reflections on my week in Nicaragua

Are you seeking to have a more personal relationship with God? Are you seeking higher things in your spiritual life? Are you wanting more and more of your Savior?

Spend a week in a third world country and His grace and His majesty and His mercy and His power will be revealed to you in a new and bigger way. Spend a week without the 'conveniences' of America and you will find yourself more dependent upon the necessities of God. Spend a week with precious children that have a hunger for something more than food and you will have a much deeper appreciation of the abundance of our bibles and study books and availability of things that we can use to increase our knowledge of Him.

Our God has blessed us to the full. We have been given such a huge portion of His measure of Grace. He is so good and we are so lacking in our reverence and fear of Him. We need to push all our worldly possessions to the side and take a real close look at what is really important in our lives. 

When I boarded the plane in Managua, Nicaragua  yesterday afternoon, I was ready to get home to a good HOT bath, clean running water and the modern conveniences of home. When I landed in Jackson, MS to begin the 2 hour drive home, I was saddened at the thought of hot water and all those modern conveniences that we think are necessities. I was ready to go back to the land of simplicity. The land of depending on God for your comfort. The land of communing with Him and being satisfied with just Him...

Are you seeking a higher and more intimate relationship with God? Get back to the basics. Quit striving for more things and strive for more of the Lord. He is everything. He is all we need. He is.....

Do you want...?

Do you want to walk closer to our Lord?

Bow your heart before Him.

Do you want to grow in intimacy with our Savior?

Bend your knee to Him.

Do you want to have an ever growing and mighty relationship with our King?

Devour His Word.

Do you want an elevated glimpse of His glory?

Upon rising each morning, pour out confession to Him. Repent and cleanse your heart of all unholiness. Purify your thought process with prayer.  Determine to walk purposefully in His ways and pursue Him in all things. Seek Him with all of your heart and long for Him with a deep yearning.

If you desire these things, God will make Himself known to you! He wants us to want Him! He longs for us to long for Him! He wants to be found by us! 

Thank you, Precious Lord, for giving us seeking hearts. May we search for you with all of our hearts and never be satisfied with our spiritual walk. May we always be hungry for more...

"And ye shall seek me, and find me,

when ye shall search for me with 

all your heart"

(Jeremiah 29:13)

The First Thing...

My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you. When your judgments come upon the earth, the people of the world learn righteousness.Isaiah 26:9

As the sun makes it's way into our windows, we drowsily awake facing the new day and new mercies God has provided. Our dog, once relegated to her crate overnight has now earned the joy of sleeping at the end of our bed. She spreads out, gently tapping us as the night wears on; checking to assure herself that we are still there; she is safe. I liken this to the way we check in with God.

Hello, God, you still there? Do you see me? Hear me? I sleep better when I know you are there, watching, protecting, loving...

In the morning our precious pup rolls over as soon as one of our toes hits the carmel colored carpet. She begins a morning routine of wagging her forceful tail, in anticipation of a loving belly rub. Thwap, thwap, thwap, thwap...it becomes louder and louder. One can't help but notice the pure joy with which she greets the day, seeking first her trusted father to walk her and spend time with her. So, this begs the question... what is YOUR first? Do you greet the Lord with joy? Do you seek to spend time with him, nestling carefully in His word first before all else?

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Matthew 6:33

I did not used to begin my day this way. I would bolt out of bed, usually later than I anticipated, flying in seven directions forgetting to pray, neglecting to seek out my Father in Heaven, ignoring his tender pleas, "Come spend time with me." And as with any relationship, how can it flourish when we are giving our seconds, thirds or even lasts instead of giving our first?

Imagine the Lord's joy when we greet him in the morning, eager, ready asking Him to spend time with us...anxious to give Him our first. Like the unbridled joy of a vibrant, faithful friend, so we too should greet our day and our Lord with our first act of love, seeking His face and His word.

What is it you are putting first? If you are not already, try spending your first moments with the One who can prepare you for all the moments in your day.

Not Laboring in Vain

"Unless the Lord builds the house, it's builders labor in vain." Psalm 127:1

When I met the man who would become my husband, he had one thing on his mind...his house. He was deep in the throes of building a beautiful home on a quiet little street. Eventually, he would finish the house and we would marry making our sweet Victorian house into a home. We have welcomed two children in this home, and mourned the losses of three others. This year, our youngest will have her kindergarten pictures snapped on our homey wrap around porch, the same place her older sister had hers taken when she was five.

Big old trees surround our property and an old, historic carriage house stands somewhat precariously at the forefront of our little patch of Heaven. Ten years have elapsed, our home now needs work...painting and fixing and hammering, oh my! But I would not trade our humble abode for a perfect one, without the dents, scratches and history.

