Children Make Us Crazy

I'm convinced of it.

Why else would I...

-hide band aids and tape?
-sing the ABC's in the shower
-pretend to eat plastic food
-scream the word "because!"
-let a child eat ice-cream for breakfast just so I have time to check my email
-call my husband "Daddio"
-take a 3 minute shower and feel clean
-ever-EVER say...'don't wipe, let me do it'

But also, I know that being a Mom is truly the most important job I have ever had. It may be exhausting and seem thankless at times, but the rewards are insurmountable!

I'm so thankful for my kids, and especially thankful that I get to see my oldest today! Matt is flying in from NYC for the weekend.

Time to Simplify Your Holidays

Lauren is on this new kick of asking me about the time. She walks up and serious as can be asks, "Mom, what time is it?"
It always makes me laugh because she knows nothing about time yet, but apparently she has figured out that this is something enquiring minds need to know.

That leads me to my post subject. Let me ask you, what time is it? If you guessed, time to prepare for Christmas you are correct.
I know, I know it seems to come earlier every year, but once Halloween is over, it's really time to get moving.
This was impressed on me even more as I read a post over at my friend Susan's place.
I want to share it with you and encourage you to start early, take you time and enjoy the true reason for the season.

While you're over there, hang out a while, Susan is a great hostess!

Simplify Your Holidays

Two shall become One ~ We Reap What We Sow

It's harvest time...well maybe a little past...but work with me here.

It's that time of the year when farmers gather up their harvest and enjoy the fruits of their labor. They've spent the spring-time planting seeds, then the summer watering, fertilizing and weeding.

Autumn is the time to reap the benefits of sowing healthy seeds.

In that same way, the current harvest in our marriage is the result of the seeds we have sown and cultivated in the past.

We are reaping today, the seeds planted last season (could be hours, days or months).
Is your harvest a strong and healthy marriage or are you struggling and feeling alone?
Could it be that we're not reaping love from our husbands right now because we were sowing seeds of disrespect?

I'm going to go out on a limb with my own experiences and say uh-huh, uh-huh (nodding furiously).

Heb 12:10-11
No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
NIV

A harvest of righteousness in a marriage requires sowing healthy seeds, watering, fertilizing and pulling up the weeds! It's not easy, we have to discipline ourselves to do things that we may not want to do.

James 3:18
Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.
NIV

Sometimes it's hard to sow the right seeds...but let me ask you- what kind of harvest do you want?
Don't wimp out and take the lazy way out- there's too much at stake.

It's going to take radical obedience to lay down your own wants and needs for your husband.


It will take way more than being the status-quo wife to live like this. In fact...it will be a direct contradiction to the pattern of this world.

The natural inclination is to sow condesending words and attitudes, but God calls us as wives to sow respect.

Eph 5:33
...and the wife must respect her husband.
NIV

Ok, so the farmer who wants corn in the fall, plants corn seeds early June.
If he wants carrots, he plants carrots.
If he wants pumpkins, he plants pumpkins...
You get the picture.


We reap what we sow.

Gal 6:7-9
7 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.
8 The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.
9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
NIV

I am living proof that this verse is true. Everytime I sow seeds of anger, bitterness and unforgiveness, I reap a level of destruction in my marriage. But when I sow forgiveness, mercy and respect I reap a happy home. (Ladies, sometimes just try smiling more...it really does make a difference!)

The Lord wants to rebuild marriages and strengthen the bond between us, but He needs our co-operation. We need to plant seeds that will bring life to our marriages.

First plant respect, it is your husbands #1 need. From there, look at the fruit of the Spirit that as women of God we should be producing:
Gal 5:22-23
22 But the fruit of the [Holy] Spirit [the work which His presence within accomplishes] is love, joy (gladness), peace, patience (an even temper, forbearance), kindness, goodness (benevolence), faithfulness,
23 Gentleness (meekness, humility), self-control (self-restraint, continence).
AMP

Let's pray,
Father, thank you for every women reading this today that has a desire to honor You as the wife You've called her to be. Empower us by Your Holy Spirit to walk in the fruit of the Spirit in our homes. Help us to respect our husbands, even those who aren't walking in obedience to Your Word. I pray that You would heal broken hearts and bind up the wounds that no one else sees.
I pray for complete restoration of marriages that some have counted as lost.
Nothing is impossible for You God!
In Jesus name we pray, amen.

