Edge of 17

This girl. I love snapping candid photos of her when she can't be "posed". To me, it shows her absolute, natural beauty.

I was picking her up from McDonald's after her school's homecoming dance. She and her date had danced until they were exhausted and had walked over to McDonald's to get fries and milkshakes and rest their tired feet. Her sparkly high heels are a signature Alex piece, but may not be great dancing shoes.  :)

I text her to tell her I'm here to pick them up.  Her boyfriend goes in to the bathroom so she's standing there waiting for him when I pull into a parking spot.  It was at this exact moment, the song by Big Daddy Weave "My Story" begins to play. As I watch her sweet innocence standing there listening to these lyrics, tears begin to flow down my cheeks.

This girl, in her sparkly pink dress holding her sparkly, glittery high heels...is a warrior. She's been through so much and had so many things knock the wind out of her, but she gets up gracefully each time, learns a hard, life lesson, straightens her crown and moves forward. In her life, things don't come easily for her. It's her story to tell, and I've shared it on my blog in the past. The things she's overcome in the past 3 years have been truly inspiring and amazing.

So as I hear the words of the song play, "If I told you my story, you would hear hope that wouldn't let go. You would hear love that never gave up." The story you would hear is the story of how Jesus chose her, saved her, pulled her from the pit, set her feet on steady ground. And what a story it is! My favorite line as I sat there watching her was "If I told you my story, you would hear victory over the enemy. You would hear life overcome the grave!" AND WHERE MERCY WINS.

She's a warrior because she is winning her battle. Mercy has won.

She turns 17 this weekend. Her life is an absolute light in darkness. She has learned to trust God even when He makes no sense. No one can ever believe she's only 17 because of her maturity. I can't even express in mere words how proud I am of her. As amazing as she is, she has never won a Student of the Month award. As amazing a singer as she is, she rarely gets chosen and she waits patiently in the wings for God to give her a platform for her gift. But grace and mercy win. Her character matters more than any awards or auditions.

Happy Birthday, my sparkly, glittery warrior. I sit in awe of you. And I want to be like you when I grow up.

Ocean Epiphany

Our family took a little break by the ocean. It was nice to just sit there and watch the ocean in all its vastness, listen to the peaceful crashing waves, watch the seagulls soar through the air.

My husband and my daughter are very adventurous.  They swim out pretty far in the waters.  My son and I are not too adventurous and prefer to sit by the shore and just wade out a little bit.  For some reason we both have this fear of things touching us in the water and Evan has a deep fear of sharks.  He used to be obsessed with them as a child and read all kinds of books about them, so his fears aren't too unfounded.  He does know the research that shark bites are pretty rare, but the possibility still scares him.

So Alex and a friend were swimming out pretty far catching waves on their boogie boards.  Laughing and splashing and having much fun.  I sat on the shore and watched Evan holding tight to his boogie board standing with the water barely above his knees, fearful to walk out as far as they were.  Michael and I watched him for about 20 minutes as he stood paralyzed with fear to join them.

It made my heart so sad to see him afraid.  Michael finally got up and walked out to him and stood next to him with his arm around him watching the others play.  Then Michael slowly nudged Evan on his back pushing him out a little further.  He was eventually on his dad's back out as far as the others playing in the waves and having fun.  He wouldn't let Michael leave his side, and as long as his dad was with him, he was brave.

At that moment, this phrase in the Hillsong song "Oceans" came to mind: "Your grace abounds in deepest waters, Your Sovereign hand will be my guide.  Where feet may fail and fear surrounds me, You've never failed and You won't start now."

I then thought about how many times I've stood paralyzed with the fear of the unknown.  Standing there watching others be courageous and brave and adventurous while I stand aside too afraid to move forward.  Then my heavenly Father puts His arms around me and slowly nudges me in the direction where He intends for me to go.  He is the one who gives me courage and moves me along.  And He NEVER leaves my side.

The ocean is such a cathartic experience.  It was literally "church" for me every day we sat there.  As I thought about how God's love for me is "more than the drops in the ocean", a fabulous song by Hawk Nelson.  Every time we hit an "unknown" in our life...which seems to be a lot...I know God is right there with us.  The unknown used to scare the life out of us, but it's getting easier.  I guess that means we are growing.  God knows everything (1 John 3:20) and nothing is "unknown" to Him, so therefore, nothing is unknown to me.

What a perfect visual picture seared into my mind as we are called out onto the waters.

Permanence

When I start to struggle with something, God always gives me a word.  I will hear it once and it will grab my attention.  Then I will hear it in the most unlikely places.  It's then that I start to perk up and really start meditating on it and try to figure out what God is trying to cement in my heart.

