tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35215904773847448932024-02-07T11:13:30.232-06:00Just saying.....Psalm 107:2 tells us to, "Let the redeemed of the LORD say...." And I am one that has been redeemed by the Blood of the Lamb! Therefore, girlfriend, I fully intend to be SAY-ing!Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12005695519129502934noreply@blogger.comBlogger531125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521590477384744893.post-48117753715853471042013-04-25T23:15:00.000-05:002013-06-07T14:25:38.952-05:00I want to "spend" better.<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSwiSYWClBXtz_CXUzvQDcd9RByV529Dfuuwn4-ZpasUqD3ommIWwfcX2jItfz7fyjHJXiVz8gzWyPklm9k-RbPZpR7cmERUvmOIiNuEN_-MCVhipBjBZckxmN0Nz2gg6fXGAtkuPrk_8/s1600/taste+and+see.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSwiSYWClBXtz_CXUzvQDcd9RByV529Dfuuwn4-ZpasUqD3ommIWwfcX2jItfz7fyjHJXiVz8gzWyPklm9k-RbPZpR7cmERUvmOIiNuEN_-MCVhipBjBZckxmN0Nz2gg6fXGAtkuPrk_8/s200/taste+and+see.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I told the Lord this morning that once we've "tasted and seen" that He is GOoD...then we cannot get enough. From then on out and forevermore, we're spoiled! We no longer ever, ever, ever again want to walk, talk, serve, work, act, hear, see, "do", in the natural; we now want only His supernatural <i><u>every</u></i> time! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm asking for me and mine today what my oldest daughter (Prissy) asked for me to ask for her two days ago, some of His "daughter-of-the-Most-High-King favor" in all kinds of out-loud out-doing Himself flavor in every way that He chooses to shower us! May we bask in His Presence while seeing Him and enjoying Him while watching and participating with Him in His work! May the Glory of His wonder radiate from our faces... and in all that we do, may we be about our Father's business and in doing so be about Displaying His Splendor! For after all, as 'children of the Most High King'.. should we be expected to exude any less than such?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I had posted what you just read above on my Facebook page. I don't post often anymore, but this morning, I was just too full not to! I found I had to spill out (or explode if not!) somewhere.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A close friend commented by saying, "Don't we ALL just need/want/desire His lavish mercy & grace! BTW... I saw something new as I studied yesterday!!! LOVE THAT!!"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I commented back: ""Don't we ALL just NEED/WANT/DESIRE His lavish mercy & grace"? Indeed so!!! And so much more!!!! I DESIRE/WANT/N.E.E.D. to serve Him, as well! For as we both know, it is in serving Him, <i>spending</i> ourselves for others, that we are more filled ourselves. I want to <i>"spend"</i> better!!!!............ "Saw something new" just yesterday??? YES! It's a favorite "LOVE THAT" moment and feeling of mine myself!!! OH, at the wonder of our Lord!!!"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've thought a lot about what I've said since then. What I said in prison this week to those beautifully-faced women that I talked to there. We've had a majestically, royally, Divinely, WONDER-<b>FULL</b> time this week in our classes. Our God blew our minds in our spellboundness at all of His saying! We literally all left after meeting together soaring! No prison razor-wired fences nor steel-slamming bars kept those girls in prison captured. They may have gone back to their bunks, and their legs may have been forced to stop, but our hearts were dancing to The King of kings at the song of the music that He had given us to sing! These imprisoned inmates may have been wearing their uniformed white, but His royal daughters have never looked more lovely!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That was our Monday night and Tuesday morning and Tuesday night, but then our Wednesday night service took us to a whole new wonder. Upon arriving I still was unsure of exactly what we'd talk about. I had a hodge-podge of some thoughts jotted on a piece of paper, yet I didn't feel we had a main text for the night. I was a bit fearful of how it would go, of what I would say; but I was trusting my God and His Spirit to fill me up and take control of my heart and my mind and my mouth, and to say only (and all) of what He alone wanted to say. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Needless to say, He answered prayer and took control, and He did just that! And as it is when He does, it was magnificently, overwhelmingly awesome. His message was perfect. We were fueled up and left with a greater want-to. A more determined determination. A new focused fascination. We left having<i> heard</i> Him! We left wanting to serve Him! We left not only refueled and renewed, we left leaving on a mission!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I could type for the next three hours attempting to recapture and sum up what was said, but bottom line, God reminded us of one thing that He constantly says, and though constant, a thing that He continually needs to remind us. He told us (again!), to love our enemies! To bless them! To pray for them! To do good to them! I told them that we are constantly wanting to get well, but that if we instead started focusing our attention on someone else and "spending" ourselves on them, then that's when we'd receive our healing! If we truly loved our enemies... if we looked for ways to bless them... if we prayed for them... if we really, really, really did things to "do good" to them(!!), <b>then</b> we'd be filled up with fullness, and it'd heal our anger, our meanness, our madness, our unforgiveness, our bitterness, our backbiting, our gossip, our slander,.........our "healing would quickly appear," "our righteousness would go before us," and "the glory of the Lord would be our rear guard,".... "our light [HIS Light!] would rise in our darkness," the Lord would "guide us," He'd "satisfy all of our needs," and our "frames would be strengthened" (see passages below).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If we quit being so focused on ourselves and we were "being about our Father's business" as Jesus was (and still wants to be), then we could turn upside-down until right-side-up in a prison!!! :)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I can't quit thinking about it. I've written myself a note to tape to the mirror of my bathroom, "I want to love better! I want to 'spend' better! I don't want to waste time, I want to be about my Father's business!"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">May we all both <i>love</i> well (both love ourselves until we're well.. and love others until they can get well), and may we <i>spend </i>ourselves well on others!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"Shout it aloud, and do not hold back,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Raise your voice like a trumpet.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Declare to My people their rebellion</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>and to the house of Jacob their sins.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>For day after day they seek Me out;</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>they seem eager to know My ways,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>as if they were a nation that does what is right,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>and has not forsaken the commands of its God.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>They ask Me for just decisions</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>and seem eager for God to come near them.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>'Why have we fasted,' they say,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>'and You have not seen it?</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Why have we humbled ourselves,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>and You have not noticed?'</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Yet on the day of your fasting,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>you do as you please</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>and exploit all your workers.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>and in striking each other with wicked fists.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>You cannot fast as you do today</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>and expect your voice to be heard on high.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Is this the kind of fasting I have chosen,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>only a day for a man to humble himself?</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Is it only for bowing one's head like a reed</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>and for lying on sackcloth and ashes?</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Is that what you call a fast,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>a day acceptable to the LORD?</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>to loose the chains of injustice</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>and untie the cords of the yoke,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>to set the oppressed free</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>and break every yoke?</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Is it not to share your food with the hungry</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter -</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>when you see the naked, to clothe him,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Then your light will break forth like the dawn,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>and your healing will quickly appear;</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>then your righteousness will go before you,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>you will cry for help,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>and He will say, Here am I.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>If you do away with the yoke of oppression,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>with the pointing of finger and malicious talk,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><b><u>and if you spend</u></b> yourselves</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>in behalf of the hungry</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>then your light will rise in the darkness,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>and your night will become like the noonday.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The LORD will guide you always;</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>He will satisfy your needs</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>in a sun-scorched land </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>and will strengthen your frame.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>You will be like a well-watered garden,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>like a spring whose waters never fail.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>and will raise up the age-old foundations;</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Restorer of Streets with Dwellings...</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>(Isaiah 58:1-12)</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like I said, I've thought a lot since our Wednesday night's commission to get busy about our Father's business. Again, I want to love better! I want to "spend" better! I want to let the Lord do all that He wants to do in this body of mine in all of the time that I am still left here to do it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span>Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12005695519129502934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521590477384744893.post-17830657776878024322013-03-31T05:18:00.000-05:002013-04-03T14:22:05.753-05:00If they had had phones!!!