I would love to hear testimony of how God is using these TSBO Tuesdays and highlight them from time to time in my posts. Please email me what God has been doing in your marriage and let me know if I can share it (indicate if you would prefer it with or without your name).
Thank you!

Are you lucky?

"Good luck!"
"You're so lucky."
"I'm having a lucky streak."

We hear these things every day, but how true are they?
Interestingly enough, the word is not found anywhere in the Bible.

Here it is in Webster's dictionary:

Luck: 1 a: a force that brings good fortune or adversity b: the events or circumstances that operate for or against an individual 2: favoring chance

As you can read, it is based completely on chance.

The definition of chance is:

Chance: something that happens unpredictably without discernible human intention or observable cause b: the assumed impersonal purposeless determiner of unaccountable happenings.

Did you see that? "The assumed impersonal purposeless determiner of unaccountable happenings."

In other words, there is no one that determines or has purpose for things that happen.

To believe in luck is to say that there is no God.
It is to believe that this life is a series of random happenings void of a Creator.

Here's another one that I hear quite often these days.
When someone deserving faces trials and struggles or good fortune.
"It's karma"

Websters says:

Karma: 1 often capitalized : the force generated by a person's actions held in Hinduism and Buddhism to perpetuate transmigration and in its ethical consequences to determine the nature of the person's next existence.

That says it all!

God's Word says:
Gal 6:7-8
7 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.
8 The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.
NIV

If we believe in the God of the Bible, than we know that there is no such thing as luck or karma.

I think it's important for us to think about the meaning of these words, certainly not to police everyone around us, but to be aware of the depth of things that we might casually say.

Please don't use this information to become the obnoxious Christian in your workplace correcting everyone else's speech, most people have no idea what these things mean.

Instead, walk in wisdom and love as we all grow up in the Lord. And pray for opportunities to share the truth of God's Word everyday.

Eph 4:14-16
14 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.
15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.
NIV

God Bless!

Captivate Him With Holy Beauty

I can not tell you how many wives I have cried and prayed with that are believing God for their unsaved husband. Such a heart-wrenching place to be. They love their husband but can’t share the most important part of their life with them.

Sometimes the husbands even go to church and confess to be Christians, but are not living a Christian life and the woman feels that she is alone in her walk. She longs to have her husband take the lead spiritually, to pray with the family and teach the kids to love the Lord and His Word.

Each time I sit with a women in this position, I share a verse that I feel is the key to a woman walking this path.

1 Peter 3:1-2
3:1 Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the Word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, 2 when they see the purity and reverence of your lives.
NIV

The key phrase here: “without words.”

So often we feel it is our job to convince them to follow the Lord - with our words.

Preaching at him every opportunity we get will not draw him to God, unfortunately it will probably push him to the point of wanting nothing to do with our church or our God.

Read it in the Amplified version:

1 Peter 3:1-2
3:1 IN LIKE manner, you married women, be submissive to your own husbands [subordinate yourselves as being secondary to and dependent on them, and adapt yourselves to them], so that even if any do not obey the Word [of God], they may be won over not by discussion but by the [godly] lives of their wives,

2 When they observe the pure and modest way in which you conduct yourselves, together with your reverence [for your husband; you are to feel for him all that reverence includes: to respect, defer to, revere him — to honor, esteem, appreciate, prize, and, in the human sense, to adore him, that is, to admire, praise, be devoted to, deeply love, and enjoy your husband].
AMP

Well there you go. We have quite a list to keep us busy:
* to respect him
* defer to him
* revere him
* to honor
* esteem
* appreciate
* prize
* to adore him
* to admire
* praise
* be devoted to
* deeply love
* enjoy your husband

Seriously, let’s go through this list, one by one and really ask ourselves where we can improve in these areas.

Do we respect them? In front of the kids? In front of others?

Do we defer to him as the leader in our home? Really???
Like when we know that he really does not want us to do _____________, do we do it anyway??? Or do we choose to defer to him and his position?

Do we honor and esteem him?
Let me ask it this way, how does your husband know that he is honored and esteemed in his home?
I challenge you to ask him….

Do we prize them? How do you treat something that you prize?

Adore? Admire?

PRAISE, are we praising them?
I have often said that it is our job to be they’re biggest cheerleader in this life. What do they get the most accolades for? If we are not their biggest cheerleader who/what is?
They will gravitate to that person or thing, ie: job, sport, etc.