The word recently is "Permanence". If you are a follower of my blogs, you know I struggle with not being really rooted in any one place physically.  I grew up in one house my whole childhood.  After I married Michael, that would no longer be the case.  Let me give you a snapshot here:  We were married 5 years before having our sweet Alex.  In those 5 years, we lived in 3 different places in college, then 3 more places before we had Alex.  Alex lived in 3 different places before her brother was born.  After Evan, we lived between my parents' house and Michael's training dorm for about 5 months. Then 6 more places after that.  Lost count yet?  That's 17 different domiciles in our 22 years of marriage.  5 states in all.  And seriously, we're not finished.  I thought we were finished in North Dakota and could settle down for good there, but God had other plans for us. For this is the life God has called us to, and we've surrendered.

I have always made a pun of the verse Philippians 4:11, "I have learned in whatever STATE I am in to be content." That was always my joke when we moved to another state.

PERMANENCE. It first tickled my ears in a sermon a few weeks ago in John 16. A sermon about joy and how joy is rooted in permanence...unlike happiness which can be fleeting. That took me to Colossians 2:7, "Therefore, let your roots grow down into Him, and let your lives be built on Him." There are so many verses about being "rooted" in Christ and letting the roots grow deep. Roots sound pretty permanent. Soon after that sermon and that word pierced my heart, it showed up again in my devotional.  The word "permanency" is not really a word that is thrown around a lot, so it grabbed me to see it again.  "Our relationship with the Lord is one of permanency..." (The Devotions of Charles Spurgeon).

The lyric in the old hymn that most grabs my heart, "Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, Lord, take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above." Another nod to permanency.

Lastly is a song I'll be singing with our choir called, "My Anchor". Anchors cause permanency...and seem to help things that try to wander. My favorite line in the song is "I hold on to You, and You hold on to me."

My permanency is in the person of Jesus Christ.  I am not of this world, so my home will never be here.  My physical address is in the heavens, and I can't wait to get home!

We have no clue where God will send us next. It may be right where we are, it may be overseas, it may be literally anywhere.  We have given Him a blank check, so it's up to Him where He needs us. But I have found permanence. Forever.

Milking It

My prayer for my husband and daughter in Ukraine was for God to show them great and miraculous things!  And did He come through!

I haven't been able to talk to Alex much, so I don't yet know things from her perspective. But I have talked to Michael and he has told me about the amazing ways in which God has moved this week.

If you follow me on Facebook, you heard me teasing about the local farmer whom he talked to and had been invited to come milk his cows. Picturing Michael milking cows was an incredibly funny picture in my mind.  Michael is a city boy, a pretty boy, not one to get dirty really.  Michael spent his week really getting to know the farmer next to the teen camp.  Trying cows milk for the first time straight from the cow, eating the cheese the farmer made, and one morning at the crack of dawn getting up and getting a milking lesson.  The morning he was to get up he texted me and said, "I really don't want to get up this early and milk a cow." My response was, "Hey, this could be a gospel opportunity."

Last night at camp was the last night of preaching and the last time the Gospel would be shared.  The Word of how a loving God loved the people He created so much that He couldn't stand to lose them to their sin so He sent His only Son to die for them, to cancel their sins so they could reside with Him in Heaven instead of going to Hell and paying the ultimate price for their disobedience. Guess who "randomly" decided to show up to camp church service that night?  The farmer and his wife.

So on top of 3 teens, that the Ukraine mission team had been pouring into all week and building relationships with, who came to Christ last night....so did the farmer and his wife.  The reason why is what I want you to focus on.

The farmer had been hearing bits and pieces of the Word from the camp for the past 8 years.  He had told the Ukrainian pastor of the camp that Michael was the first American to ever speak to him about his farm and take an interest in him as a man.  Drinking his milk, eating his cheese, milking his cow.  He was impressed that an American pastor would get his hands dirty.  So that drove him to come check out Michael's "job" at the camp.  After hearing the gospel, he said he had never heard of God's love for him and that Jesus would care to die for him.

Relationships.  The key component to the gospel.

One of our concepts we remember while parenting is "Rules without relationship equals rebellion.  Rules with relationship equals obedience." The key to that concept is RELATIONSHIP.  When someone has a relationship with you, they listen to you.

Michael is a relationship guy.  If that is a spiritual gift, he is overflowing with it. I love how God used his gift and the way He created Michael to bring a farmer to Christ.  We were all created for "such a time as this." And sometimes we may have to take an interest in things that take us out of our comfort zone in order to do so.

How are you using your gifts to glorify God and bring others to His Kingdom?

Hosanna

A word we sing and use frequently, but have you looked up what it means?!  So cool.  You can check this link if you'd like or I'll pull out a summary of it for you: http://www.desiringgod.org/messages/hosanna.

