I have another book to reflect on that is a FANTASTIC addition to any Mom's library of resources.
I picked this one up at the Lifeway Christian Store while I was in pursuit of a different resource. I went to the bookstore on a "mission" for a little booklet that contained a series of sermons by John MacArthur entitled, "The Fulfilled Family". You can find these sermons on his Grace to You website at, http://www.gty.org/resources/sermon-series/52/the-fulfilled-family. But, I couldn't find the booklet so I continued on my mission for another great resource to read along with my Bible regarding God's expectations for the family and more importantly for a Mother.
I happened upon "The Mission of Motherhood" by Sally Clarkson.. I thought, "Well, I wonder what this author has to say about a mother's mission and more importantly is it aligned with scripture?". I purused the book for a bit and found myself not wanting to put it down. That's a good indication of a good read.
This one is definitely a keeper. Its one book that I found myself truly convicted and desiring to read and re-read portions over and over again to make sure that it was sinking in my head. It pulls together all of the scriptures found in the Word regarding God's expectation for a Mother and how those differences stand so far apart from mainstream society. Given the conflict between the Bible and the world's way, its comforting to read from an author that speaks boldly, confidently, and clearly about what God desires of a mother's heart.
I don't want to give away too much on the book, so I'll just stop there and encourage everyone to grab their own copy, a cup of coffee, and get cozy in your favorite chair as you ponder and reflect on God's mission of the Mother.
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Reflections of Mueller
In addition to my daily Bible reading of various verses to remain encouraged each day, and the "Jesus Calling" daily devotional (by Sarah Young) that provides wonderful reminders in connection to the Word of God's sovereignty and control over all things, I picked up the book, "Answers to Prayer" by George Mueller during the last few months leading up to receving the contract on the house.
When you're waiting on God and praying for an answer to a specific requests that is burdening your heart, its just plain easy to wallow in self pity and worry that your prayer will never be answered. Satan knows our weaknesses and can play upon our emotions to be led to doubt what we believe in our heart that God is doing in our life. Taking the thoughts that Satan and we ourselves conjure up in our minds and hearts captive and replacing them with Truth is so imperative. If we don't take them captive they will fester and grow like mold or a virus and take root in our heart and mind. Before we know it we'll find ourselves believing a total lie.
Close friends let us borrow the book by Mueller several years ago and I recall reading through a portion of it at the time. Now several years later I picked it up again and decided to read it completely and wow... it just resonated with me in such special ways given the fact that I was continuing to wait on God and lift up our requests to Him. One thing that I admired in Mueller was his steadfastness to pray. He first off prayed for things that solely brought the Lord glory and he would continue to pray until God answered it. He prayed over and over again, petitioning the Lord multiple times in one day for the requests on his heart. And, while time could pass by for years without any sign of the prayer being answered, he described his confidence in the Lord knowing that the Lord heard him and would answer it in His time (and, not when he thought God should answer) .
This was such an encouragement to me and it helped me in my waiting period to learn more about my God's character. His timeline is not my timeline and through the waiting I'm led to be fully dependent on Him and no one else. I learned that, this is His desire. That I depend on Him. That I need Him and that I'm patient on His working things out for His glory and not my own.
Some days I wondered if God looked down at me saying, "here she goes again.. praying that same prayer request." and, the truth is He knew each moment that I prayed what I was going to say, but the beauty was my need of Him and ultimate dependence for His power in the midst of what felt like a hopeless and difficult situation.
Muellers faith blessed my soul. We all will have to wait for something in our life. In the circumstances that we're waiting on the Lord and the end of our waiting results in His glorification, I pray that we will not grow weary in our waiting, but we'll fall to our knees each time that ee feel ourselves growing discouraged. And, we'll seek the Lord however many times that it takes to be renewed in our Spirit because we know that He never grows tired of our requests.
When you're waiting on God and praying for an answer to a specific requests that is burdening your heart, its just plain easy to wallow in self pity and worry that your prayer will never be answered. Satan knows our weaknesses and can play upon our emotions to be led to doubt what we believe in our heart that God is doing in our life. Taking the thoughts that Satan and we ourselves conjure up in our minds and hearts captive and replacing them with Truth is so imperative. If we don't take them captive they will fester and grow like mold or a virus and take root in our heart and mind. Before we know it we'll find ourselves believing a total lie.