<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"At once [when Jesus drew His last breath] the curtain in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, and rocks split apart. Graves opened, and many of God's people were raised to life. Then after Jesus had risen to life, they came out of their graves and went into the holy city, where they were seen by many people."</i> ~ Matt 27:51-53</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hmmm... </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Can you even imagine?!! </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguSdFGxv00Gaislpg4ejg5PWzYnz_kfuiWFgIb7gXbRouX7pbtH8_fvmJzrcF92r84mG0qxuB4OG-cIURUm8nAHoLxaaNUbQIljIR-gJfucCg6Kb2vd8B-YA8uBGNkRSdRH5IAiB_coI0/s1600/Oh+my+goodness.....png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguSdFGxv00Gaislpg4ejg5PWzYnz_kfuiWFgIb7gXbRouX7pbtH8_fvmJzrcF92r84mG0qxuB4OG-cIURUm8nAHoLxaaNUbQIljIR-gJfucCg6Kb2vd8B-YA8uBGNkRSdRH5IAiB_coI0/s320/Oh+my+goodness.....png" width="192" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Can you imagine the mouths dropped open... the hugs,... the screams,... the squeals,... the conversations, and maybe perhaps even the fainting!!! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If they had had phones back then, can you imagine everyone grabbing their cells and calling everybody they knew to tell<i> who</i> it was that they just saw or were talking to! The tweets of</span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> "You'll never guess who's here???!!!"</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">... The Facebook status's of: </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"You'll never believe this"</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">...! The Instagram pictures showing proof of the live-walking-around-presence of the recently raised previously dead friends!!!.... </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Wow! I'm sure as "the risen to life" person left that the person that was seeing them took off to run to tell somebody else! I wonder at that awe! I wonder at the chaos! I wonder at the joy! I wonder at the tears that fell! I wonder, too, what it must have looked like from the Heavenlies! Not counting all of the "Ahhhh"s.. and "Oh my goodness"es over the Savior that had risen, but there were site-ings of people that family and friends hadn't seen walking alive on this planet for years!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What was that like? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And then.... What happened to them???</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Did they soon disappear to lie back down in the former graves that they had just left? Or, did they go back to their normal lives, and live until they died again? What did they say to their loved-ones? What questions were they asked? How many tears were shed? How many apologies? How many I-love-yous? How many I-miss-yous? How many I-don't-want-you-ever-to-leave-agains?</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Were there any oh-my-goodness-you'll-never-believe-the-beauty-of-what-Heaven-looks-likes?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Many of God's people rose when Jesus did!!! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Jesus rose..!!! He's the Ultimate!!!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And now, because He did, we now can too.... and if saved, someday we really, really, really forever-after really, really, really really will! :)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span>Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12005695519129502934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521590477384744893.post-14951679180916799512013-03-29T19:57:00.000-05:002013-03-29T19:57:40.921-05:00An email from the Ultimate!<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbKiPN7MKj59KPJPKDGsOLf0AMhQDNIiuNGYqOnMMbe19uQENWWhxQXjz0aDU3ZsqRjaSCiOaCpBDwj9kXfGtms6nmBhrphNqNXMATmSvXsy1OQKTTw810xMQ_vpqnLHtMXQbs3RiygQg/s1600/God+of+all+comfort.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbKiPN7MKj59KPJPKDGsOLf0AMhQDNIiuNGYqOnMMbe19uQENWWhxQXjz0aDU3ZsqRjaSCiOaCpBDwj9kXfGtms6nmBhrphNqNXMATmSvXsy1OQKTTw810xMQ_vpqnLHtMXQbs3RiygQg/s200/God+of+all+comfort.jpg" width="158" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Wow! After posting the previous post out to a mass email of friends, and then receiving several of the sweetest replies, the following verse was emailed to me (via. Verse for the Day) the next morning:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>the Father of compassion</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>and the God of all comfort,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Who comforts us in all our troubles,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>2 Cor 1:3-4</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Praise God indeed!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For when I opened that email I HEARD my Shepherd's voice!... and I knew, too, that He was telling me (and HER!) that HE has heard! Not for a minute after mailing out the mass email did I fail to see God speaking everywhere in His sweet resounding reassuring way! Saying out-loud that 'This IS Who I Am: "The Father of Compassion / the God of ALL Comfort - Who comforts us in ALL our troubles."' </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I had already begun on a rampage and deep into digging into another verse that relates so huge with this. He amazes me! And I love that after sending out that email that HE Himself it seemed wrote back to me telling me (and mostly her!) that 'He's in'(!) - and that He's 'in' with the compassion that can't be measured / and the comfort that can handle it "all"!!... every bit of it!!.. everything!! And with that also, another wonderful thing in His nice reminder that all those that have received the comfort before her, was given that comfort to share. Talk about an email! It was an email sent from the Ultimate - God Himself! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I felt Him rallying in the troops!!!... People started emailing back the sweetest things, crying out to Him for her!!! Sharing the comfort that He had once shared with them!!! A full-circled-cycle! Warriors running to war in a battle that they themselves once fought... and crying out fiercely against the evil threat of the enemy.... fierce in their seriousness to help the wounded, because they've felt that hurt!... and they were given that comfort! They know the One Who comforts!... and are now eager in their efforts to share! How SWEET! I LOVE that He let me see so vividly its picture!!! Praise Him! Praise Him! Praise Him! <i>"PRAISE BE </i>[for real!!!!] <i>to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, Who comforts us in all our troubles,so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God"</i> (emphasis mine).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'll amen it again: Praise Be!!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span>Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12005695519129502934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521590477384744893.post-19205247014694466432013-03-28T16:12:00.000-05:002013-03-28T16:12:27.426-05:00If you saw her...<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">If you saw a little girl robbed, beaten, and left for dead in a place where you were walking by; if you saw her hand outstretched reaching out for yours; if you stopped long enough to see her tears, her wounds, her bleeding, her desperation, her need; if your compassion moved you deep enough to look and linger longer and you listened long enough to hear her cry........ and if you heard her say between wretched sobs because of her dire need for help; if you heard her say to you: Go tell my father! Go get him! Tell him I'm hurt! Tell him I need him! Tell him I won't make it unless he come!"..................... Would you go? Would you go get her father? Would you tell him she needs him? Would yy tell him to come?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">If in awe and pure fear and a total stunness of the moment, if you stayed just a tiny bit longer, and in just a glimpse you saw underneath her two little boys wounded and beaten and robbed too; and if the need overwhelmed you........ They need the help of their father!!!! Seeing them there, how could you possibly not go get him?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I have a friend who wrote to me the other night telling me that she needs prayers, she's having a very rough time. She wrote asking me to pray. And wrote asking me to ask others, too, to pray for her. In all sorts of ways, she's been robbed, she's been beaten, she lays bleeding; and as she cries, so many pass her by. She's not asking for anything other than prayers, she's asking that we will go tell and get her Father! She's asking us to ask Him if He'll come and help her!</span></div>
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Will you go? </span></div>
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Will you prayer for her?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He knows her name and the names of the two boys that lie beneath her. If you will, go get Him! Tell Him to hurry! Tell Him to come! They need Him so.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Thank you in advance to those who stopped to see and who won't pass them by!</span></div>
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>"A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper, 'Look after him,' he sad, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.' "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise.""</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Are you "going and doing likewise?" Which one are you?</span></div>
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Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12005695519129502934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521590477384744893.post-1540113924874801472013-03-24T05:12:00.000-05:002013-03-28T15:51:25.476-05:00A closed door that didn't stop Jesus<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp1M_TiQ7mgpp1lJ5Tu_w0YlweJ_4EnxCDW_MIbQmYnr6BYM1RBliu23avqgLQj3Aia_OrkDpNFESWvNL8mazrK7TktmgSzU6P4bim3VZOHBdiOYGJ3f4isw3v-slc6ywnrrxdN5be8vc/s1600/Locked-Door1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp1M_TiQ7mgpp1lJ5Tu_w0YlweJ_4EnxCDW_MIbQmYnr6BYM1RBliu23avqgLQj3Aia_OrkDpNFESWvNL8mazrK7TktmgSzU6P4bim3VZOHBdiOYGJ3f4isw3v-slc6ywnrrxdN5be8vc/s200/Locked-Door1.jpg" width="133" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I love the Word! Have I said that lately? I<i> <u><b>l.o.v.e</b></u>.</i> the Word! I cannot begin to tell you how much I love it!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I love when a passage speaks. I love when a word jumps off the page at you. I love when it magnifies itself! When it screams attention! When it shows up in 3-D. I love when it makes it into your heart, into your mind, into your soul, into your spirit, into the marrow of your bones, down into the deepest and every part of you and you can't quit thinking about it! I love when it penetrates! When it pierces! When it incites! Excites! When it thrills you! When it fascinates! When it amazes you. Awes you. Astonishes you. Entrances you. Captures you. Captivates you. I love when you can hear it like you've never heard it before. When you can see it differently! Clearly. Visually. When it feels like it's just for you! Or when you know that you've just seen it in order to grab the phone to make a phone call to tell someone else! I love its speaking! And I love when you can't help but to tell of what it's just said to others!