Obviously, it comes from the New Testament Greek.  But before Greek, there was Old Testament Hebrew.  The Greek word is actually "hosanna", but that came from the Hebrew word which is "Hoshiya na". Hoshiya na is found in Psalm 118:25 "Lord, save us". Then verse 26 follows that up with, "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord." That word, hoshiya na is answered with the New Testament Greek which changed the meaning of the word to a word of praise for He who is our salvation...He who has saved us. The meaning changed from "save us" to "our salvation has come."  Glory in the highest, for our salvation has come.  Can I get an amen?

That brings me to the point of my blog today.  (I'm long winded, I know.)  Michael has been in the Ukraine now for 4 days.  He has learned so much in just those 4 days, that I can't wait to see what God still has to teach him!  Three years of seminary culminating into seeing people yearn for truth and long for the teachings of God.

Our youth praise team had been working on several songs to sing in the Ukraine.  One was "Hosanna" by Hillsong.

As they had been practicing, these words were reverberating in Michael's soul, "Heal my heart and make it clean.  Open up my eyes to the things unseen.  Show me how to love like you have loved me.  Break my heart for what breaks yours.  Everything I am for Your kingdom's cause. As I walk from earth into eternity."

Each time he interacts with the Ukrainians, his prayer is for God to open up His eyes to things unseen and to break his heart for what breaks God's heart.  And God is doing just that.  He is seeing the great need for these youth camps that the Ukrainian church puts on there.  Many kids come to this camp several times a year.  Their dollar is extremely low, so it only costs the kids US $45 to attend this camp.  That is a lot of money for the Ukrainians, so the church absorbs a lot of that cost because over half the kids won't be able to pay it.  How easy it would be for us to come up with $45 in our lavish country.  Michael is learning what "poverty" really is...not like the American version of poverty.  

He was crunching some numbers to try to get them to make sense in his brain today.  He took his own monthly salary figure and asked the Ukrainian translator, "If someone in Ukraine made this much money how would they live?" The translator said that person would live like a king in Ukraine.  And there are just a very few people who live on that "much" money there.  "Open up my eyes"...to see that we are blessed, even on a lower salary than we are used to while we are in seminary.  "Break my heart for what breaks Yours"...in seeing how frivolously we spend our money when there is so much more Kingdom work that could be done.  We spend so much on temporary things that don't matter when we could easily spare $45 for a teen to go to camp and feed on God's Word.  And that is exactly what they do...they can't get enough of God's Word.  When was the last time we were that hungry for God's truth?

Our country seems to be shouting "Lord, save us", but I want to shout from the rooftops, "Hosanna...our Salvation has already come!"  

It's all wrapped up in a man named Jesus. 

Ebenezer

I LOVE how God slowly unfolds things for me. I enjoy mysteries, and I think God knows that and likes to throw them my way. I'm starting to feel like it's a little game we play together. It's all part of our relationship.


Every time something awesome comes along, I want to blog about it and tell the world, but there is SO much back story that my blogs get so long. But God really doesn't do anything quickly and simply. He usually interweaves it through every area of my life. It makes what He does for me so much more satisfying because it shows me how much He loves those details. So, here goes...I'll try to keep it brief.


Last year, Michael's air conditioning went out in his car. It was a hot week until he realized he could add some freon and it was good for the rest of the summer. This summer, his AC went out again. Simply adding freon this time was not an option because apparently his compressor was shot. That would be a $1400 fix. His car is older, therefore we weighed if he really needed AC for $1400. That's not just chump change we have easy access to. We were then in a conundrum about trying to sell his car to find another car because that compressor has to be fixed first because the "service engine" light is on and in North Carolina a car can't be sold (or pass inspection) with that light on. (What a run on sentence, but you feel my frustration!) After some super hot, sweltering days driving with no AC, we really started to pray about it.


Now, we have learned in the past 6 years a definite difference in needs and wants. We can easily sacrifice our wants on the altar of things we need. No problem with that lesson. And seriously, AC in the hot, muggy south is a need. Maybe a first-world need, but it's a need.


So the prayers began. Prayers that we could easily fix his car and sell it and make enough to purchase something else. Prayers to find something in great condition because buying an older car from someone unknown to you is a scary event. Prayers for something safe because Raleigh drivers aren't known for their attentiveness on the road and I have a teen driver up and coming. Prayers for God to just work it all out because He knows we don't have extra money for a car payment nor do we have time or energy to deal with this right now! Jesus, take the wheel!


Ebenezer. What in the world does that have to do with anything, right?


