Sweet Words to My Ears

My husband has a friend, a coworker that he has gotten to know over the years we've been here in Austin. He is a nice man with a lovely wife. We have had dinner with them a few times and Hubs has spent some time with his coworker socially. 

For some background, My husband has grown amazingly in his personal walk with Christ in the past years. He amazes me daily with his love, dedication and steadfastness to focus on Christ. He is open with his faith at work and in his daily life. He enjoys conversations where he can share a sermon topic or a scripture with his friends. Recently the men he works with have asked questions, some have started to read their Bibles more regularly. There is one that stands out...

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Back to that special couple, My Husband recently received the follow text message:

It's a new day and I am a new man in a different place than when you last saw me brother. I thanked God for placing you in my life when I prayed last night and this morning he told me to honor him by letting you know this. He wants you to know that you lead by example in the way you live your life and that your example has been noticed and is a blessing to me. I want you to know this and to know that I am now "all in" thanks to people like you. Keep doing what you are doing because it works. God bless you and Lani.

Wow! As you can imagine Hubs and I were not expecting this! I cried, I was so happy for this man. A phone conversation soon followed this text and Hubs came to find out that recently the wife of this sweet man had also declared her faith in Christ and chosen to live for Him. She was overseas undergoing IVF and leaned of Christ in her time of weakness. Sadly it was not successful and no baby was to come of the treatment. Yet she did not turn away, she continued to read her Bible and reach for Christ.

 I am happy to say that months later, both this husband and wife are now living for Christ and soon will have a beautiful child coming that they will be able to share this love with. 

So the lesson of this story is that your everyday actions matter, your language, your attitude, the love you show a stranger, everything! you never know what impressionable person is watching and listening. Don't you want to influence them in a positive way?

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Manic Monday: Fasting and a post from Hubs

***Disclaimer***
I am not writing about this experience to lift it up for myself. I am writing about it to share the unique and excited experience I have recently had in my spiritual life.

Hubs and I had an experience this week that was exciting and new for both of us. Our church recently asked the body to participate in fasting as a congregation as a day to focus and pray for Easter. Our church combines all 3 of their locations, total of 7 services into 1! It's held at the Erwin Center, which is where the University of Texas plays basketball. Last year was our first Easter service since making this our home church, we were amazed to get to be apart of something so big, that reached so many people in the community. Somewhere around 13,000 people attended. This year we took this day to pray for the people who would attend, God's word to be spoken and absorbed, and for God to be in control of all of it.

 "Fasting is primarily the act of willingly abstaining from some or all food, drink, or both, for a period of time." according to Wikipedia that is...
Starting on Wednesday night after supper, we abstained from foods until dinner on Thursday night when we broke the fast with our Missional Community and communion.

So the scriptures have a few things to say about fasting, oh course since that's where the concept comes from.

"When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you" Matthew 6:16-18.

I had to spend the day at work, and truth be told I was hungry. My stomach growled...and I tried to use it as a reminder to pray. Hubs was off of work and was able to spend much of the afternoon in the scriptures. He had time to read, pray and think. He wrote the following, I look at it as a personal statement of faith. I was so wowed when he read it to me, I asked if I could share it on the blog and he said yes! So here it is per the hubs....

"This is what I believe to be true. The world has a creator. It’s created and allowed to change for all of us. We are allowed to change also. We are allowed to attain more information. In knowledge attainment we often forget that all is unknowable. Our collective intelligence as humans does not understand very much. Compare birds to planes, antibiotics to our own innate and acquired immunity, paintings to the sky, C3PO to single cell organisms or Polar Bears. I digress…


I believe the creator had an intimate relationship with the first person. I believe that something caused that first person to reject obedience and the world was allowed to move forward in free will. It’s a difficult subject and entire lifetimes are spent attaining the details. I believe the creator allowed for free will so that we choose Him freely. He’s awesome and terrible. How do I mean? He allows for ultimate Shalom peace in Heaven worshiping him without want of sin or anything material…happy. He allows for eternal damnation, pain and suffering. I believe even if we are “saved” we will be judged and held accountable for every sin. Ughh.


Who is this? In short, it’s the God of the Jews…the people who authored the Torah; Moses, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the prophets, 300 years of Kings, a story of continued teaching, struggle and falling away…which resulted in the coming of God in human form to Earth as part man part God. Jesus was miraculously born of a virgin. Thereby, Jesus began without sin. He is the perfect substitution for the original man, Adam, whom Moses taught disobeyed God. Up until 2 thousand years ago, animal sacrifices had been offered as sacrifices in an attempt to redeem Jews to God to for their sinfulness. Jesus arrives sinless destined to be the ultimate (Lion and the…) lamb or sacrifice.