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I ran across such a word today! One that once seen it stayed in my seeing! One that I've tried to keep picturing! One that I could visualize in the time that it told of, and one that I can't help but envision happening thousands of times since.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"On the evening of that.. day..., when the disciples were together, <u>with the doors locked</u>..., <b>Jesus came</b>..."! ~ John 20:19 (NIV)</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Woe, what a statement!!!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"That Sunday evening the disciples were meeting behind locked doors... Suddenly, Jesus was standing there among them!" (NLT)</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"On the evening of that day.. the disciples had gathered together and locked the doors of that place because they were afraid.... Jesus came and stood among them" (NET)</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Can you picture it?! Can you imagine?!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"... when the doors were shut.... Jesus came..."!!! (NASV)</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"Although the doors were locked; Jesus came..."!!! (ESV, 20:26)</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"Even though the doors were shut, Jesus came..."!!! (ISV)</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"...Yeshua came when the doors <u>were barred</u>; He stood in the center and He said to them...." (Aramaic Bible in Plain English, 20:26)</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Oh, that Jesus comes! Even when doors are locked! Even when doors are locked! <b><i><u>EVEN W~H~E~N DOORS ARE LOCKED</u>!!!</i></b> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What a phenomenal thought!!! Especially last night for all those locked behind barred doors inside the prison I was in! Jesus comes! HE came! (Oh my goodness, it was phenomenal ) With no door being able to bar,to lock, to shut or to keep Him out if He wants to come in it! What an encouraging thought! What a tremendous truth and reality!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We often lock our doors... from fear, from wounds, from hurt, from despair, from disappointment, from depression, from misunderstanding, from rebellion, from ______..... All kinds of "from"s!! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What mood or madness or emotion locked your door?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Jesus can come!... even when doors have been locked! When doors are locked... GLORY!.. HE STILL COMES!!!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span>Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12005695519129502934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521590477384744893.post-65547536650037695122013-03-21T21:03:00.001-05:002013-03-23T10:18:15.120-05:00Show ME Your Glory!<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">I ran across an old email today that I wrote to a friend on 11/4/2005. It said:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">I just had a thought: Why do we focus so often on the darkness and the evil and the ugliness of things around us in this world (complain! complain! complain!), when there is so much Light? Let's focus ALL of our thinking on Go(O)d things today... and not give the enemy glory in all of the havoc that</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"> he has created. For I wish to give ALL of my glory (my headline news!) to that which is really Glorious. Let's sing praise to our Creator and Savior with every word we utter.<br /><br />Exo 24:17 says, "To the Israelites the Glory of the LORD looked like a consuming fire on the top of the mountain"...<br /><br />To Sharon "the Glory of the LORD looked like" the rise of the sun and the mercies that He brings with it that are "new every morning"....<br /><br />To David "the Glory of the LORD looked like _____________"....<br /><br />And all day long Sharon and David saw the Glory of the LORD in all of His wonder all around them.<br /><br />Let's have that said from our God about US when we lay our heads down upon our beds tonight.... that we saw the Glory of the LORD because we took the time to see it!!!<br /><br />"Then Moses said, "Now show me Your Glory" (Exo 33:18).<br /><br />Then Sharon said, Now show ME Your Glory...<br /><br />Then David said, Now show Me Your Glory...<br /><br />And now, let's recognize it and praise Him for it when it appears!!<br /><br />David wrote back. He said:<br /><br />It is just amazing at God's awesome way of making things and thoughts connect to His wiring and signals. His network is worldwide, and even bigger than that. As I ponder the question, "What Glory do I see?" I had just yesterday afternoon, when reflecting God's amazing grace and power, was awed at the sight through the window I was looking through. I shared with a co-worker, that no matter how splendorous the project, or how pretty the paint is, nor how majestic the architectural design on any building on earth, NOTHING matches the beauty of the raw sky and earth. When GOD shows off and gives us a pretty day, my eyes will never get tired of looking at it, nor does the scenery get old, because NOTHING beats the portrait that GOD draws!!!<br /><br />AMEN!!!! Well said! The Glory of the LORD, indeed, has been seen!!!!!!!!!!!! :)Today has been a Very, Very GOoD day!</span><br />
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Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12005695519129502934noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521590477384744893.post-34706808667599796742013-03-17T11:41:00.000-05:002013-03-23T13:28:55.650-05:00Sometimes we choose crooked.. or crooked chooses us<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsp51tjgcjNKraVq4Zx_ZEB4B6f1xIRv6JTTyYe6YtravlABEKjPEsbdj3AaBymfYAOdDvVo8rNo3uctl7D6B8zTVFXKQZEwnjW72Uyhu_UCRlZu7q5NEL4Qt5rwYIGJOPSQdm_8BgDjY/s1600/sad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsp51tjgcjNKraVq4Zx_ZEB4B6f1xIRv6JTTyYe6YtravlABEKjPEsbdj3AaBymfYAOdDvVo8rNo3uctl7D6B8zTVFXKQZEwnjW72Uyhu_UCRlZu7q5NEL4Qt5rwYIGJOPSQdm_8BgDjY/s200/sad.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I hate rape! I hate killings! I hate stabbings! I hate robbery! I hate meanness and ugliness, just for meanness and ugliness sake! I hate illness and I hate diseases.......</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I hate lots of things that have gone on that I wish had not! LOTS! LOTS!!! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We live in a crooked world, and just get knocked crooked a whole lot of times on the paths of our journey as we're walking along. Sometimes we choose crooked, or crooked chooses us.... Either way, we often end up knocked crooked and then are left having to deal with it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Torn ligaments are painful to walk on after the tear, broken bones need healing, wounds need tending, holes need mending, bruises HURT because there's bleeding under the skin..... Isn't it amazing how many wounds there are that can't be seen to the naked eye, yet causes the one wounded to hobble or to walk funny without obvious reasons to the person observing them? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some wear a frown and a furrowed brow. Some snarl and growl. Some bite and hit. Some smile, wearing the disguise, yet carrying inside them an "I'm-crying-inside-but-nobody-knows-it-but-me" heart. Some lick their wounds and nurse it their entire lifetime, rocking its sorrow and singing the tune of its blues. Some laugh, but it's fake and loud in its attempt to cover. Some dare another person to get close to it, and snap in attempts to bite them if they try to. Some dress the wounds while constantly picking the scab to make it bleed. Some run like crazy, bursting it open again and again at their crazed incited accident-waiting-to-happen lunacy. Few, only a few, will take it to The Great Physician Himself and allow Him to wash it and clean it, stitch it and sew it, anoint it and dress it, and allow Him to bandage it and tend to it until it's completely and totally healed.... leaving the "few" to wear it as a testimony to The King! The scar still shines as its 'Purple Heart Medallion,' its medal of honor pin, testifying to the soldier's valor, his combat in the fight, his bravery to do what must be done for victory to come. Oh, these 'few' may walk with their limp, but(!) they'll walk with their heads held high, with security in their steps, with joy in their hearts, peace in their minds, and smiles on their faces that bear the marks of a resurrected life because of the one they left behind and chose not to swim in for the rest of their days appointed on this earth. They'll choose to live for the next life, and not die daily in their<i> this </i>one.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I could not resist. I had to pause here to go look up the Purple Heart. Here's what I found: <i>"The PURPLE HEART is awarded to members of the armed forces of the U.S. who are wounded by an instrument of war in the hands of the enemy and posthumously to the the next of kin in the name of those who are killed in action or die of wounds received in action."</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When we're wounded, may we allow our Great Physician to heal us, and may we wear our Purple-Hearts to display and honor our King! May we combat the enemy.. and fight for our freedom, because freedom never has, and never will, be free!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"In the thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa was afflicted with a disease in his feet. Though his disease was severe, even in his illness he did not seek help from the LORD, but only from the physicians." (2 Chron 16:12).</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Wow! And Asa died because of it! Let us not be guilty of such!.. of going to a doctor, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, or counselor, even a friend,... but not go to the Lord, the Great Physician, Himself! No matter what you've done, or has been done to you, Jesus Himself CAN (and wants to!) heal it! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span>Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12005695519129502934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521590477384744893.post-9051505679350584462013-03-14T13:28:00.000-05:002013-03-23T16:11:44.854-05:00Who closed the door?<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"What, LORD, what about this? What? Is this right? Help me here! Is this Your will? Is this spacious place, this refuge for people, this place to run to that we'd been praying for... not that at all??? Were we wrong? Because, it's okay if we were, we only want Your will. It's not for us anyway! Not for our glory, but Yours! But is <u>this</u> Your will? Or have we just so easily excepted the closed door as being that it is?"</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In my frustrated confusion that's what I asked Him. After people had such a knowing of what God wanted done... the door was shut! And, those that were asking excepted the closed door as the will of God. But me, after there had been so much prayer, I couldn't help but question it. I couldn't rest in such ease of acceptance.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I wondered.... is it really, really, really God that closed the door?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I could not help but think: when Moses went before Pharaoh after God had sent him, Pharaoh did not immediately and readily and graciously submit to Moses' request. Mind you, it was God's request that He had sent Moses to request for!