Saturday, September 24, 2011

I get it now!

I've always heard that the people in the Old Testament would not write God's name. I never really understood why. In the past few weeks, God has done an overhaul on my heart! I truly believe that because I have allowed him to work in me these past few weeks that he been able to accomplish more in my life in the past two and half weeks than in the last six years! God is AWEsome. If we are not sent to our knees when we think about all he has done for us, all he has provided, something is very wrong with our hearts and our perspective of who God is. You may be reading this thinking if God is so powerful WHY? We all face our questions, each of us have things we don't understand. When we stop letting those things scare us away from encountering God, and instead run to him with our questions, our hurts, our negative emotions, HE will meet us where we are, love on us and minister truth! I am going through a study of David, I have also been researching things that God has provided for his children in the Old Testament and also for us through Jesus' death and ressurection. My findings, prior to a few weeks ago I did not regard the God I serve as the same God who did all of these things!
When I spend time in desperate prayer, I am praying to the Almighty God who enabeled a shephard boy, untrained for battle, to conquer a nine foot GIANT! When I spend time praying over my baby boy before his nap for health and peace and sweet dreams, I am talking to the God who gave up his son for us, GAVE UP HIS SON and then three days later breathed his sweet breath of life into his baby boy! Really, my friend, if you can read this without getting out of your chair, kneeling down and thanking God for who he is, I pray that God will meet you like he has met me! Those people couldn't write God's name because they wintnessed the power of God! They knew without a Messiah, they weren't worthy to even pen his name because of his almighty power. I praise God that he sent his son, I pray that I will never lose what he has done in me these past weeks.

Friday, August 12, 2011

The 29th Cupcake

Any of my high school friends would tell you that all I have ever wanted was to be a "stay at home mom". This is the absolute truth! I have found in the last year of living that dream that it's not as glorious as I once thought. The days are long and too quick, lazy and extremely demanding, boring and exciting all at the same time! It is incrediby easy to get to the end of the day and wonder what was accomplished and if God will ever use me for more than ensuring two very clean hineys at every moment of the day! Will I ever have enough of myself available again to be effective outside of my home?

You never know what mundane activity God will use to speak into a dry area of your slice of life! Tonight I was finishing up spooning cupckake batter into liners and I really needed the recipe to make 29 cupcakes. It easily made 28 but I knew the 29th was going to be a stretch. As I began to scrape the mixing bowl with every utenstil I had around, I felt God start to speak to me in that still small voice. Isn't this how you feel frequently in your life? You feel like when you're still required to have something left to give to your kids, your husband, your coworkers, your family, to ministry, all that is left are the scrapings? There is a level of desperation that comes when your scraping for that last cupcake or the ability to bath one more kiddo, write one more report. (At this point I am scraping the bowl as hard as I could with tears streaming down my face feelng as though those scrapings represent what's left of me when everythng i am required fo do is done.)
Then I shifted my focus to my interaction with him; when I need something from God, when I feel like I am scraping and scraping to find him. I want to see him show up in some loud monsterous way but as I kept scraping the bowl, I felt him nudge my hesrt. "See that little bit of batter on that spoon? It would be so easy to look past but there is no doubt by it's appearance, it's taste, and it's function that it is batter!" This just made me realize how much I miss God showing himself faithful in small ways through out my day! Even though sometimes he slips
his blessings in in small ways, they are no doubt proof that he is right here!

So when God and I were finished our little chat, there was a 29th cupcake! It may not have been as big as the rest but i was no doubt by appearance, taste (it was my taste tester since it was anew recipe so after taking a few pictures of it, i ate it) and functon a cupcake! My friend, it's normal to feel like you have nothig left to give, It's awesome (hard and frustrating but awesome!) to scrape desperately to find God in moments of life, but don't miss him in the small ways he is showing himself faithful! He is right there big and small!