The Power of a Whisper....

Tonight, 29 groups of different ages, genders, backgrounds and stories all met in our gym to kick off Community groups for this coming year. I am going to be honest here and say community groups were something I had a very hard time getting into initially, but soon realized it wasnt the group or the discussions that hadn't attracted me it was the mere lack of commitment and effort on my part. After I really started trying to be consistent about going and giving it my all I found that it was an amazing way to connect and grow in my realtionship with Christ with the help and encouragment of my group. It became a time each week that I looked forward to so much and felt a hunger to feel that closeness with each other and God through our discussions and prayer time. We battled many ups and downs throughout our time together last year, deaths, births, major illnesses, job, family and financial struggles, you name it we probably faced it. It became such an amazing sense of unity and support that I think we all gained because we knew regardless of what we were facing we had a group that was there with us to encourage and pray for us.

I am excited that this years groups have kicked off and we can begin a new journey together. Our groups have changed a little this year because of the growth thats taken place but I think God is using this to stretch us and take us out of our comfort zone a little more. Pastor Phillip shared with us tonight the series that all community groups will be doing for the next 4 weeks and thats the book "The Power of a Whisper." by Bill Hybels. We all face moments in life where we feel like God is speaking to us and asking us to go in a certain direction or face a specific situation and it can be difficult to decipher His voice. Or we have so much clutter and noise in our lives that we often forget to take the time to be still and hear what He is trying to say. This series is a way for us to have the tools to hear His voice more clearly and understand if it is the voice of God we think we are hearing.

Scott and I were talking a little about our first impression and the discussions that took place tonight and we both feel its going to be an awesome series. I know that we all want to follow the voice of Christ and its hard sometimes to decide what that means. I think most of us have an innate sense to be kind and giving and good but is that our personalities or is that from God? When you get a deep sense to help someone in need is that because you just have a generous heart or is that because of Gods leading??? One of the members in our group mentioned tonight that its tough to know weather its Gods voice or just your conscience and wanting to be good or do good. I have to admit I really struggle with this. I often find myself not being able to know whether something I am feeling is the voice of God or a desire in my heart thats of my own abilities.

These are just some thoughts that I wanted to share and get throughts from others, how do you feel about this or what do you think about the voice of God in your life each day??? In the next 4 weeks we will be going through this series and during that time I would like to try and share the journey of what I feel like God is showing and teaching me. Do you know what it means to hear the still small voice of God??? I pray that as we begin this series I would learn to remove all that distracts me from the sweet whispers of Jesus so that I can allow my life to become more Spirit led and directed.

Religion or Relationship.....

I have to admit my attention has been captured a time or two lately over the show "Extreme Couponing." Scott likes to make fun of how I say the word coupon but either way it still equals lots of savings. I have never been a big couponer, it just always seems like so much time and effort to save a little. If you watch the show though these people have amazing strategies and get hundreds if not thousands of dollars in groceries for very little if anything at all. I saw one episode this past weekend where a ladies total was $1300.00 before coupons and after it was all said and done the store owed her money back! It may seem very appealing from afar but in order for the huge payoff these women have to spend hours and hours planning ahead for their shopping trips. They collect stacks of flyers from friends, family and recycling branches. Most of them have to order large quantities of items ahead of time and have maps of the stores layout they will be using. One lady claimed she took 6 hours to plan one shopping trip, to me that just seems crazy!!! I'm not very patient when it comes to coupons but I do like getting deals or things for free. One of my favorite things are Kohls cash. I know all you women know what Kohls Cash is. Maybe I shouldnt let our secret out to the men but Kohls Cash is basically $10 in free money that you can spend it on anything in the store without having to purchase anything with it. This always feels exciting because when you use them you can walk in the store and grab something for your value amount and slide through the register without having to pay a dime so you feel like you just got a huge deal. The tricky part though is that in order to get Kohls Cash you still had to spend money so it wasnt exactly all that easy. Or at other stores they have little punch coupons where everytime you spend so much you get a hole punched on your card and if you get the required amount you get something free. It feels awesome when you finally fill up all those hole but what did it take to get there?

As followers of Jesus I think we try and live on a points system sometimes. We think the more we do the more we will get. We try and constantly occupy our lives with works to gain the love of Jesus when we forget it comes freely. "Man's way to reach God is religion; God's way to reach man is Jesus." We so often get the concept of "religion" confused with a "relationship." Religions are man made, and are based on trying to get to God through rules and regulations and works. Man made religions all are based on people's efforts at reaching God and being made right with Him through their own efforts. God's plan for man's salvation and for being right with Him is told throughout the Bible, in the Old Testament and the New Testament. God's plan is not based on people's efforts and good works, but is based on His amazing Love and amazing Grace for us.