</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was a fight before Pharaoh let the Israelites go! </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And Joshua was told to go in and possess the land that was promised to be given to him.... but the inhabitants of the land did not bow down and move over and off at his coming. It was a fight before possessing the land. That very land that God's very own chosen people were SENT to go to, and promised to be given! Satan does not move over just because we approach someone and ask. Satan does not just give up and give us the land just because we want it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I can't help but wonder: Do we know how to fight?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We ask and pray, and we hope and believe.. but do we know the first thing about fighting? And if we believe, really believe, then won't the belief, the faith, be tested to see if we really believe it or not? Isn't it part of the requirements of believing in the fight of holding on to what we believe has been said and promised to us?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Do we know how to fight?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Do we fight?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Do we even expect to have to fight?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Do we know what fighting is?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Or do we bow at the closed door that we've prayed to be opened, and being that we find it closed (because Satan dare not want us to go in and posses it), we bow and call it closed by God's very own hand? When possibly it wasn't God's hand at all? Are all the closed doors closed by Him? Is it really Him? And how do we know??? Because I know that IF we know that it IS God's hand that we really don't want to go there. We really can be happy and satisfied with knowing that it's simply not His will, therefore it's not best, and we can submit to God's answer whether our will and our want was hoping for the other thing or not, because we know Him enough to know that He knows best and that in the long run, we really do want what He wants... whatever that is.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our problem comes when we aren't sure of His will. How do we know what His will is? <i>HOW </i>do we <i>KNOW</i> what He wants??? How do we<i> KNOW</i> His will for any thing???? When an important matter in our walk on this earthly sod in the roles chosen for us to play comes up, perhaps a "life or death" matter for one or for many, how do we really KNOW what His will for that matter is??? HOW??? We can think strongly that God is leading us to do something, we can be greatly convicted of it;... then what changes what we were so convicted of the day before?? Does a mere measly meager "No" change all of that? Just because the door doesn't swing open do we become doubtful of what we first ever thought to begin with??? Is that the way it should be??? <u>A wishy-washy double-minded man depending on the accessibility of the door that swings on its hinges or if it's barred shut or not</u>? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I don't know. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How do we know?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How do we really, really, really know what His will is?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And why do we think that by believing we won't have to fight to possess what we're believing for?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These things baffle my mind. It's wonder won't quit wondering. I need to know!!! I keep putting before God all of these things that I don't understand. Asking Him about certain things that I've been believing Him for - for days and weeks and months and years of thinking this a thing to be something that He has said to me...yet the door still has not opened. "LORD, is this You or not??? LORD, is this Your will or not??? LORD, did you say this to me, or did my own mind make it up??? Do I continue to believe, or am I foolish in thinking it ever Your will at all in the first place??? LORD, HOW do I KNOW Your will and what You want???" Because if I know it's Him, I can fight!!!!!!! I can hold on to the hope and fight for the thing in total belief for it, because of my belief in Him no matter the struggle or the man in my way, no matter the door that looms locked and imposes. But if I'm not sure, I can't and I won't. And I'm not naive enough to not know that Satan still slithers up to us as he did in the very beginning of time in the Garden of Eden and whispers his very first question that he asked of man, "Did God really say ___?" And with his questioning what I had originally thought that God had said to me, I begin to doubt that it's God's will at all, and if God really said or He didn't.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"If any man lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. BUT when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does..." </i>Those verses follow the ones that say, <i>"Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you KNOW the TESTING of your FAITH develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking in anything." (James 1:5-8,2-4, emphasis mine)</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The testing of our faith still comes!!! Just as it did for Abraham, for Isaac, for Joseph, for Moses, for Joshua.................. and on and on and on until our turn! And as surely as the testing of our faith still comes is the truth of<i> "without faith it is impossible to please God" (Heb 11:6).</i> And I believe that sometimes believing is a fight! We must fight for things that we believe in, in order to possess it. Yet, I don't think believing is the only thing. Where's the fight? I don't think we really understand what fighting means. I don't think that it's faith alone with our saying aloud that "we do believe." I don't think it's prayer alone. Or maybe that's incorrect? Maybe that really is exactly what fighting is? BUT I don't think that we can call a battle being fought and it really qualify as fighting with only being on ours knees for a night. I think fight sometimes gets up day after day after day and is not thwarted by a door disguised as "closed" by God's hand because it didn't fall open at the first breath blown from us in our asking it to.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Doesn't that make sense? I am needing God to give me wisdom here. I really do go to Him with the question, "How do I know?" And I really do wonder if we're missing what "fighting" really means? I really do wonder if what we do really qualifies as being called a fight as He's called us to do? Can we call what we do fighting? In our armor, we're only given one weapon with which to fight with: <i>"the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God."</i> Revelations 1:16 tells us of Jesus (Who IS The Word): <i>"from out of His mouth came a sharp double-edged sword."</i> What does that mean? He told the disciples to <i>"speak to the mountain."</i> In the desert when satan was tempting Jesus, testing and trying Him, Jesus quoted Scripture. Scripture doesn't tell us that He stopped to pray! He spoke Scripture to the enemy. He uses His sWord. What does that mean??? Do <i>we</i> wield the sWord... really?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How do we know? How do we know His will? How do we KNOW it for sure? And do we really think that we won't have to fight for what His will is? Can we call all closed doors, doors that have been shut by His hand? How do we know when satan slithers constantly and consistently with his, "Did God will say" echo? Those questions that make us wonder if God really did or not? And do we even really know the first thing about what fighting is?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'll be honest, there are a land of giants, enemies that possess a land that I feel with all of my heart that God has told me is His promise to me... I feel He's told me to clear them out, to go in and possess it, so that His Glory will Shine! not for mine! not for me! HIM!!! Him!!! HIS Glory alone!!! <i>"So that all the people will know that I am God and there is no other"!!!!! </i>I look like a grasshopper up against these giants! They're huge! They're mighty! And they're mean! And because the "Israelites" of today (God's people, Christians), because they themselves haven't been this way before, they've spied the land, and want to run the other way and leave the enemies in that land where they are! All the while saying, <i>"We can't attack those people, they are stronger than we are... The land we explored devours those living in it! All the people we saw there are of great size!... We seem like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we look the some to them... If only we had died in Egypt! OR in this dessert</i><i>"!!!</i> So God let them die there!!! They died there!!! So many died!!!!... never going into a land that had been promised, for fear of driving out the enemy before them! They only wanted to go if they were invited, and if the door was graciously opened to welcome them in.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There's a land that I do believe that God has promised to me (and I don't mean earthly sod). He's entrusted me with a hope for a thing that looks incredibly hopeless, the most impossible looking thing that I think that I can even think of. It's crazy! A ridiculously looking hope in most Christians' eyes. But a hope nevertheless that won't let me go. Not that I won't let go, but it won't let me go!! GOD keeps placing it in my hand when my hands threatened to drop the craziness of it. I've prayed. I've sought His Word. I've asked His will. I've asked Him again and again and again. And I want you to know that I'm talking GIANTS here in that land... Giants!!@!! Something bigger than me!.. .and they don't want to leave!!! To get then to... will take a fight!! And I'm not sure that I know what fighting really is! And in my I-don't-know-how-to-fight place where I am, satan whispers, hollers, yells, accuses, shakes his head all over my face: 'Did God really say that to you? You just made that up! God didn't really say! And God won't do that too-big-of-a-thing anyway!'</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How do I know for sure if it really is His will or not? And if it is, what's it mean to fight for it? And if it's so big and will be used greatly to show His Glory, what makes me think it won't be a fight in the first place? Is it He that has closed the door that I've not been able to open? Or, are the walls that surround its gates of the enemy? I just need to know!!! The 'gates of the enemy' don't scare me so much, because I KNOW the ONE Who has the power to possess it!.. the power to remove it... or the power to crumble it. I just have to know that I know... and fight for what I know is right! What's the closed door mean? And who was it that closed it?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I still have questions that I seek answers to. God knows my heart. I can honestly say that I am seeking Him with every bit of it. He promises that the one who does will find Him. My hope is in Him! My trust is in Him! <i>"I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in His Word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning" (Ps 130:5,6)!</i> Abraham was a long time in receiving his promise.... most of them were. It's my turn. It's my season. It's my wait. It's my generation. And if you're reading this, it's yours too. I long to SEE what my heart hopes for!!!!!!!!!!! For HIS Glory!!!!! For His Name's Sake!!! To show the Magnificent of HIS GLORY!!!!!!!!!... so.... that(!!!) people will know!!!</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.... By faith Abraham, even though he was past age... was enabled to become a father because he considered Him faithful who had made the promise" (Heb 11:11).