When he speaks do we hear him?

Inspired by the movie Mom's Night Out  I am back on the blog tonight!

  God has spoken will I listen to him?  They say if you hear a message three times it is truly for you and this week MOTHERHOOD has been Gods message to me.  Now is the time and here is the place in my life!  It started with the Church service Sunday that was not on motherhood but on Kindness and Genteelness.  All I heard was you show God love by loving your kids.  

  My question to myself has been "Are you loving your kids as much as you could be?"  I love them but do they know that they are important and his treasure because of my actions.  Tuesday I was at the dock with my two younger children as they fished and I played on my phone (fishing is not really my thing).  When there was a grandma and her two grandson's playing on the shoreline.  I noticed how loving she was trying to get them to walk in the water with her.  They soon got down to the dock and came to check on our fishing.

 My Daughter had had some good bites but nothing that stayed on.  The two young boys watched her bobber as the grandmother introduced herself.  We started chatting leading us into an extended conversation about motherhood.  I at one point caught myself at the beginning thinking if she only knew how I really am at home and how I really want to runaway most days. By the end of the conversation I found myself feeling so glad I had the privilege to be home with my kids.  When I do work I work at the school they attend or run my photography business that I limit to one or two sessions a week depending on my kids activities.  I spend a hour a week shooting unless it is a wedding than I am gone for 7-12hrs on that one day.  I do my editing in the living room or when they are sleeping so I am available to them if needed.
      Later tuesday I had the joy of picking flowers with my son and as he came across the yard on his bike with five peonies in his hand I thought I am going to miss this.  As a photographer my next thought is I didn't capture the moment my phone is in the house so I can't get a photo but I have many times since that moment pulled that image up in my mind and tried to capture it and all the love that surrounded it. Wednesday I had a chance to put my oxygen mask on and spend a few hrs with friends watching a movie that all parents need to see especially moms!! I spent the majority of the movies in tears, some of laughter, some of guilt, but most of all tears of love for what God has given me.  I have viewed this week since Sunday different with much love and joy for mothering.  I am not sure where God has put you today and who he wants you to love but remember that each person in your life right now needs your love even when you feel like you are failing someone is looking up at you as a hero weather it is a friend that thought you had it all together but just realized that your not perfect either. The little kid down the street that lives in a single parent home that saw you invite him to play with you and your kids.  This is what it is for Romans 12:21 reads  "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." this seems so simple when you read it but when the kids stomp off and slam the door it makes every nerve in my body scream "YELL AT THEM NOW" and I try to choose not to let the evil come out but just take a minute to cool down and than follow them up to the room and plop down on the bed and hold them.  I realize that it takes work and the holy spirt to fill me and hold me in check when I walk away from what Christ has done and his love for me I easily slip back into the same Screaming pattern satin has filled my fractured faith with.  We must open our eyes to Gods plan not ours.  What has he been asking you to do lately?

I started this blog post months ago and got away from my blog of a while.  I think I miss placed my password but this message still holds a deep rooting in my heart, so please read it with my love and caring for each of you today and in the days to come.  I once mailed a letter to a friend a few weeks after I wrote it and she said I had written just what she needed for that day so here is to knowing God has his timing for this message for you.

Why do they walk away?
This question seems so easy to answer but I don't understand the answer as easy as it is answered.  Today this question came up more than once. The answer was different but also the same at the same time. Devicedness like being told being a Christian is easy and if you do things for the Lord nothing bad will happen.  Decivedness as when no one shares the truth as harsh as it may seem so you are lead to believe that you can get by in life and have everlasting life with out giving God a heart of repentance and surrender. We are to give this heart not because we feel like it is the right thing to do but because you realize he came to earth in the form of a man and loves you so much personally.  He knows the number of hairs on your head, he has all of our days ordained from before he knit us together in your mothers whom.  God does not want us to feel punished by him.  I have seen a lot of people pretray him as a man who is sitting on a thrown with a whip, slapping it down on us if we act out of the lines.  The Bible says different if we look at the stories in the new testament where Jesus eat with the worst of the worst.  Read the lines following the ones that you hear quoted from the text by people on the street.  Have you personally read a book of the gospels ( Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John)to see what they say.   I do not share this to make you feel wronged but I share it out of love that you will know the truth and come to a place of peace in your life in that is not law driven but love driven and grace filled.   I started this blog post months ago and got away from my blog of a while I think I miss placed my password but

