Lessons learned the GOD way

This year has brought about many changes in my life.  Some I was aware of and some I had no idea were changing even though I was painfully aware they needed to change.  If there is one thing I have learned about my relationship with the Father, it is that he does not approach me with big booming enlightenment, but rather through the course random comments, questions and conversations.  Each one is completely isolated from the other, and yet they that are blatantly related.  He of course does this because he knows me...he made me!  I am not one to just have things handed to me.  I thrive on putting things together.  I like looking at the small pieces of the puzzle and how they all go together to achieve the "big picture".   I need to see it, then see it again, then I need to make the connections in order to really let it sink in, you see I am what you call a problem solver!  Knowing this, God really plays with me!  I picture him up there dropping clues in my path, then watching me with anticipation and then delighting in that light bulb moment that I, as a teacher, long to see in my students.

Growing up in a christian home, I learned very quickly the difference between right and wrong and I learned those things "by the seat of my pants" as they say!  My parents had a strong grip on the ole "spare the rod spoil the child" verse and regardless of what else may go wrong, that was one they held on to and truly lived out daily...for some of us (Brad and me) they lived it out "hourly".  I also learned about repentance and the importance of making changes in order to better please God and live a Godly life.  As an adult, when the worldly desires and ways began to take hold of me, I began to feel the pressure and conflict created between the things I knew to be morally and spiritually right and the "earthly" things that I had come to enjoy.  Enter CHILDREN!!!  I began to search for the way to end the discomfort of my conscience and in doing so I found an amazing church family.  Soon after my involvement with my church family I began to feel a burning desire to serve the Lord in a greater capacity than my home and daily life.  While this was exciting and all, I knew that I still had lots of things in my life that were holding me back.  SOOOOO like any good praying, christian girl I began to "give those things to God".  That is what I had been instructed to do my my spiritual advisers and by those strong Christians that I so badly wanted to be in cohoots with.  I prayed and I prayed and I asked God to take those bad things away and I could not understand why my desire for worldly things was not being quenched...I was after all "giving them to God".  Then I stumbled on a few other people who I immediately began to read and study about.  I heard them speak, I read the books by the people who inspired them into action and I began to see a different way to serve, and oh how that fire got bigger!  Then one Wednesday night it all began to click for me and I had the greatest epiphany that a person can have...the fog cleared and I saw the answers so clearly to what had been my biggest struggles in my personal desire to change.  My pastor devotes our Wednesday night service to PRAYER.  How to pray, when to pray, what to pray, and how to put the power and authority of God in your heart through prayer and reading God's Word.  He said one night..."There are people in this room that the Lord wants as servants, and I pray that as God continues to call you them they will hear it and be in prayer about being his servant.  If  you will pray that God reveal his plan for your life and pray that he will turn you into the servant that he desires you to be, then God will transform you." (some paraphrasing here but you get the picture)  When I heard these words I immediately realized that I had been going about this all wrong.  God wants to work on ALL of me...not just the warts!  So I began to pray just like Brother C.R. told me to.  I began to pray that God make me his servant.  I would lift up my desire to spread his Glory and that my deepest desire was to serve him.  Without knowing it, the Lord has been working on me for the last year, but since I began to pray that prayer, he has become "a better Ty Pennington in a new version of EXTREME MAKEOVER... the HEART AND SOUL EDITION" 

Example: 
Pre Servants Prayer....Teachers are paid 1time per month.  I had been known to be what my mother lovingly term as a "clothes horse" (translation:  a clothes hoarder completely driven by need to have new clothing at least once per week....maybe more...or at least until my money ran out!) This need resulted in my checkbook being a sad sad place approximately 10 days after payday with 20 painful days remaining to survive before the next check where to process would repeat itself once more.  After I was married, you could immediately insert the words "arguing" after painful because JY was none to happy with the fact that he had to give me money for the remaining 3 weeks of the month!