</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And now us, in our turn, if God saw fit to write about us, what would ours say? By faith _______, even though _________ was enabled to ____________ because (s)he considered Him faithful who had made the promise. Or, could He not say that about us at all because our faitha and our fight has failed Him?</span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span></i>Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12005695519129502934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521590477384744893.post-63158482102105249512013-03-12T19:56:00.000-05:002013-03-23T09:38:25.976-05:00This _____ is what I'll need!<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I had an older friend write to me to request my help in prayer for something that he believes with all of his heart that God wants him to do. He feels strongly that it is God that told him to do it. It is to further the Kingdom's business. It is in hopes to give others that don't know Jesus a place to come... and thus, a place to be introduced to Him. He wanted me to pray about it, and asked, too, that I would share with him anything that I felt like the Lord was leading me to tell him. It took me several days to respond. Finally, after much prayer, I wrote him back. Below is some of what I told him:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">After opening my mail and reading what you wrote I as extremely leery of writing anything back unless I felt it strongly and it was a huge knowing inside for me to tell you so. I prayed yesterday about it, and have prayed throughout the day today, and I've told God that if He wanted me to give you an answer in any way that He would have to give me one to give. I walked into my bathroom just now thinking about it, just wondering... but not really even asking the question at this point, and as I leaned over to look at my face I felt He said to me, <i><b>"Be bold!"</b> </i></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">"Be bold?" I asked. "That is Your answer? To be bold" </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">And with all of my heart this is what I felt He said to me (not with verbalized words that are audible to hear, but hearing inside my heart):<i> 'If it's for My Glory, for My Kingdom's sake, for My Name, and for the saving of souls, and for My people.... if it's to serve Me in My Kingdom; then be bold in asking for what it is that you want, what it is that you need, to serve Me with all of your might... Be bold! Ask with boldness! And believe Me to give you what you ask Me for! What would I not?... if it's for My Glory?'</i></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">Wow! Good point!!!! Why would He not? What won't we come to Him believing that it is HE that has lead us there? And if we say we believe that He is behind the whole thought of it, if we know that, then why do we question whether He is willing to answer us or to do the thing we need Him to do or not???</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">Why aren't we bold? Why don't we believe when we ask Him? Why do we think we must beg and plead? It's for His Glory for Heaven's sake! For HIS Name!! not for us!!! not for ours!!! We're being about our Father's business!! Serving and washing feet!! Teaching and equipping!! Let's believe Him to equip us for what we need in our serving Him!!</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">As a warrior, and as a child of the King, see yourself on bended knee before Him on His throne. See Him tell you what your orders are that you are to do to serve Him! Then, see yourself raise your eyes to His and say to Him, <i>This ________</i> is what I'll need in order to do what You've asked me to!</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">Be bold! Pray audaciously! and believe Him for it! If it's His will, He will provide! Thus pray for His will to be done!</span></span><br />
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<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">"If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer" ~ Matt 21:22</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span>Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12005695519129502934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521590477384744893.post-89013525880260119872013-03-11T08:36:00.000-05:002013-03-23T08:37:07.315-05:00I feel overwhelmed!<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Friend: What do I do?? I am asking God.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Me: I think you answered your own question.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Friend: Thank you!</span><br />
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<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Me: You're welcome. It's a war! We must all fight to save!</span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Friend: I feel overwhelmed</span><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Me: Amen! It's the "How-can-I?" syndrome! Moses had it... Gideon had it... Saul had it... Isaiah had it... Jeremiah had it.... Just to name a few. But it's God's comeback that holds the answer: <i>"I will be with you!"</i> God first sees the slavery, He hears the cries of the one oppressed, then He acts by SENDING one to help in their deliverance. It's just how He works. "Overwhelmed" can find solace in WHO it is that goes WITH him! Now GO... and do what you know that He's told you to!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span>Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12005695519129502934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521590477384744893.post-5846015953233583392013-03-09T23:43:00.000-06:002013-03-22T07:20:41.410-05:00But Jesus OFTEN withdrew to LoNeLY places<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"But Jesus OFTEN w.i.t.h.d.r.e.w. to LoNeLY places and PRAYED!" </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>(Luke 5:16 emphasis mine)</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have so missed <i>withdrawing </i>to my <i>lonely </i>places with Him! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am sad to admit to my negligence. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Today I have sat at the feet of my Jesus and been fed!!!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have not studied.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have not done homework.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have not sat down to prepare a lesson.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have simply been with Him. Listened. And prayed. What a beauty-filled-full morning!!!!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Perhaps we have 'lonely' times, moments, seasons, on purpose? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Perhaps we have these 'lonely' times in order to go away and withdraw to Him alone? Because, sometimes perhaps, if we didn't we wouldn't withdraw alone with Him at all?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's been another VERY GOOD day. I've missed this for too long! For sadly I have been distracted by too many things. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Today... I was focused on One!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span>Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12005695519129502934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521590477384744893.post-69256581963159153862013-03-08T21:44:00.000-06:002013-03-22T07:21:09.665-05:00His mercies are new every ____<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I had a super hard (challenging!) last 5 weeks. Then, on top the turmoil, last Saturday I fell. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Twice! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I don't remember what happened either time. To put it simply, I suppose I just blacked out; though normally I know I'm headed that direction because I feel in advance the light-headedness starting to take over. Such feeling gives me time to put my head down, and wait until the feeling passes over me; thus preventing such falling from happening.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not this time.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first fall wasn't too bad. The second? Left evidence! Though I cannot tell you anything that happened, by deduction I've figured out what it was that I hit. A huge concrete urn that sits right inside my front door. It cracked my tooth, cut a place underneath my jaw, hit my cheek bone, tore up the top part of my ear, scraped and put a huge knot on my head behind that same ear, and whopped the top of my arm and my hip. Today I am sporting a rainbow of colors such as purple and blue in some places, and I'm wearing a putrid green upon my face. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But that's not why I'm writing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In my month of "hard" (Lord, please forgive me when I whine!)... I switched only between two sets of clothing. The first: "Trying". And the second: Plain out "Ugly."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now, after the fact, I feel horrid! That being so, I texted my daughter (who during this time so very kindly listened to me), my husband (who patiently tolerated me), and my best friend (who sympathized despite all of my ridiculousnesses). I typed to all three:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">God so gently and sweetly and tenderly (but seriously!) reminded me of a portion Scripture that I quote and think of often. The part that I often say to others and that He reminded me of is that we are to be <i>"a display of His Splendor"</i> (Isa 61:3). I cannot tell you of the countless times that He has stopped me in my tracks with the ever-knowing admonition that in my present mood of the moment that I am failing to display any Splendor of His at all. I am displaying alright, but it's only a nasty look!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am ashamed and horrified and embarrassed and sorry for all of my ugliness these past few weeks!! Please forgive and except my apology.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then today, just now, God wildly reminded me that another part of that very verse says that we are to wear <i>"a garment of praise"</i> instead of being clothed in<i> "a spirit of despair.</i>" </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I will be honest and tell you right now, I had been garbing myself daily from the wrong wardrobe!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yuck! He's so right!!! I have very much failed Him. The garment that I have been clothed in was a pitiful unexplainable darkness of despair that I looked (and felt!) horrid in!... simply no joy (no praise!) at all within or without of me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Please forgive me when I whine! For I have so much to praise God for. Indeed, the JOY of the LORD is always our strength. I love, too, the reminder today and the admonition from my Lord.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like I said, I sent this to Prissy (my daughter) as well as the other two; later to find out that Prissy had been having a very hard day herself. She didn't get off until 11 p.m... and on top of everything else in her day, she found out on the way home that she had company staying with her, knowing that she had work again at the 6 o'clock hour in the morning. For lack of a better way of saying it, she was wearing the same shoes that I had previously been wearing... She was tired, stressed, and in mood.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And then!!!