God doesnt hold us on a point system, He doesnt sit there watching our every move thinking "ok now Amber helped out with an event at church this week so thats one point for her and so and so didnt do anything this week so I better take away a point on hers." Thats crazy sounding I'm sure but many people struggle with this very concept. Ephesians 2:8-9 "For it is by free grace (God's unmerited favor) that you are saved (delivered from judgment and made partakers of Christ's salvation) through [your] faith. And this [salvation] is not of yourselves [of your own doing, it came not through your own striving], but it is the gift of God; Not because of works [not the fulfillment of the Law's demands], lest any man should boast. [It is not the result of what anyone can possibly do, so no one can pride himself in it or take glory to himself.]

We can do "works" for Christ all day but if our hearts are not genuine and we are not in love with Jesus on a personal level then its all for nothing. Its very pleasing to the Lord when we put forth our heart and serve Him but what He wants even more than that is our hearts. In order to be the hands and feet of Jesus and serve others we must be so empty of all that we are and filled with the Holy Spirit that it seeps from every ounce of our being and thats what others see in us and are attracted to. I have talked about the story of Mary and Martha before but its such a huge reprsentation of how we should live our lives not being so focused on our works that we loose sight of just merely sitting at the feet of Jesus and worshiping Him. We live in a world where its all about you get what you give but Jesus tells us that what He wants is not from our actions but our hearts. I pray as you go throughout this next week that you will keep your focus on Christ and truely embracing His love that He gives us so freely. Allow your works to come freely because you are filled with the Spirit not merely because its just another task in your list, another hole on your punch card for Jesus. God extends His blessings and grace for us us, we don't have to purchase or do anything to earn it we just have to accept it.

A little laughter....

Chonda Pierce is a christian comedian, she is hilarous and thought I would share a clip of one of her sessions on Life Today with James and Betty Robison. Sometimes we could all use a good laugh and she knows how to take every situations and had humor to them :)


http://lifetoday.org/video/prosperity-and-joy-3/?h=1

What can stand aginst....

There is a pretty popular worship song right now called "Our God is Greater." I love this song and feel like the words are so annointed and powerful. The song describes the power of Christ and how if our God is for us then nothing can be against us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlA5IDnpGhc

We need reminded this often as humans. I know for me right now with medical testing tomorrow and the fear of whats ahead I have to keep telling myself that God is bigger than the circumstances of whatever is ahead. I talked about this yesterday but it seems like we spend so much time as humans living in fear. It can be crippling if we allow it to overtake us. "Fear is the opposite of faith. We receive from the enemy through fear, and we receive from God through faith. Fear is the enemy's brand of faith, his counterfeit of it. In other words, we can know and do God's will through placing our faith in Him, but we can cooperate with the devil's plan through fear. When we are afraid, we may fail to do what God wants us to do and, instead, end up doing what the devil wants us to do," Joyce Meyers.

Satan will use every inch we give him as a foothold in our lives and fear is a big one. If we live in fear it allows our minds to shift from a place of faith and trust into a place of independence and worry. We are human and its natural for us to be fearful about the unknown but when we come to a place of worry we need take it to the cross and trust that Jesus has died to protect us from Satans schemes. "The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged." Deut. 31:8

Yummy Potato Soup......

I was in the midst of writing a couple different things this morning when a couple little things knocked me off my rocker a little. So instead of continuing to finish the others I felt like the Lord was just saying to share what I was feeling today because someone needs to hear it. My day started off kind of humorus actually, Scott must have taken soup or something of that sort to school for lunch because as I was trying to throw some things in the crockpot this morning I noticed the disappearance of my can open. When your trying to open cans, a can opener is pretty important. So I'm shuffling through the kitchen drawers trying everything that I possibly can think of that might do the trick. How in the world did people function without can openers at one time????

So after much frustration and because I started thinking with my luck I'm surely going to cut my finger off I ran to the store and picked a new can opener up. It made the job so much easier it was amazing and I think I'm going to wrap it up and give it as a "thinking of you" gift to Scott when he gets home today :) I know this is a goofy story and hard to take serious when it was merely a can opener but it threw a curve in my road today and was a little unexpected mishap that I had to just deal with. I had 2 choices, I could have gotten really mad at my husband because I'm not sure what he was thinking and sat at home ticked off over this or just dealt with it the best way I could by grabbing another one at the store or borrowing one in the meantime from a neighbor.