Jesus taught the scribes and keepers of the Religion mostly what they had been doing wrong. It was like they had the book but now the author shows up and explains a completely different paradigm. Our nature is to resist and that’s just what the Jews did. He placed his knowledge in the hands of regular people of his choosing…we know these as the 12 apostles. In the Gospels of Jesus, He acknowledges early on his intended persecution and what will happen to him, but the world was receiving a gift from God. It was going to be much more than teaching Jews they were hypocrites. Jesus God was about to absorb the undeserved pain, humiliation, suffering and disgusting death of the most vile of humanity; The only sinless man was to be executed in hours long suffering. Jesus, however, was doing this for humanity. I believe He knew we were incapable of saving ourselves. Thousands of years of Jewish history proved that. Despite “hands on” caring, the Jews wandered. Humans don’t have a chance. I believe Jesus showed up to stand in for the terrible suffering planned for us. Jesus God stepped in to absorb our punishment so that we didn’t have to know it.
What does that mean for me now? There are a lot of details unresolved but I said in the beginning…we can’t know it all. I know if there is no God then it doesn’t make a difference if we are ultimately bad (Hitler) or Good (Ghandi). It makes no difference. I choose to believe in the God that has a perfect story from the beginning of time to the furthest reaches of eternity. I digress. I believe I should try and know God…read the bible and pray alone and with others. I believe I should hold strongly to that which I can ascertain as right and try with all my power (which I will fail occasionally) to avoid doing that which is wrong. I thank God Jesus for helping me, redeeming me and caring about my eternity. I also believe I should share God with whoever will listen."

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1LW #11

It was rough, that's what I have to say about this week. Seems like just when I think I have a grasp on it, my grip starts to slip until its out of my reach completely. 

I have had a great week with Hubs, but got frustrated one morning and left the house without saying anything. I made it to my car, sat there a moment and then went back in to say sorry and kiss him bye. I felt better when I left for real {I scared him when I came back in and seeing him jump was so worth it}.


I struggled at work, we had severe weather one night and several of our clinics lost power. The next day I answered the phones for 3 clinics instead of 1. I was exhausted at the end of the day, and had 1 mom yell at me and hang up on me twice!


I struggled in my walk. I had a hard remembering that God is in control and that the desires of my heart may not be what He desires for me. If my heart is in the right place {on HIM} then my desires will be for His will, and that He will grant. 


I struggled with food. I haven't been reading the Made to Crave book like I wanted to. I have managed to keep off the weight I lost in the challenge at work, but am having issues with wanting to eat poorly. I'm pretty sure this is directly related to the struggle with my walk. 


So I am going to keep praying, keep trying to seek Him, know that my husband loves me no matter what, and that at the end of 8 hours {no matter how exhausting} I am going home and leaving work behind. 

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1LW #7

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I keep telling myself this because it is important. Life is good, I am blessed. I see this line all over the place, we live in Austin Texas which is a fairly "Hippie Dippy" town as my chiropractor calls it. Lots of outdoorsy types and "adventure" stores. You see this brand in all of them: hats, shirts, water bottles, stickers, you name it. They display cute stick figures "adventuring" with catchy phrases.

As I sit tonight writing this post, I think about all of the different "life is good" shirts I've seen. I agree, life is good, but not because I am riding my bike, kayaking,sitting next to a camp fire. Life is good because... I am a child of God!

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I am a Child of God! However I am not perfect...This is a little bit harder for my to wrap my brain around. This week was a challenge. The weekend, while really fun, I didn't get even half of the things on my to do list accomplished. Major downer moment, not POSITIVE thinking. Monday was, well a MONDAY. I had bad news at work, that frustrated me to no end. The had 2 parents get very frustrated me over the phone, 1 of them yelled, the other yelled and cursed. Not easy to stay positive through. I can home from work, hubs asked how my day was and I had to admit, it wasn't good. He was great, supportive and encouraging.

I decided that I went about the entire day wrong. Not an easy thing to admit to yourself. I realized that I had to make a change in me in order to see a change in others {duh!}.

