy day suited me fine so I read a chapter from “God has a Plan for Little Boys” next, and we talked about how God has a plan for their lives and great things in store for them.  Then we read about the Ajanta Caves in India for history and looked at pictures online.

They sailed through handwriting and math.  Travis will finish his math book this week.  He’s mastered single and multiple digit addition and subtraction, multiplication and division facts, multiple digit multiplication and long division… next up the wild world of fractions!

Quick spelling lessons and Travis took a science test and we called it a day! 

I resorted our home library and organized most of the books by reading level, so they spent part of the afternoon laying around reading.  We have books I didn’t know we had thanks to donations from family!  I keep saying I’m going to start hitting garage sales to pick up books but I never seem to find the time… I really need to do that though… and buy more bookcases, bookcases would be great!

As part of my ‘no more threatening or nagging’ plan I told the boys we would make cookies once their room and the living room were clean.  Our chewy chocolate cookies turned out kinda crunchy, but at least the rooms are clean!

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I want to always be willing to share how God has blessed and moved for me and my family.  In the last week He has moved in three areas where I know it had to be Him.

First, Brian had been sick for weeks, went to the doctor 3 times and would get a little better for a few days and then feel worse again.  Finally one night we were finishing our devotions and he said he thought he needed to go to the doctor again, so I asked if he wanted to pray about it and he agreed. We prayed and he started feeling better the next day and is now doing much better!

Second, we had some unexpected expenses this month. No matter how I figured it we still came out needing about $500 more than we would have… and that’s not even planning for groceries, believe it or not these people around here think they need to eat every single day!!  So I prayed about it and gave it over to God.  Just about every day last week someone contacted Brian with a job for him! He hasn’t gotten paid for everything yet, but so far we’ve been able to pay everything on time and it looks like we’ll be able to do the same for these last two bills!

Third, my phone rang a few day ago, I didn’t know the number so I almost didn’t answer it.  The person wanted to ask me a few questions about my church, I answered them still not knowing who it was.  Turned out it was someone I’d talked to for maybe 2 minutes, 3 MONTHS AGO, about something totally unrelated to church!  It blessed me more than I can say to see first hand how God can touch lives.  He is truly able to put that hunger in people’s hearts… and He can do it all by Himself.  All He needs is a people willing reach out and be a friend!