When I thought I had tonights dinner fiasco figurd out I get a phone call about my upcoming tests in Cleveland on Friday. I have to admit I have been pretty anxious thinking about it coming up and hearing the list of instructions for the tests didnt help. The lady goes on and on but I hear a few of them that specifically pertain to me and that is I have to take out my feathers because they have metal on them and you can't have that with the MRI machine and also the substance they give you for the test can cause nausea and vomiting but not to worry because if that happens they can easily clean you up and continue the test. LOL huh??? ok that just took the anxiety level I had about the tests from 3 to 100. Inevitably I have to have the tests but now with every new detail thats added comes more worry and fear. In that moment when I wanted to let fear and worry take over I had to remind myself that I can't change it so I need to deal with it one thing at a time and trust God that everything is going to be ok. I need to avoid getting into the "stinkin thinkin" mode where negative thoguht on top of negative though creeps in and consumes us to the point of feeling smothered and drowning in the unknown. "We need inner strength to keep from being overwhelmed by outward circumstances."

I'm human and there is a part of me that I know will struggle from here through Friday until its over with but in the process I'm missing out on the now. Corrie ten Boom has a quote that has always been one of my favorites and it says "Worry doesnt empty tomorrow of its sorrow it empties today of its strength." What an awesome quote because we can't do anything about the things that are going to happen tomorrow really but we can change and decide how we are going to react and deal with today. "Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for power equal to your tasks," Joyce Meyers. Philippians 4:6 "We are commanded, “Do not be anxious [do not worry] about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”

If we are constantly stressed over what "might" be in the future and yet maybe it will never happen, then we have wasted so much of our energy that we could have put into the now. Like my dinner fiasco I went to the store last night and made sure I had all the ingredients for tonights potato soup, I cut the bacon up early and had everything sitting out but then WHAM my plans and my worry failed because without a can opener this morning I was stuck. I went through all that worry and the game ended up being changed by circumstances. I firgued out a new path to deal with it but it just emphasize my point that we can worry and stress about whats ahead but ultimately it can change and be out of our hands. You can be overly prepared for something but if the situation shifts then you are still stuck scrambling how to figure out how to deal with new circumstances.

Next week Fridays tests will merely be a distant thought. The tests may be uncomfortable and may be nervewracking but its only temporary, I'm not going to have to spend the rest of my life stuck in an MRI machine even if it feels like it at some point. In those moments where fears tries to overtake us we have to remember to take those thoughts captive and understand how temporary the situation is. You may be dreading something ahead now or 6 months from now and its hard not to worry at all but ultimately remember where those thoughts come from and that God can replace them with comfort and peace because He will be with you through it all. "If you feel presed, confused, controlled, or stressed about something, then it is not of God; that is not how He works. Instead, the Holy Spirit will gently "reveal, (comfort, declare, disclose and transmit)" the truth to you,"Joyce Meyers.

Mommy I'm Stuck.....

Have you ever tried to take off a shirt when the hole for your head seems to have shrunk from the time you put it on and are ready to change into something else??? When Macie was younger I remember trying to pull and pull some of her t-shirts off at night and her flipping out the whole time because she felt so confined and trapped. There are even a few shirts I remember Scott cutting slits in to make the head bigger so we didnt have to go through such fiasco at bedtime. I went through a situation recently where I was anticipating freedom from a burden that was going to be lifted. The crazy thing is that after it was I didnt feel anymore free than I had while carrying it. I realized through this situation after trying to sort through many thoughts and questions that it wasnt freedom I needed to gain, I had been given that through Christ a long time ago. Although my present circumstance had me feeling trapped it was because mentally I wasnt allowing myself to be free in Christ. It was like Macie getting stuck in her toddler t-shirts, she felt physically restrained and in bondage at the time but really it was more mental and the anxiety was based on emotions.

I don't know how many times I have been at the Dr.s for tests, surgeries, blood work, the dentists for fillings or other scary situations and to ease the anxiety I will sing certain praise and worship songs in my head to get through that period. Now physically I am still going through pain but there is a peace that comes when you allow yourself to emotionally go to a place of freedom. Pastor was talking about a woman who prepared for months and months because she knew that she was going to be captured and thrown into prison during World War II. Esther Kim went through such drastic motions to prepare herself for the bondage and prison that was to come. She ate food that was decaying and memorized many books of the Bible. After being thrown into prison Esther witnessed for Christ and was able to sustain the physical entrapment because she had mentally found freedom. She had learned to find freedom in her mind not based on her present circumstances but due to Gods faithfulness. Isaiah 26: 3 "You will guard him and keep him in perfect and constant peace whose mind [both its inclination and its character] is stayed on You, because he commits himself to You, leans on You, and hopes confidently in You."