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After her unexpected guest greeted her at the door with prayer!!!... she immediately "chose" joy and to receive the blessing being spoken over her. She later texted me back. I L-O-V-E what she wrote!!! Wow at the blessing that this child is to me! She responded to what I had earlier texted. She said:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Wow!!! Amen!! I couldn't have said it better, and what perfect timing. HE'S SO GOOOOOOD!!! His mercies are new every mourning (yes, I spelled that wrong on purpose, and yes I am my mother's daughter!). Declaration: Tomorrow I will display Your Splendor for all to see, I will wear Your praise gladly on my lips, face, and actions and I will <u>notttt</u> fall into the pit of despair (noun: The complete loss or absence of hope). You are the Lord of all! And I receive Your joy for tomorrow for both me and my momma!</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I so love her heart!!!!!! AND her misspelling!!!! Perfect! And beautiful! ('His mercies <b><i>are</i></b> new every mo(u)rning!') I'll never see that verse the same now because of her!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"His mercies are new EVERY"</i>.....</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thank You, Lord, for all of the "EVERY"s that You cover!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12005695519129502934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521590477384744893.post-8327701193388028492013-03-07T16:08:00.001-06:002013-03-07T16:08:11.370-06:00A broken silence<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For someone whose voice has somewhat felt silenced, I sure seemed to 'say' a lot in all sorts of different venues yesterday. But... back to the same new friend that I had been emailing. She shot me a quick email at 9:25 p.m. last night simply saying: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>I was riding my bike with Jesus tonight and I made a declaration in your name with regard to your writing. I BELIEVE He will break that wall and your pen will hit the paper and sing love songs to our Savior.</i> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How sweet! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I like her!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I wrote her back this morning: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Oh girl! I will receive such a declaration! How beautiful that you took me along on the bike ride with you two! :) What a special thing for you to do! I love that God has orchestrated our lives to be brought together. May He bless you mightily and magnificently in all that He has for you!</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I continued:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>I would apologize for such a spill to you in my email on Wednesday, but I dare not... for what you first wrote opened a wound, it started a bleed, and perhaps it lanced a boil that had need for lancing. I needed the release of the infection inside me! Perhaps even rather than "it opened a wound," perhaps instead it opened a "womb" (or thus visited one!), and helped nurse the child OR the "seed" (the desire, the longing) within it! And so yesterday with such an 'opening', I had then to do something with it! I sat at the Throne of Grace, I sat at the feet of Jesus, I sat before my Father... and I cried as I spilled my heart's feelings. And don't you know, dear friend, that every tear is caught in His bottle! And that every tear talks!!! Every tear tells with liquidized words what the heart feels that the mouth will never be able to put voice to! And so, my dear Jehovah, He opened a river of His Own! He heard my cry (and heard yours too!), and I feel that He indeed touched my lips, and has released my tongue from the roof of my mouth (Eze 3:26a), and has started the beginning of a voicing-revival (Eze 3:27a)! :)</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>So.... dear friend, I thank you! I thank you for the thoughts and the feelings that you somehow provoked in your sharing (Divinely planned, I'm sure!). I feel refreshed and renewed! I feel like I've gotten my voice back! I feel that I've been healed of its laryngitis. May He give me eyes to see again with the lips He's opened... and then may I share what He has so sweetly shown to me!!!</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>May God bless your heart today and tender it as His is. May He give you eyes to see into the heart of someone you might have missed. May He give you insight and knowledge and understanding, and may He<u> move you</u> with His compassion so that you will do what He would! May you be the 'Jesus with skin on' to someone today that is desperate to see Him! </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>I love you today! (I hope you FEEL it!)</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So wow, today I have been soaring with my Savior! I feel that He has spoken to me as He did to the woman in Luke 13:12, <i>"And when Jesus saw her, He called her to Him, and said to her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity."!!! </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Oh Lord, I thank YOU, and praise You for such loosing!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>.</i></span>Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12005695519129502934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521590477384744893.post-55471312392451458782013-03-06T11:09:00.001-06:002013-03-06T22:07:14.622-06:00I've been missing me<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I don't know where I've gone. And I don't know how to get me back. But it's March in 2013 already!... and I haven't written the first blog! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I haven't written, because it seems I've completely forgotten how to write! And for one who once had to pen <i><b>E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G(!)</b></i>..... I miss me! As crazy as it may sound, I miss my write! I miss my<i> have-to</i>! I miss my <i>need</i>! I miss my <i><u>got-to</u></i>! I feel as I have been blinded! I miss my sight!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's like a friend that I've put out to pasture. Like a friend that I've misplaced or left behind. Like an invisible friend that I've neglected. A friend that I've hung up on. A friend that I've walked away from. A friend that I've lost. A friend that I'm looking for. A friend that I cannot find! </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It might not be </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">your</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> friend, but trust me, once she was mine!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Where is the <i>me</i> I used to be?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yesterday, and the day before, I was writing to a new friend, a friend that my daughter introduced me to. And twice, maybe three times even(?), without even knowing me, in her emails she told me that I ought to write a book... and that if I did, she'd buy it! Her words made me cry. It stopped me in my tracks. I wanted to tell her (and I did) that I lost my write. That I have not just forgotten<i> how-to</i>, but with all of my <i>want-to</i>, I've still lost my <i>have-to</i>! It's like the pen to my soul has dried up. There's no ink to spill. There's no <i>think</i> to quill. There's no... it's almost like inside me there's no fill to <i>feel</i>!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No. That's not so true, but it is too! There is feel. I do feel! I feel a lot! But yet it seems my feel is lacking. It's not like it used to be. My feel isn't FILLED full enough to spill out. And honestly, I am super sad to say so!</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Used to I simply couldn't help it! I couldn't stop myself if I had to! I'd write on anything I could find. A napkin. A receipt. A paper bag. My hand. My arm. A check. A deposit slip! A blank spot in a book! A pamphlet! A magazine! I could hardly sit without pen in hand with paper. I almost couldn't hear a word (or read one!), especially in church, without scribbling in ink something that had moved me. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It used to be like a flood. But now, though it still comes, it seems to come only in drops! What's left is just a mere drizzle. Where's the gush that used to rush over me? Where's the flooding that used to fuel me? Where's the overwhelmation that used to move me? Where is the umption that used to take over me?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Umption" </span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the motivation <b><i><u>to do</u></i></b> something</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">a driving force</span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Where's the need? The pain? The angst? The joy? The ecstatic? The anguish? The fire? The ____.... All of the "The" things that are missing?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This friend that was emailing me shared with me some poems from a poet that had been an invalid and so stuck on her bed for 35 years! When I read that and after reading one of her poems I thought: Woe, at the gift she was given in being laid there so long obviously for that very reason!!!! Don't hear me wrong, I DO NOT wish to be an invalid unable to get up, but I love what this lady did in the place that God put her! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I suppose that the reason that that visual hit me so hard was because of a place that I was when God first captured me so and I was so desperate for Him! I would pack my children off to school and spend every hour of every day while they were away upon my bed delving deep into God's Holy Writ and sitting at the feet of my Jesus! I literally spent years there, and dared the world or the people in it to pull me away. I was a sin-sick soul in desperate need of her Savior! I needed help! And I needed healing! I treasured each moment! Each minute! Every second! Every tick and every tock of the clock! I knew then that that time was a gift. I knew then that it wouldn't last forever. I studied! I cried! I wrote! I wept!..... And now I miss those days! I miss the time I was given! I now am in prison teaching so much that I don't have the privilege of sitting silently hour upon hour so that I can be filled enough for the words to spill out of me. To do so, I need quiet. I need lone-ness. I need uninterrupted-ness. And I need lots of it. I don't know how well I write; but what I do know is that I still have an everlasting longing, desire, <i>NEED!</i>, to do so!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So now I sit here in the quiet of my home with three sleeping dogs surrounding me. Bible close by, pages already opened and read, fire place warming my back, looking to my God! Looking to my Lord! Tears have slid down my cheeks as I've talked to my Savior... willing Him to see, willing Him to feel, willing Him to be moved with His blessed compassion.... Asking Him as I so often do to let me see Him see me in the place where I sit! In the place where I've sat with Him for so many years previous. I've felt Him here! I've heard Him here! I've seen Him see me here! He has simply so many times blown me away with His wonder in this very spot!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That's all I need, Lord! A fulfillment of you! Whether it ever passes on through from my fingertips to a page does not matter. It's You I want! It's You I need! Teach me, Rabboni, for I am Your student! Teach me, for I am Your servant! Forgive me! Tell me! Show me! Change me! Transform me!..................... for after all, it's not "me" at all that I have been missing, but You, Lord, due to all of my busyness. Martha was distracted by many things, when it was Mary that had chosen the "one thing"! I used to be a Mary, dear Jesus, but I am afraid lately that Martha has invaded my every minute..............