Close friends let us borrow the book by Mueller several years ago and I recall reading through a portion of it at the time. Now several years later I picked it up again and decided to read it completely and wow... it just resonated with me in such special ways given the fact that I was continuing to wait on God and lift up our requests to Him. One thing that I admired in Mueller was his steadfastness to pray. He first off prayed for things that solely brought the Lord glory and he would continue to pray until God answered it. He prayed over and over again, petitioning the Lord multiple times in one day for the requests on his heart. And, while time could pass by for years without any sign of the prayer being answered, he described his confidence in the Lord knowing that the Lord heard him and would answer it in His time (and, not when he thought God should answer) .
This was such an encouragement to me and it helped me in my waiting period to learn more about my God's character. His timeline is not my timeline and through the waiting I'm led to be fully dependent on Him and no one else. I learned that, this is His desire. That I depend on Him. That I need Him and that I'm patient on His working things out for His glory and not my own.
Some days I wondered if God looked down at me saying, "here she goes again.. praying that same prayer request." and, the truth is He knew each moment that I prayed what I was going to say, but the beauty was my need of Him and ultimate dependence for His power in the midst of what felt like a hopeless and difficult situation.
Muellers faith blessed my soul. We all will have to wait for something in our life. In the circumstances that we're waiting on the Lord and the end of our waiting results in His glorification, I pray that we will not grow weary in our waiting, but we'll fall to our knees each time that ee feel ourselves growing discouraged. And, we'll seek the Lord however many times that it takes to be renewed in our Spirit because we know that He never grows tired of our requests.
Monday, May 27, 2013
Answered Prayer
Its been about 2 moths since I've blogged and given the fact that I haven't advertised my blog yet, the only audience is me! So, I'm the only one to give myself backlash for slacking.
Lots of things have transpired over the last few months...
- As we continued to lower the asking price of our home the activity of interested prospective buyers started to pick up. We got our first offer in March, but after serious consideration and asking God for wisdom we unfortunately had to turn it down.
God was faithful and continued to bring lookers to the house. In early May we received 2 more offers in one weekend, one of them being our best offer yet and we accepted and entered under contract.
- We're now scheduled to close July 1st so we've been doing the things necessary to close on the house. This process has been so *new* to us. We've experienced a lot of processes after going through the construction of a home, but never anything like this. Our agent has been absoloutely fantastic (more on her later)
- To date, we've had the water inspected, our septic system pumped & inspected, the home inspected, and have filled out all sorts of paperwork to prepare for closing.
- As we near closing, we've started packing up the house and prepping to store things away.
- After exhuasting the short-term rental options in our area which are so pitiful, we decided to take our in-laws up on their gracious offer of letting us stay again with them (they so lovingly took us in for a 2 1/2 years while we constructed our home back in 2002-2004)
- I informed my boss that I was expecting and told him that if all goes well I'd like to transition home from work at the end of August to start homeschooling my kids in September.
- The kids said their good byes to their school, their friends, their teachers, etc. That was a tearful day. My oldest's class had been praying for the sale of our home since September (she made our real estate ad her notebook cover; a realtor in training?), so to witness the culmination of their answered prayer on the last day of school filled me up so. They presented my daughter with a class picture and then prayed over us for our new adventure. Her teacher and I held each other and cried.
- I've continued to narrow down the kids homeschooling curriculum and outline their schedule. I've met with a few parents considering homeschooling (mind you I haven't homeschooled a day in my life) and have passed onto them what I've learned so far. I've also met with a mom that I share a like-mindedness regarding my philosophy on education and all (more on that later too..) and she's helped me further narrow down what types of material I'd like to use our first year.
- We've narrowed down which modular home plan we're considering for the next home which we're going to build on our property and are praying that God would provide us a reputable builder to construct the home. The modular process is a much quicker process than stick building on site. They build the home in doors in an offsite location and then transport it in "modules" to your property and put it together. We've visited the factory where they are constructed and then several models so that hubby could see the quality of the their work. My prayer has been to inform him as much as possible so that he can make an informed decision.
- and.....................we're continuing to GROW! Baby Jordan No. 3 has NO IDEA what their family is doing here on the outside world. LOL. The baby is working on growing day after day, so the baby is busy as well (wouldn't it be neat if a baby could blog from the placenta..)
This is my belly and not my bottom as my 6 yr old suggested.
whew! I think that catches our crazy life up so far.
I felt compelled to share all this because the questions are starting to come and the interesting looks are starting to turn up on faces of co-workers, friends, family, etc. as I share our plans & how they are unfolding.
Some I'm sure think we're absoloutely off our rocker to sell a home that we spent a 1 1/2 yrs. building just so that I can stay home and teach my kids who were in a perfectly safe and wonderful school! Its a little absurd when you think about it. Good job, beautiful home, comfortable life, why mess up a good thing?