A Friendship Never Beyond Repair

   Forgivness, why is it so hard?? Do we even see when it is needed? Why is it hardest with the people we are closest with?
 First of all we need to know the sin before we can give or receive this forgiveness. It took me years to ask forgiveness from one of my best friends. I just didn't realize that it was eating at my heart pulling us farther away.  It also was not allowing me to know Christ's full forgiveness.  I couldn't see the full effect of what Christ had done for me until I humbled myself  to ask forgiveness towards  the person I wronged even if they don't feel wronged.
 Even now all the good days of our friendship going flying through my mind than it stops like my memories hit a wall. As I took out the anger for my sisters death on my friend I got so mad that we grew apart to then point we didn't talk for months. I had hurt the one that was there through everything as I watched my sister slowly go down hill. The one that said that they would be my friend no matter what. I watch the reel of our friendship of three years fly past until the point of anger on the reel of memories slows down until they fade like the friendship did. It only took me 10 years to realize what I did and why but I am so thankful for the fact it was only 10 years. Now God has washed the memory of that moment of anger out of my mind. I know I did something but exactly what I can't recall.  Things will never go back to the way it was in ninth grade as our lives have changed and that's all in Gods hands too.  One thing I know is just how good it felt to know that forgiveness was given and a friendship was restored. I am not great at forgiveness and most of the time I don't see my actions as sins. I look at it as OK because it was not murder but God does not rank the sins instead he washes them clean daily.   Though my friend in this story would not consider themself as an image of Christ I look back and see them as a great reminder to me what a friendship I have in Christ. I pray that as you look at who Christ is you will find a friend that is there even when you thought the friendship was beyond repair.

King James Bible Romans 5:8
But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

FEAR, FEAR, FEAR does it makes us who we are?

If you think of it we as humans act out of fear more than confidence!
 In the Bible every person that God used said at one point that they were not good enough. Moses spoke of his bad speech, Jeremiah said he was too young no one would listen, and in the New Testament Mary was young,  Elizabeth thought she was too old, Paul was a murderer and God also used Paul to tell Timothy that he was not to young to preach the gospel. Others too argued with God for one reason or another on why they didn't feel they should do what he wants them to do. Why than do we feel it is any different with us?
    Do we call ourselves better than Moses because he was a murderer?  God used him to bring the Israelite people to freedom.  I know that I have sinned more times than I can count on most days and God says sin is sin no matter how big or small.  This brings me FEAR but it says in Romans 8:1 "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."   God provides grace and forgiveness for those who walk in a relationship with him.  I have had to work hard on praying for people that I really didn't feel should be able to have Gods grace and forgiveness for the wrong that they have done but if God can't forgive them I have no right asking him to forgive me.  I look at the little things that we have all done like the white lies or the not forgiving the person that hurt us as a child by calling us names on the playground.  I have watched a lot of people work through forgiving the darkest of dark things that have happened to them but yet we continue on letting our little unforgiven hurts eat away at us.  We all react different out of fear! Many will hide at home and become depressed and.  Others will show fear in a way that no one thinks of fear as, these are those of us that show fear through being bold and voicing our opinions to make others think we are stronger than we are. 
    What is God calling you to do and are you not doing it out of FEAR and EXCUSES??  In every person in the Bible God called to do something he also said I will be there with you I will give you the words you need to spread the truth.
   The challenge I have for us today is to seek what God has been calling you to do by praying and asking him to show you it clearly.  Than search the Bible to make sure it fully lines up with his plan. If you are not sure where to look the book of Acts and other of Paul's letters is a good place to make sure you are in line with how God wants us to act as Christians.