You may have made choices that led you into bondage or have been thrown into it without fault but I believe that regardless you can find freedom. Whether you are physically shackled and thrown into a prison cell, drowning under a mound of financial debt, battling a life altering illness God is bigger than those circumstances. One of the very first Contemporary Christian Cd's I remember buying had lyrics that said this "On Christ the solid rock I stand all other ground is shifting sand." Beth Moore says this in her book "Get out of that Pit, God is unreasonably patient and mercifcul. He's there for every urgent need and any sudden spell. God can hold your weight-the full emotional, spiritual, mental, and physical poundage of you-sixty seconds a minute, sixty minutes an hour, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year for the rest of your life." God is not just a firm place to stand. He's a firm place to stay."
Regardless of what you face this week rest assured that you can choose freedom in your mind and find a peace within the depths of your soul. You may feel that the world is closing in on you and Satan is trying to entangle you with vines of lies, destruction, and heartache but God can cut through the thickest strongholds and set you free. My chains are gone I've been set free, my God my Savior has ransomed me, and like a flood His mercy reigns, unending love, amazing grace.

The last cookie.....

　There is the cutest commercial out right now maybe you have seen a time or two. I have written about commercials before but there is just something about them that catches my attention. Commercials are made to make a quick lasting impression on you so that it will be embedded in your mind and you will remember it next time you go to purchase that type of product or service. This particular commercial is for Keebler Fudge Striped Cookies. It shows two kids in the kitchen maybe coming home from school and they go to grab a cookie but there is only one. The bigger girl of the two thinks for a moment then gives the cookie to the second girl. Mysteriously though when she looks back another cookie has appeared. You then see "Keebler Elves" in the background working diligently to provide the cookies when a need appears.

I'm not a huge fan of cookies or sweet stuff but God has definitely played a much much bigger version of the "Keebler Elves" in our lives over the years. I can't tell you how many times in life God has provided when it seems like we have "run" out. Financially, physically, emotionally His hand in our lives has always been faithful. Over the past year and a half there have been some pretty low moments in my life where physically and emotionally I was "done." I had not one more ounce of strength left in my humaness but God always revealed to me something, even the slightest hint of hope and thats all I needed to sustain me in that moment. It doesnt have to be a huge plane in the sky with smoke and lights but just something little that you can find as a blessing and glimpse of hope. Marybeth Chapman says in her booking "Choosing to See, Some people might see little things in life as coincidences, no big deal. But to us, these small signs were like a little trail of bread crumbs on a shadowed path, showing us the way to walk."

When Scott and I got married I really struggled with the idea of tithing. It wasnt something I was familiar with and when you are struggling paycheck to paycheck and the amount you should give as a tithe equals your electric bill its hard to lay it over, not holding anything back and say "ok Lord this is yours." But I could tell you story after story of ways that the Lord provided, mind blowing, "God bumps" stories. Its not about what you give so much as the attitudes of your heart in giving and knowing that as you give you are entrusting God with that part of your life and handing over control. Its truely about surrendering every aspect of your life. This is the case with all areas whether it be relationships, health, finances, or jobs God cares about each of these and wants you to give them over so He can pick them up and transform them into something amazing by His power. Matthew 6:26 (AMP) "Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father keeps feeding them. Are you not worth much more than they?"

The attitude of the little girl in the cookie commercial is priceless. You can tell she struggles at first and think about giving the cookie away knowing its the only one but when she turns around and sees that another has been provided her little eyes light up. God wants to put that twinkle in our eyes. He wants to show us how powerful He is and how much He cares about our lives, so much that He can provide for us in an instant, even when we cant begin to see the pieces fit together He has already started orchestrating them ahead of us.

1 Peter 5:7 "Casting the whole of your care [all your anxieties, all your worries, all your concerns, once and for all] on Him, for He cares for you affectionately and cares about you watchfully." Regardless of the circumstance, the lack of supplies or how irrational a situation seems ahead God is still bigger than your circumstances and can provide in ways that you can't even imagine. Remember the story of the fish and loaves of bread. Jesus takes 2 fish and 5 loaves of bread and feeds 5,000. Now that is an amazing story of the power of Christ and how little our offering may be but with faith all things are possible!!!