Are we devoted to them? Another spin on that…what do we devote ourselves to, is it them…or could it be “good” things such as church/kids, etc. that come before our husbands?

Do we deeply love and enjoy our husbands?
Maybe the idea of enjoying them is absolutely foreign to you, I’ve spoken with many women that feel that way. Let me just tell you, it’s not too late to deeply love and enjoy them –and enjoy your marriage.

That’s God’s plan for marriage! Enjoyment and pleasure.
Our marriages can be a little bit of heaven on earth.

Let’s look at one more version of that verse out of The Message Bible:

1 Peter 3
1-4 The same goes for you wives: Be good wives to your husbands, responsive to their needs. There are husbands who, indifferent as they are to any words about God, will be captivated by your life of holy beauty.

I love that, what a picture it paints. “Be captivated by your life of holy beauty.”

That radiates true womanhood!

Captivate him.

I would love it if you would share (in the comments) how you have already applied this in your life or how you plan to.

I’m praying for our marriages.

The Power of Love

1 John 2:15-17
15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
16 For everything in the world-the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does-comes not from the Father but from the world.
17 The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.
NIV

Love should be reserved for people, not stuff.

1 John 4:7-8
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.
Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
NIV

The time is always right to do what is right

I want to share with you an email that I received from Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It is a timely message that will encourage you to focus on the things that really matter in this life.

October, 2008
Friends, I’d like to share a recent dream with you.
This is October 2008, early in the morning. I am away on a spiritual retreat. While sleeping, I dreamed of two converging streams. One stream was the economy, the other stream was a deep, dark, stream with a powerful current. This stream was the spirit, whether of God or man, I could not see. This stream was a mystery. As I woke up, I realized that the streams represented today’s dilemmas, the economy being the problem, the spirit the solution.

The economy stream was heading towards a huge vortex, where other streams were converging; broken marriages, drug abuse, AIDS/STD, failing school systems, sexual abuse and sexual dysfunctions, houses, businesses. I looked for abortion, knowing it had to be somewhere in the mix, but it was hidden. Major institutions were whirling in the vortex too, Wall Street, Planned Parenthood, banking systems, political systems, and sadly, what appeared to be religious institutions. I looked for the Body of Christ, and found her in the spirit stream. Marriage, Life and Family are in the spirit stream, guided and guarded by Love.
I have a dream, it is in my genes. My Uncle Martin, my grandfather, Daddy King had dreams too. Martin’s dream was for the nations, one of Granddaddy’s dreams saved me from abortion, another saved my son from the same fate.

This particular dream about the streams comes in the wake of a growing discontent in my heart with our present times. The Body of Christ is in the spirit stream. The spirit stream is more powerful than the vortex, yet it is dark and mysterious, and most people don’t trust what they can’t see. Yet, those who are investing their prayers and yes, their money into the spirit are seeing something amazing, their efforts are staying afloat, not sinking, not converging into the vortex. The spirit stream converges somewhere too, it flows steadily into a river.

There is a river whose streams gladden the city of God, the holy habitation of 'Elyon. (Psalm 46:4)

So, this is a time to trust the Spirit of the Living God, to communicate with God in spirit and in truth. Our spirits can converge with His, if we are prayerful and wise. This could be a time to invest in the spirit and not in flesh and material things. But seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:33) End of the dream.

By building on things which are eternal, we can find hope in this present time of trouble. The thing is, we must not lose sight of moral priorities in the face of economic stress. Yes, these are troubled times, times of trouble, we need to anchor our faith in Jesus, through His love, so we remember what’s important. What the current economic meltdown should teach us is that our hope is not in the things of this earth, but in God. If financial pressures cause us to stop loving our neighbors, to think only of ourselves, we will lose much more than money. If we stop giving to charity, cease donating our time to help others, or, in the extreme, abort a baby for financial reasons, we literally sacrifice the eternal for the temporary.

Ultimately, what brings us the greatest rewards or the worst scars are the choices we make that have spiritual consequences. In the end, we don’t look back at our lives and think of refinanced mortgages or stock trades, but of those we loved. Let us trust God and love Him by loving others in good times and bad.

As my uncle, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “The time is always right to do what is right.”
God bless you.

Blessings and prayers,
Dr. Alveda King
Pastoral Associate,
Priests for Life and Gospel of Life Ministries
Niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

You can find out more about Alveda and her powerful ministry at:
King For America