I'm on the praise team at church and every time I am up in rotation we seem to sing, "Come Thou Fount". Every time I sing the phrase, "Here I raise mine Ebenezer, Daily I'm constrained to be." I love hymns, but had never bothered to look that phrase up. It's not good to sing things you don't understand, so I kept telling myself to research that before I sang it again. I kept forgetting to research it, then God brought it up because He had fully intended for me to learn it. We were sitting in small group a few weeks ago studying 1 Samuel and there it was.


"Then Samuel took a stone and set it up...and named it Ebenezer saying, "Thus far the Lord has helped us."" 1 Samuel 7:12


Up to this point, the Lord has helped us. God clocks me right between the eyes so frequently! My small group leader told a story of a friend who had a picture in his house that simply said Jehovah Jireh-Ebenezer. (God Provides and Up to this Point He has helped us). So, I sit in small group with tears in my eyes knowing God is there speaking to me. He used my favorite name for him (Jehovah Jireh) and now my new found mysterious name (Ebenezer) and let me know He was there and would help us AS HE ALWAYS HAS!


Okay, back to now. We have some seminary friends, Jake and Lauren, whom we love dearly. My kids lovingly refer to Jake as Jesus because he totally looks like him. They are heading to Canada for Jake to begin PhD work and were needing to sell one of their cars. Their move was sudden so they needed to get rid of the car suddenly. Jake asked Michael if he was interested in looking at it, so he brought it over to test drive. First thing Michael did was blast the AC! Everything on the car is exactly what we need (with some wants thrown in because God spoils us sometime). And the car is a super safe Volvo for when my precious teen cargo gets behind the wheel. We told Jake we would totally want it, but could not buy it so suddenly because we have to fix the old car and sell it first. With lovingkindness, Jake allowed us to go ahead and take the car and make payments to him until we get Michael's old car sold, then we can pay him the remainder. We had a need for a car; they had a need to sell a car. God blessed both His children this weekend.


As I sit basking in our blessing, these are the verses God brings to mind:


1 Peter 5:10 "In his kindness God called you to share in his eternal glory by means of Christ Jesus. So after you have suffered a little while, he will restore, support, and strengthen you, and he will place you on a firm foundation."

Matthew 7:9,11 "Which of you if your son asks for bread will give him a stone? So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him."





My Jehovah Jireh-Ebenezer directs the steps of the godly and He cares about every little detail of my life....

"I could have no greater joy than to hear that my children are following the truth."
                                                                                                                  ~ 3 John 1:4

Father's Day 2016. The day my Evan gave his heart to Christ. For reals.

I say "for reals" for a reason. When Evan was a younger child, I was his children's church leader. He was Miss Becky's son and in his mind, it was something that was expected of him to do. He believed in the things of our faith, but it was not something he had fully examined for himself.

Fast forward to present. We have been talking a lot this year about "working out your salvation" (Philippians 2:12) and making the faith you hold your own. As young adults, my kids can no longer lean on believing things just because mom and dad say it's right. They must examine those beliefs for themselves and see if they hold true in their own lives.

A few months ago at DNOW, Pastor Jim Gillespie was the keynote speaker. When I first met Pastor Jim, he scared me to death. A big burly biker guy who always wore jeans and black leather. Duck Dynasty beard and just all around scary looking guy. As I've gotten to know him over the years, and his family, wow, was I wrong! His son is Evan's best friend, his wife is the most beautiful lady I've ever known, and Pastor Jim is a massive teddy bear with a heart of compassion to see people live for Christ. At DNOW, Jim spoke about John 14:15, which very simply and plainly says, "If you love me, keep my commandments." Pretty simple and to the point. To the point, that's Pastor Jim. Evan and Alex both came up to me that evening at DNOW and their views on everything were radically changed.

Father's Day Sunday, Pastor Jim preached this sermon again, and Evan was so excited to hear it again. After service was over, he leaned onto me crying. When I asked him what was wrong he simply said, "I need to talk to dad." We went to find dad, who was ministering to others somewhere throughout the church, but who stopped everything when his son needed him. What a great dad! He sat Evan down with him and ended up leading him straight into the arms of Christ. For reals this time. It's now his own faith he wants to embrace...and no longer just the faith of his father.

What a fabulous Father's Day present. Like Alex joked, "How can I even compete with Evan's Father's Day present?" No competition, sweet girl. For now I can leave this world in peace knowing both of my children are walking with the Lord. "Not a sinless perfection, but a sinless direction", as stated by our lead Pastor David.

My favorite part of this story that keeps resonating in my soul was the phrase, "I need to talk to dad." When we face hard questions and issues in life, run to the Father. Find Him amidst all the things He's doing. He will stop everything for you! The One who has all the answers. The Bible calls God our Abba Father, a term of endearment for dear old dad. Crawl up into His lap and simply talk to Dad. He's always there!