The only way I can explain it in one word is, God.
He'll make you do some crazy things. Kinda like love you know? When you fall in love you'll do some really silly things to make your confidant happy. Well, my God did something really crazy too. His Father sent his ONLY Son to die on a cross to redeem a people that had no desire to love him. This Son was scourged, beaten, mocked, and nailed to a cross and He was INNOCENT of the crime that He was accused of. We find ourselves asking why? He too did it because of His love for God the Father.
While I'm sure I'll continue to get the strange looks and questionable responses from folks of why we're doing what we do, my prayer is that our life will speak a testimony of love, sacrifice, submission, obedience, hope... I know that this journey will not be easy, but God is with us.
For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 1:6)
Lots of things have transpired over the last few months...
- As we continued to lower the asking price of our home the activity of interested prospective buyers started to pick up. We got our first offer in March, but after serious consideration and asking God for wisdom we unfortunately had to turn it down.
God was faithful and continued to bring lookers to the house. In early May we received 2 more offers in one weekend, one of them being our best offer yet and we accepted and entered under contract.
- We're now scheduled to close July 1st so we've been doing the things necessary to close on the house. This process has been so *new* to us. We've experienced a lot of processes after going through the construction of a home, but never anything like this. Our agent has been absoloutely fantastic (more on her later)
- To date, we've had the water inspected, our septic system pumped & inspected, the home inspected, and have filled out all sorts of paperwork to prepare for closing.
- As we near closing, we've started packing up the house and prepping to store things away.
- After exhuasting the short-term rental options in our area which are so pitiful, we decided to take our in-laws up on their gracious offer of letting us stay again with them (they so lovingly took us in for a 2 1/2 years while we constructed our home back in 2002-2004)
- I informed my boss that I was expecting and told him that if all goes well I'd like to transition home from work at the end of August to start homeschooling my kids in September.
- The kids said their good byes to their school, their friends, their teachers, etc. That was a tearful day. My oldest's class had been praying for the sale of our home since September (she made our real estate ad her notebook cover; a realtor in training?), so to witness the culmination of their answered prayer on the last day of school filled me up so. They presented my daughter with a class picture and then prayed over us for our new adventure. Her teacher and I held each other and cried.
- I've continued to narrow down the kids homeschooling curriculum and outline their schedule. I've met with a few parents considering homeschooling (mind you I haven't homeschooled a day in my life) and have passed onto them what I've learned so far. I've also met with a mom that I share a like-mindedness regarding my philosophy on education and all (more on that later too..) and she's helped me further narrow down what types of material I'd like to use our first year.
- We've narrowed down which modular home plan we're considering for the next home which we're going to build on our property and are praying that God would provide us a reputable builder to construct the home. The modular process is a much quicker process than stick building on site. They build the home in doors in an offsite location and then transport it in "modules" to your property and put it together. We've visited the factory where they are constructed and then several models so that hubby could see the quality of the their work. My prayer has been to inform him as much as possible so that he can make an informed decision.
- and.....................we're continuing to GROW! Baby Jordan No. 3 has NO IDEA what their family is doing here on the outside world. LOL. The baby is working on growing day after day, so the baby is busy as well (wouldn't it be neat if a baby could blog from the placenta..)
This is my belly and not my bottom as my 6 yr old suggested.
whew! I think that catches our crazy life up so far.
I felt compelled to share all this because the questions are starting to come and the interesting looks are starting to turn up on faces of co-workers, friends, family, etc. as I share our plans & how they are unfolding.
Some I'm sure think we're absoloutely off our rocker to sell a home that we spent a 1 1/2 yrs. building just so that I can stay home and teach my kids who were in a perfectly safe and wonderful school! Its a little absurd when you think about it. Good job, beautiful home, comfortable life, why mess up a good thing?
The only way I can explain it in one word is, God.
He'll make you do some crazy things. Kinda like love you know? When you fall in love you'll do some really silly things to make your confidant happy. Well, my God did something really crazy too. His Father sent his ONLY Son to die on a cross to redeem a people that had no desire to love him. This Son was scourged, beaten, mocked, and nailed to a cross and He was INNOCENT of the crime that He was accused of. We find ourselves asking why? He too did it because of His love for God the Father.
While I'm sure I'll continue to get the strange looks and questionable responses from folks of why we're doing what we do, my prayer is that our life will speak a testimony of love, sacrifice, submission, obedience, hope... I know that this journey will not be easy, but God is with us.
For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 1:6)
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