This house knows how far I have come and how much I have grown to love where God planted us. When our elder daughter came along, I was preoccupied with the thought that our home was not the home I had dreamed of. I had different visions for the kitchen, ours a large farmhouse kitchen that blends unknowingly into the dining room. I had different visions for the steps, ours white with a beautiful Victorian runner adorning each wooden tread, I dreamed of oak hardwood. Needless to say, there were many years I coveted the homes of others and secretly stashed Homes magazines pouring over the pages looking for our perfect home. But God knew all along...He knew this was our home. Over and over, He would provide for me confirmation that He ordained this home to be our own. With prayer and a resignation of my pride, God showed me time and time again to love and nurture this home and not jump ahead of Him.

....I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through Him who gives me strength." Philippians 4: 11b - 13, NIV

As I prayed about my worldly desires and my dream home, God reminded me very clearly, "I am your dwelling place." POOF! Just like that, God had managed to soften that hard place inside, that place that was dishonoring the labors of my husband's hands and the plan God had clearly orchestrated. In an instant, I felt the selfish desires slip away and began to see the beauty and provision in our home. It was in this home that my husband and two children learned how to pray, this home makes light work of driving the children to school and myself to that same school for work, it was in this home, that we consciously changed our lives, doing devotions each day and reading our Bibles consistently.

Ultimately, it became clear to me that the Lord does not desire for us to become attached to our worldly posessions. As special and meaningful as it is that my dear husband built the home we live in, truly it is not a home until we fully recognize the critical role God played in building this home too. Until we submit completely to His will, we are laboring in vain.

So, especially today, I ask, where are you laboring in vain? Are there areas of your life not fully committed to our precious Lord? Each day, I begin with prayer asking God, what is it you have for me today, Lord? I desire to serve Him with a joyful spirit and stand content with where He has me...is He the Lord of your home this day?

do you want more??

Do you want to know God in a more intimate way? Do you desire to have a deeper, more personal relationship with our Creator? Do you just want to seek Him higher?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, God is ready for you to take the steps necessary to make this happen! God pursues us and His desire is for His to purposefully pursue Him right back! He wants us to have a deeply intimate relationship with Him and when we are earnestly seeking this, He will NOT disappoint us.

The WORD tells us in Jeremiah 29:13, "And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart". Dear friends, He is telling us that when we seek Him we WILL find Him!! How awesome is that thought! He wants to be found by us. His heart is yearning for us to yearn for Him!

I don't know about you but that just fills me with such a deep longing to go face down and begin this seeking process right now! Oh, I want to be a true seeker of God. I want to be passionate about my pursuit of Him.

If this is your hearts cry, start each day in fervent prayer with our Lord. Pour out your heart to Him and tell Him your hearts desire. As you seek Him in purpose and prayer, He WILL be found by you...

Are you a Seeker?

I am a seeker. A seeker of God and a desperate seeker of His Word. I absolutely love to read the Word of God. I love to study it and let God show me new and amazing things nestled deep in the scriptures. He shows me familiar verses with new eyes. He reveals treasure in obscure passages and floods my heart with enlightened understanding.

"Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of Truth" (2 Timothy 2:15)

God's Holy Word. From His mighty lips to our hearts. Our needy and seeking hearts.

God-breathed. Holy Ghost-inspired. Living Truth.

I love the way everything in the scriptures just fits together so perfectly and proves itself true over and over. We see the prophecy of the Old Testament fulfilled many times in the New Testament. We see the perfection of the Word proved accurate and true time after time. Never contradicting. Never lacking in power. 

The Old Testament is full of such rich reading and is very important to our spiritual growth and to our Christian walk.  It is full of examples of God's power and sovereignty. Full of evidences of His wisdom and His might. Full of wonders for us to seek.

As we read the bible, both the Old  and New testament, we see God's people time after time, choosing to NOT follow God and His ways.  Choosing NOT to seek after God. And we see the evidence of God's punishment and chastisement that follows. Whether under the law or under grace, God's reaction to our disobedience is the same.

Jeremiah 10:10 says, "But the Lord is the true God, He is the living God, and an everlasting King. At His wrath the earth shall tremble and the nations shall not be able to abide His indignation"

Wow. That is some pretty rough stuff. So many times we read passages like this and we think that they were only applicable for those times. Old Testament. Before Jesus. Before grace.

Not so. God's Truth then is the same as God's Truth now. Is the earth not trembling with the wrath of God today? Is God not certainly full of indignation with the state of our world and with those who profess to be His children at this present time?

See, the beauty of God's Word is that it is timeless. His Word is as pertinent now as it was then. It speaks just as loudly and distinctly to our hearts in this generation as it did back in the days of Jeremiah.

God's Word is powerful. True. Eternal. Holy. Immutable. Inerrant.

It is full of wonder and full of mystery. Brimming over with marvelous passages of rich history and generous grace. Overflowing with everlasting Truth. Treasure waiting to be found by our seeking souls and hearts.

Oh, Father, help us to open your Word each time with new and eager expectation of meeting with You. As we pour over the scriptures, help us to see the wonder of Your Word and fill us with new understanding. Open our eyes and our hearts and fill us with the desire and longing to obtain deep knowledge of who You are. Grant us an encounter with You that will blow us away and change us forever. Show us your Glory!

Seeking Him Higher,