Post Servants Prayer....Still only being paid 1 time per month.  With the exception of a Christmas dress, I have not  made a clothing purchase in a very long time, and I really had not even noticed until one day at school.  A girl at school asked me "Why don't you wear all your crazy, cute, funky clothes anymore...I miss them"  my response was..."I don't really know...I guess I just don't think about it really."  This conversation made me take notice of a complete shift in my thinking and I realized that gone were the days when getting up in the morning centered on what I was going to wear, and what looked cute.  I really did not think about that anymore...replaced was..."Lord, please allow me the honor and privilege of showing someone your love today" and "Father, make me your servant so that I can bring you people into your kingdom."

It was the blink of an eye and all that focus on me was gone, replaced with "what else can I do for my Savior".  I had not even missed it or noticed it changed!  The Lord will heal your afflictions, he will answer your prayers, and he will make you his servant, but what I have learned this past few weeks is that God doesn't only want the WARTS, he wants the good things too!  He wants to use us for his purpose but you have to give him your life....the bad and the good!   Surrender doesn't just mean give him your troubles, he wants those but he wants your happiness, your praise, your acknowledgment that he is your creator.  He gave us the good and the bad for his purpose and until we give him our heart, he can not use them for his glory. 

James 4:7
Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

Trusting his timing...even when it seems his watch has stopped!

There is the little piece of decor hanging in our teacher's lounge at school and it boast one of my favorite sayings.   This has sort of become my "mantra" if you will, and I often repeat it to myself when my controlling, impatient, and sometimes overly caffeinated other side comes to the surface and I start trying to "force" things to happen in my life!  It states:  "Faith in God includes trusting his timing"...elloquent, accurate, yet ever so challenging to do for an over achiever with a tendency for ADHD!  So this year I have decided  that I will continue my crusade for demonstrating that my faith DOES IN FACT INCLUDE...trust in his timing!

Insert the reason for my focus on "timing";)  Jason has began his quest for self employment and boy has the Lord been with my family in this endeavor.  Now while most would choose to start a business during the better months of March-October, we are extreme and we like to live on the edge soooo....he started in November...just in time for the worst months of the year for a budding Fencing and Welding business.  Has he been there for us....why yes he has!  Have I chanted my mantra in the shower for the entire length of my shower....why yes I have!  But the great thing is that God has never left us or forsaken us in our time of need.  What a comfort to us to know that God will be there to provide for our needs whenever we call on him.

This morning in church, our band sang a song about prayer and it really did resound with me and I have added it to my mantra!  You gotta keep prayin!  Sometimes I think about how the Lord has brought Jason and me to this place in our lives were we are solely relying on him to provide for us and to guide us in this earthly existence and I am brought to my knees by his mighty plan.  I know that God has great and mighty plans for us as a family.  We are his for the using and that is what has brought about my blog.

Almost a year ago, I went to a ladies retreat with some of the women at our church and I listened to a speaker by the name of Jen Hatmaker!  This woman changed my life and I will forever be so grateful to her for introducing my to God's Plan.  In the day I spent listening to her I realized that I was meant for more than just being a Wife, Mom, Teacher, Wanna-Be Guitar player!  I am meant to bring glory and honor to the Kingdom of God and I realized that I have been sitting on talents that are meant to spread the Good News!  So while writing may or may not be my venue, this blog will get me started.  This morning our pastor said something that really touched me....it was early on because I volunteered to lock myself in a classroom of wonderfully energetic and curious kids ages 3-13 as a stand in Sunday School Teacher, but I digress!  Anywhooooo.... he said that his dad used to tell him that whatever you spend the first day of the year doing is what you will continue to do throughout the year and I am excited about that because today is the day that God moved me to start sharing my stories about what he has done for me.  I pray that my experiences as a mother, a wife, a teacher, a learning christian woman who loves the Lord with all of my heart, will touch someone else!  May God Bless you all in this New Year!