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Today I was determined to do better, be Positive no matter what. This morning I ask God to help me do a few things: Only speak kindness, no gossip, don't get frustrated, don't talk about ANYTHING negative. I knew that one pray wasn't going to be all I needed. I ended up praying for these things several times through out the day. Once I had to stop my self mid-sentence when I realized what i was about to say, and a few times I caught myself before I spoke at all. Amazing is the power of prayer.

It was a wonderful day, all happy patients at work, happy employees, happy me and happy hubs. I think that the entire point of this awesome weekly link up is to help keep us accountable. It easy to write a post at the beginning of the new year and talk big. Then you can fade away as the weeks pass on and most likely no one will ever post you a comment ask how you are doing with that 1 Little Word you talked about back in January. I feel that God has put an amazing group of women in my life at just this time for a special purpose. I started blogging when I met them and can't truly tell you how therapeutic an experience it has been for me. I'm going to continue to pray my prayer each morning and through out the day, I have a few other things I through in there too that I am working on giving over to God.  I just have to rememeber...

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...and by the life that is waiting for us, I know that is the life that God planned for us.

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thankful thursday

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I wish I had time to write about all of the things I am thankful for. I guess I would start it with something like....God, thank you for blessing me with so many blessings that I have a list of things I'm thankful for. I don't just have 1 or 2 things, although i try to just write about a few each week. I have so many that I can hardly think about all of them. God is so good, I wish I could repay Him someday. 


#1 My Bible and A Challenge: Several months ago, our pastor at church challenged us to spend just 5 minutes a day in The Word for 1 week. Easy enough, my 1 week has turned into months and I love that I start each morning reading my bible and having time in prayer. I think it makes my entire day go better. I'm thankful  that I can read the Word and thankful for the challenge to start reading daily. 

#2 My Job: In a time when so many people are without work, I have a job that not only helps provide but that I enjoy. My coworkers are nice individuals. My boss is friendly and awesome! I just like what I do. There are days I really enjoy being at work, don't get me wrong if I could sell enough clothes to work from home I'd be all over that:)

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#3 Time for Exercise: I exercise almost everyday. Some weeks I manage it every day, other 4-5 times a week. I am glad that I have time everyday to take care of my body, relieve stress and challenge myself. Sometimes I spend this time thinking, praying, or being entertained. Its an hour or so a day that is there for me to do whatever I want.

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What are you most thankful for this week? Have you sat down and really thought about it?

Linking Up with:

 

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1LW #6

I feel that I have been very blessed this year. Now I know its only 5 weeks into this year, but I have had an amazing year so far. I have been blessed with time with my family, time with hubs, an incredible group of couples from church, a new circle of friends of which are all Christian women, encouragement at work. So many things that it is really hard to list them all. 

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I started blogging regularly this year and an proud to say I have actually had something to say each day! I have embraced this blog to be not only an outlet for me, but it needed to be fun. I really enjoy reading other's postings and linking up with "Linky Parties." I think my favorite linky party takes place each Wednesday over at It's a Long Story, it's called 1 Little Word Wednesdays. 

When I first read about this post, I really had to think about what my word would be. 

I choose POSITIVE...I want to choose to be more POSITIVE.

It really is a conscious effort. 

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This week I had my challenges and my successes like every week. 

With My Husband: He's tired and a little stressed. He works so hard for us and is going to school to prepare for the future. I tried to be a positive encouragement to him, calm and helpful when he needed it and sometimes it was as easy as going shopping so he had a quite house to study in. 

With My Work: This ones challenging, work has its Mondays, the it has it's Tuesday's that feel like Mondays. This past week I think work was my biggest struggle. We had a lot of people call in sick and have several new employees starting. Moral is.... stretched. I'm trying to keep my chin high and be positive with every interaction I have. I'm praying hard on this one.  

With My Friends: Don't gossip! Be encouraging!

With My Self: Don't get discouraged, keep praying, keep smiling.

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1LW #4 and a Sermon

Being positive is harder than I thought it would be. Yesterday morning I was frustrated when I left the house and kept telling myself, "God this is Yours." Easier said than done, does praying like this work? Sometimes I don't really know what the right words are, sometimes I just pray to myself that God is in control of ______.


Sunday, as Hubs and I sat through church listening, I kept thinking, "he's gonna wanna talk about this later." {I didn't mean it in a good way} We frequently talk about the sermon after church and discuss what we learned or how if was related to us {it's always related to us somehow}. This week Hubs didn't make the first move so I thought I would. I mentioned the sermon that evening and hubs gave me the run down of how he thought it applied to him, and then he hesitated and asked me what I thought.

