Our Ozarks Life

“The Lord shall fight for you, and you shall hold your peace” Exodus 14:14.  Can you imagine fleeing from Egypt? Can you imagine picking up everything you own and running for your life with the Roman soldiers behind you with chariots and you’re on foot? No convenience stores along the way. No Dominoes to pick up food enroute or time to wait for a garden to come to harvest. No money to purchase anything and an unknown future in front of you?

Compared to that scenario, most anything any one of us are facing is light weight stress wouldn’t you say? We have food, doctors, shelter, and support around us on the earth and in heaven.  One of the fallouts of  not having the blessing from your earthly father is that you do not have the assurance that he took care of you and its harder perhaps to transition that God will take care of you. Can you relate? I know I can. While I had earthly provisions, my heart and head were often not protected and the names my father called me were not beloved nor precious. However God says I am his precious creation and my husband Les laughs and says “that’s one way to put it”…for we both know God had to delight in my creation for I am a hot mess of mixtures of abilities and colorful thinking.

Children who are in a safe, loving, nurturing environment have an easier time believing God is a trustable God.  The core of “God cannot lie” is harder for many adults to believe because not one single adult in their house didn’t either lie to them or keep the other adult’s lie. However Christ came to earth, received every temptation to protect himself, to call off the attacks against him, to give in to anger, ugly and revenge when things were going badly (have you ever had that moment where someone whipped Y OU and you just allowed it because it was what you were sent to do?)  So when Christ went to the Father to sit at God’s right hand he is not without understanding of angst, of pain, or ugly on the earth.

Personally I am in a period of life that I am looking daily at the promises of God. There are hundreds of them. The very words read out loud to myself during my devotions are empowering to me each day. I write one at the top of my planner each week. I have others on my computer screen. I have a prayer journal each morning that I write at least a couple down that go with whatever I am praying about. God’s word is infalliable. It is infinitely true and those words have transformed my life this summer. Peace for me is a state of believing God’s got me. He’s got this…whatever “this” I am facing.

“..and call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee and thou shall glorify me”  Psalms 50:15

Whether your trouble is over working, whether your trouble is facing a diagnosis, whether your trouble is simply the inability to stop patterns of behavior that are not supporting a peace filled life….God is there. Do you know peace?

This week we’ve read about how important it is to give blessings to others. To receive blessings. To reach out and have a meaningful and approriate touch. To lay hands on those we bless.  To have a spoken message, to specifically say to others the blessing you have for them.  To attach high value and honor others. Not what they’ve DONE but who they ARE…as a child of God…it is enough…we don’t have to accomplish but to take the role of the child of the King and become who we are.  To picture a special future for the one we are blessing. Cast visions for them, speak life to them, share expectations for them and assurances God has a life planned for them.  and create an active commitment to those you bless. Check in on them, help them find the tools they may need for their gifts, be present in their lives.

Whether you’re raising children, mentoring adults, or growing your community through involvement. Your intentionality about blessing those before you can make such a difference….and by the way…can you consider allowing others to speak blessings over you. Can you allow yourself to hear the good things others want for you? Allow receiving that which others have for you? Align your thinking to the way God thinks about you?

I believe that God indeed has your life in the palm of His hand, and that is a mighty safe place to be if you’ll allow it to be and engage His word, His promises for the path and provision for your life.  What are you not at rest about? Have you spoken to God about it? Looked for promises of His provision in that area of your life? I know for me, it is a new walk to expect help in areas I know it is a lack of self discipline, but God promises he’ll give me right desires and even the laundry isn’t looking so bad any more. 🙂

You are loved my friends, I love you!

 

Dear Ladies,

Thank you for meeting with us Fridays for Bible Study time together at 8:30 to 9:15. I know it is a commitment to give the time to this intentional time together.  It is my hope that we each grow from the experience and affirm just how loving God is in our lives and how we, through loving God, can more deeply love those whom God puts before us.

In the lesson last week we read that all individuals at the core of their being yearn for intimacy and affection.  I challenged each of us to reread the verse

 Genesis 2:24  “For this shall cause a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife. 

in a new way.  To read it as the emotional separation of valuing our relationship with others over the relationship with our husbands. God clearly instructed in that time period for a boy and girl, for really that is what we were when we married, to step across the village, or even sometimes in the same household in those days, but to emotionally separate themselves in their roles as a new husband and wife.

How many times a week do you desire intimacy and affection from your husband? I know for me, I so want Les and my own relationship to be close, yet I often put many things before our marriage, our relationship, our friendship.

Part of the journey for me in learning to love God more, and the awareness the Gift of the Blessing is bringing into my life, is that emotional separation from ANYTHING that keeps me from being the Bride of Christ.  I am identifying personal maturity of my emotions as a main culprit in the days that I struggle. You see, if I am not firmly identified as “enough” in my head by God, then nothing much I can do on earth solidifies that concept. Not over work. Not a certain weight. Not any one’s words of praise, nor works. The first step for me is identifying that I didn’t receive the blessing from my father, in fact his words were more of a curse where my “enoughness” was involved.  Many of us are wounded that way in one form or another….neglect, abuse, born to wounded parents who wound….

The hope is though that God is God and our fathers on earth were not.  God created us, designed us for a purpose, designated us to be his beloved child before we were ever born. Nothing we can do can separate us from the deep love of God as our Father. Stop and think on that a moment. Could anything separate you from loving your child? I know I could ring their necks some days but there is little if anything that would ever separate me from adoring our four children and the many that we’ve loved that were not ours through teaching, borrowing and engaging.

Perhaps this week, as we prepare for Friday again, let’s see our past, our emotions, our woundedness, our not-enoughness as what we leave behind as we marry  our relationship to Christ in new ways. He deemed us enough to die for, to heal on the cross, to absolve us from any sin we have committed or will commit. He simply wants relationship with us and to love us.  I don’t know about you, but when my love cup is filled by the presence of God, when I invite the Holy Spirit to lead and guide me, the past becomes a distant and deflated power and the present becomes a beautiful place to be regardless of what I am facing, God’s peace and provision is there.

Love you all,

Sweetie