I had been prepping for this moment all day and blurted out my answers...and then started crying. Nice, right? he listened but didn't really have any insights for me. I think that as a married couple we frequently know each others struggles even if our spouse thinks they have it under wraps. I was busted, he already knew the things I was struggling with. So this week I am trying to take to heart the concept of the sermon on Sunday.

Give the Idols of my life to God.

Sounds so simple, one little sentence. It's HUGE and not as easy as I had hoped. I'm going to keep praying about it and trying to stay {Positive}. Lots of prayers, moments of frustration with my self and moments of humility.

I've included the video of this weeks sermon and I can't think of 1 person I know that wouldn't need to hear this. So here it is, the 1st in the series.

Counterfeit Love: Idols Defined from The Austin Stone on Vimeo.

These are the Idols of my life that I trying to give over to God daily...


Body Image



Desire for a baby...now...right now!

What are the idols in your life, what are you spending more time thinking about than praying about? Can you give them to God?

I would love to be a prayer warrior for you and always appreciate prayers myself.

Linking up with It's a Long Story for 1LW

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thankful thursday

When I tried and write down all of the things I'm thankful for this week, the list was pretty long. So today I highlight a few of them rather than a Plain Jane list.

Time with hubs: Our recent vacation was the first time since before we got married 2 years ago that we have really taken time out to just spend with each other. It was amazing and I am very thankful for it.

 

I read a wonderful, encouraging book...in one day. Yes, it was that captivating that I just couldn't put it down. It taught me that I may never be the perfect wife, but if a love and fear my God, I am being obedient and the other things tend to fall into place.

The past few weeks have been a wonderful blessing to me. I joined an online group of Christian women. Some are friends I've know for some time while other are new. These women are amazing and I love that we share everything from prayer requests, book suggestions, ideas and so on. I can not tell you the encouragement that I have taken away from our daily interactions.

What are you thankful for this week? Join us as we link up with:

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Thankful Thursdays

1. My awesome and powerful God, who loves me unconditionally
2. My family
3. My marriage to a Godly man
4. My new soon to be sis-in-law
5. A job, when so many are without
6. An amazing group of new Christian friends
7. Desire to blog
8. Desire to be healthier (i've needed this one for a while)
9. My new niece or nephew that will be here this Fall
10. Safety as we have been traveling
11. Time with my husband
It's simple and sweet. What are you thankful for today?

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1LW #2

Last week I pledge to have year focused on being Positive. Easier said than done. I never thought about being a "Debbie Downer" as my husband calls it.

I spent time praying about it and talking with my mom and husband about it. Since they are the two people I talk to most I figured I should let them in on my personal challenge. Hubs and I traveled to my parents house this past weekend, and mom was their to be encouraging as well as accountable. When she heard me talking and thought it might be about to take a turn she would smile and remind me to be positive. It was AWESOME, I loved it...and yet so hard. It made me acutely aware of how often my month says something negative. A few times I was able to change the direction on the conversation while a few others just had to be ended because their was no good to come out of them.

Thank you God for a mother that holds me accountable and encourages me!

Their were several other areas of my life that I want to work on too.

My marriage for instance. Hubs and I are still newlyweds (two years) but have been together for 8 and still find things that really get at each others nerves. I imagine that this never completely goes away. Several times I wanted to complain about a disagreement we had or he didn't do what I wanted him to do and then realized that nothing positive comes from that conversation.
I recently purchased the Bible on CD for him to have in the car. I thought this was an odd request, but he kept mentioning it. We got it in the mail just a few days before we started on our 11 hour round trip drive to visit family. We chose a book to listen to and little did I know the amazing discussions that would stem from these CDs. We listened to all but the last 2 chapters of the book of Matthew. We stopped and rewound, paused and discussed, asked questions and thought of questions to discuss with my family when we arrived. It was wonderful!

I felt so blessed to have a husband that has the same beliefs as me, yet so suprised to see how we inturpret things differently sometimes. I continued to read my bible and pray almost daily, I missed 1 day of reading because of the traveling. I feel that God is working in me to be a better wife, a stronger child of God and a Godly women to influence others. 

I ordered a book this past week called, My So-called Life As a Proverbs 31 Wife: A One-year Experiment...and Its Surprising Results. I had hoped it would be here in time for our trip but didn't arrive in time. Fingers are crossed that it comes in todays mail so I can read it on the plane tomorrow as we head on a little trip just me and hubs.

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