</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span>Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12005695519129502934noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521590477384744893.post-81087879569418159672012-12-31T23:04:00.001-06:002013-01-06T12:13:27.221-06:00Goodbye 2012<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">It's been a great year! A busy one. So much that I should have written about (so much!), but didn't. There we so many moved moments that my pen (or fingers) failed to paint (by typing) in hopes to capture and hold to later vividly remember. I suppose it's because I had less quiet time, less by myself time, less down time, less time to get into the zone and spill out in black & white typed verbiage all that the day had filled me with. I look back on the empty pages for day.. after day.. after day.. until after month after month....... and my lack, my failure to, it seriously saddens me.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I'm tired. It's less than an hour left in this 2012 year, but I knew that I had to stop if even long enough just to say something (anything) to acknowledge and to end this year with before laying this head of mine down on its bed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">But.. I am so sleepy. I don't think my eyes will stay open very long, and my brain is already in its slo-mo mode and shutting down without my will or my wanting it to....</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I just wanted to end my year by thanking God! By praising Him for the goodness of all of His blessings! I am blessed beyond measure! I'll never be able to thank Him enough. He's always <em>always</em> there. And He always provides. Always protects. Always grants and gives...................... </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Always... so many always!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Hopefully by tomorrow there is more to come... but tonight I can no longer hold these eyes of mine open... I'm exhausted! But a good exhaustion.... And now, "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake........................."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">.</span>Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12005695519129502934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521590477384744893.post-81819404818891505222012-11-28T22:09:00.000-06:002013-01-06T17:30:43.492-06:00He continues to speak!<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I suppose in my lack to blog very much lately, every once and a while something is still so massively profound in my moment that I feel that I have to find a way to type words to share the evidence to someone of its happening. Instead of posting here at the time, I texted my best friend of its woe-ness.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I am post-dating this post to its actual date of November 28, 2012. Yet, I am actually typing this recording on January 6, 2013. Reason being, I have been reading the past posts of 2012 and just came across my post on January 8 ("<a href="http://sharon-justsaying.blogspot.com/2012/01/who-are-you-show-me-your-who-ness.html#comment-form" target="_blank"><span style="color: #cc0000;">Who are You? Show me more of Your "Who"-ness</span></a>"). Woe! Might I just say "WOE!" to what I'd just read?! I had forgotten all that. But upon my reading it again and it refreshing my memory, it reminded me of a very similar happening all over again exactly ten months and twenty days later.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Here is it is just as I had captured it in a few texts between my friend and I on this date (Nov 28) in my 2012 year..</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Me (11:42 a.m.): This is where I am today... preparing our Wednesday night meal for our Tutwiler ladies. I'm overwhelmed!! It's so much! It's so good! How do you capsule the wow-ness and wonder of something God has said? I can hardly sit still here as I read it. I keep getting up and shaking my head as I attempt to consume one morsel right after another. I am woe-ed in a magnified sense!!!! Prayers are greatly appreciated!!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Her (11:45 a.m.): I see a "but"...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Me (11:45 a.m.): Yes, you do!!!!!... and many more!!!! But's can change the world!!!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Her (5:14 p.m.): Father, as Sharon speaks tonight allow Your Spirit to FLOW & FILL!!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Use her reverence to Your glory!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">May those who hear be CHANGED! Wanting evermore of YOUR Presence!!!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Thank You for granting, giving & bountifully blessing our lives! You are lavish, Lord!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I praise You in advance for Your working / hovering tonight!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">We adore You, Lord! And praise You through Your precious Son's Name! Amen</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Me (5:15 p.m.): Woe!!! I was painting my face and talking to God. In my conversation I brought up Mikayla, asking Him about her again, but not expecting Him to say anything about it. I "amen"ed and turn my Pandora on. And the first song that came on was a song I'd never heard of before. WOE!! Look up the lyrics, I was blown away: What Life Would Be Like, by Big Daddy Weave. Added even to the importance of the words, is the artists God has singing it. Big Daddy Weave always reminds me of God (our Ultimate 'Big Daddy' weaving the story)!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Her (5:37 p.m.): The song...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><div align="center">
</div>
</span><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I wish I was more of a man.</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Have you ever felt that way?</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">And if I had to tell you the truth,</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I'm afraid I'd have to say</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">That after all I've done and failed to do</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I feel like less than I was meant to be.</span></div>
<div align="center">
</div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">And what if I could fix myself?</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Maybe then I could get free.</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I could try to be some body else</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Who's much better off than me.</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">But I need to remember this</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">That it's when I'm at my weakest</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I can clearly see.</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span> </div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">[Chorus]</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">He made the lame to walk, </span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">and the dumb to talk</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">And He opened blinded eyes to see</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">That the sun rises on His time,</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Yet He knows our deepest desperate need.</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">And the world waits, while His heart aches,</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">To realize the dream.</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I wonder what life would be like</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">if we let Jesus live through you and me...</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Yeah.</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span> </div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">What if you could see yourself</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">through another pair of eyes?</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">What if you could hear the truth</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">instead of old familiar lies?</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">And what if you could feel inside</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The power of the Hand that made the Universe</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">You'd realize...</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span> </div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">[Chorus]</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">He made the lame to walk, </span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">and the dumb to talk</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">And He opened blinded eyes to see</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">That the sun rises on His time,</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Yet He knows our deepest desperate need.</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">And the world waits, while His heart aches,</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">To realize the dream.</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I wonder what life would be like</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">if we let Jesus live through you and me...</span></div>
<div align="center">
Yeah</div>
</span><div align="center">
</div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">All our hearts, they burn within us.</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">All our lives, we've longed for more.</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">So let us lay our lives before</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The One who gave His life for us.</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span> </div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">[Chorus]</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">He made the lame to walk, and the dumb to talk</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">And He opened blinded eyes to see</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">That the sun rises on His time,</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Yet He knows our deepest desperate need</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">And the world waits, while His heart aches,</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">To realize the dream.</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I wonder what life would be like</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">if we let Jesus live through you and me..</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Yeah</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span> </div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Let Him live through you and me... yeah</span></div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span> </div>
<div align="center">
</div>
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Me (9:26 p.m.): Thank you for sending me that. It's the "He made the lame walk, and the dumb talk. And He opened blinded eyes to see.." that got me. It reminded me of the verse that God once gave me after asking Him specifically if He was going to heal her. The verse targeted her lameness, her speechlessness, and her blindness. (Matt 15:30-31, "Great crowds came to Him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others, and laid them at His feet; and He healed them. The people were amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled made well, the lame walking and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel.") Why do I ever doubt?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">By the way, we had the best, best, best, best, best night in prison tonight!!!! Thanks for praying. I love God!!!!!</span><br />
.Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12005695519129502934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521590477384744893.post-45387139954298339122012-08-23T20:53:00.000-05:002013-01-06T12:23:22.719-06:00When shalt nots... still do!<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Okay. So I've blogged about it before. It's not new. But, on some days, the line looms over me. And though it doesn't laugh, nor does it mock or make fun, it doesn't beat over the head or badger, it doesn't reprimand or yell in frustration... No! Instead, it whispers, it reminds, it tries to convict and convince!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The line?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"The Lord is my Shepherd I shall <b><u>NOT</u></b> w.a.n.t...."</i> (emphasis mine!!!!)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The LORD is my Shepherd...... </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">shall. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u>NOT</u>! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>w-a-n-t</b>!! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ugh! I might have a problem! Because right now, my wanter's wanting!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It wanted a month ago. It wanted again a couple of weeks after. And it's wanting again for tomorrow and this weekend.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It wanted in Illinois. Then it wanted in Tennessee. Now it's wanting in South Carolina. In about two weeks, it'll be wanting in Pennsylvania! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ow!! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I ache with want-itis! And then, I'm horrified and overcome with the guilt for wanting... when we are NOT to! My 'shalt not' shalts when it's told that it shouldn't!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What do you do then... when your wanter wants? You try to stifle it. You whine about it. You complain about it. You pity yourself. You wrap yourself in sorrow. You sulk. Your brows furrow. Your mouth frowns. Your whole demeanor becomes downcasted. You grab your laptop and start typing. In your despair, you blog about it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want."</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What is it I'm wanting, you wonder?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Short and simple: Him! The Lord! My Shepherd!!! The Great I Am! His word! His voice! His wonder! What He says! A message from the Great God Almighty! My Father in Heaven! The overwhelming feeling / knowing / filling / wrapping / wearing of His Presence!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There's a Living Proof Live with Beth Moore tomorrow in Charleston, South Carolina! There was one in Moline, Illinois that I had tickets to back at the end of July that I missed due to other circumstances. There was one in Knoxville, Tennessee two weeks after that. There will be one in Reading, Pennsylvania on September 15th.................... I so <i>want</i>ed to be there! I so w<i>ant</i> to go! To experience the wonder! To share in the worship! To praise Him with the multitude! To break the Bread with a whole host of sisters! To bask in His pleasure with synced awe in our hearts and our voices with so many soaring the same soar all around me! To...................................</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Oh Lord, see me long and desire and seek to see You! Show up and show me all that You want me to hear and to see all alone here in the quiet and the loneness all by myself here in my room! It's You I want.. and You I crave to hear... You can speak with Your voice.. in Your Word... without using the mouth of one of Your teachers. That's what I'm seeking. That's what I'm craving. That's what I'm wanting... not her, not them, not all of that, not what they can give, but YOU!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, yes, indeed, it truly is true! <i>"The LORD is my Shepherd; I shall not want"</i> ... because You alone (as my Shepherd) knows and can satisfy all of my need! For it's not the other sheep that I'm longing for. It is the Shepherd Himself that my heart hungers after!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And the best part of it is, even more than I want to see and hear You, no doubt, <em>You want</em> me to hear and to see You even more than I do! Come Lord Jesus, Your servant is here... Your servant is looking, Your servant is listening! <em>This sheep</em> baaas and cries out in need and in want to her Shepherd that longs for Him to draw her near, to hear His whispered words, and for Him to hold her......</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span>Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12005695519129502934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521590477384744893.post-12745659673771612962012-08-10T01:15:00.001-05:002013-01-06T12:30:39.724-06:00Oh my goodness! He's so cute!!!<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEjZNSYAyxJHi7b-lPS2mKVYUyBUba8z-bQFLwZwD2sLI3Ec3XsK0TY-mLE44pTLekLpGAvqWM2L3ma-jJZrzpTCOy6uWqDN1EDXwBA8EDS8YVbLE9QVIMmr5ZLCbDF7mtM5RMmaOV1BI/s1600/bullfrog+Jeremiah.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEjZNSYAyxJHi7b-lPS2mKVYUyBUba8z-bQFLwZwD2sLI3Ec3XsK0TY-mLE44pTLekLpGAvqWM2L3ma-jJZrzpTCOy6uWqDN1EDXwBA8EDS8YVbLE9QVIMmr5ZLCbDF7mtM5RMmaOV1BI/s200/bullfrog+Jeremiah.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I HAVE MADE A NEW FRIEND!! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Oh my goodness, I mean, I've recently had the sweetest encounter with a bullfrog! A "first" encounter that has quickly turned into a nightly one!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was a week ago. I was outside with my dogs (all three of them!). Every night for the previous several I had seen a huge bullfrog sitting on the sidewalk right next to my front door. That particular night I was trying to make one of my dogs see him, but the dog was blind to the frog because of his color and his stillness (without any movement, he carried a close resemblance to a rock). So (in my effort to help my dog see) I got a small stick in order to poke him and to force from him some movement. Only the poke didn't do that. The poke failed its purpose. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The poke evoked a whole different reaction than the one that I was expecting</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. The nudge from the stick didn't budge him! Instead, he just leaned into it as if he invited it! He leaned in such a way that it lead me to believe that he wanted me to continue! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And so, that's just what a did! I didn't necessarily poke anymore, I rubbed. I scratched. He squinted his eyes like it felt so good! He leaned to whichever side I scratched him on. When I went to scratch him under his neck, he closed his eyes and literally LAID on the sidewalk so that he could rub into the stick all that much harder! It was priceless! Adorable! I thought he was going to turn upside down! I stayed out there talking to that silly thing forever. I came back in and texted my kids, letting them know of my new-found wonder! I immediately named him! I didn't ponder but a minute before I dubbed him "Jeremiah"! Surely (though my kids don't!) you remember the song and can sing the line with me: <i>"Jeremiah was a bullfrog, a good good friend of mine...."</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am astounded at his seeming this-feels-so-good-oh-please-don't stopness...I told one of my kids, "Maybe it's Prince Charming coming on a mission to look for one of my daughters???" I've warned Mr. Charming that I'm already married! And yet, with his sleepy squinting eyes, he already appears to be smitten. Entranced. In-love forever!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After massaging the critter that first night, I came in boasting about him to my husband. I went back after a little bit to look for him again, but upon not finding him, I guessed he'd gone back into the bushes for the night. That didn't stop me from squatting down to look for him. It didn't stop me from calling him. "Jeremiah! Jeremiah! Hey you, where'd you go?" I whistled. I clicked-clicked (that thing that you do when you're calling an animal with your tongue). He didn't answer. Didn't appear. Didn't come back. But hey, I tried again the next night. And I'll be, I found him almost instantly! I had my stick ready... and he was ready for it! He was there to enjoy the moment again! It was a Kodak moment!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So cute!! I told God that, "I am so impressed with all that You've made!" I told Him, "I love Your creation! I love Your creatures! I love their uniqueness! I love their surprises! I love their differences!"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've seen him every night since! I go out multiple times just to scratch and massage on him a minute. And to think... it all started with a poke! That poke that soon developed into a friendship!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You know... we can learn some deep lessons from that small thing. Our reactions to a poke doesn't always have to be what the norm is. A poke (even if done in meanness or madness or aggravatedness or provokeness), if reacted abnormally, it might could actually turn into something beautiful! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My girls in prison get "poked" a lot in order to provoke a negative reaction! To start a fight. To prove a point. To show seniority. But woe, <em>what if</em> we did what the frog did?!! <em>What if</em> we leaned in toward the person that poked us? <em>What if</em> we didn't get so defensive? <em>What if</em> we didn't get so mad? <em>What if</em> we attempted instead to start a friendship? <em>What if</em> we stunned the person with our sweetness despite the poke? Despite the hit? Despite the harsh words meant to start a fight?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Don't you just love what God will use to teach us? I think He sent him to me! I think He smiles at us (me and Jeremiah) when we sit outside for a few minutes each night and play with each other! I think that He likes that we enjoy each other! :) Can you only imagine even more what He'd think if we did the same toward a pokey-person!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span>Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12005695519129502934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521590477384744893.post-11232806980139953292012-08-08T21:58:00.001-05:002013-01-07T11:39:00.953-06:00I didn't swoon!<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I went to my ex-boyfriend's (like... a zillion years ago's ex) dad's funeral's visitation with a high school friend a couple of weeks ago... AND... I... didn't... even.... swoon! </span><br />
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<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I didn't get butterflies! I didn't ache! Didn't yearn! Didn't hurt! Didn't wallow. Didn't waver. Didn't lose my head and get all caught up in a yesterday's year. I didn't lose myself. Or get weirded out or nervous. I didn't miss what we had and thus mourn for it. Our no-longer-"us" didn't sadden me sorrowfully as it so often used to... Seriously, I barely even thought about it! </span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I thanked God a thousand times over for healing what I (at one time) thought would never stop bleeding! I LOVED seeing his mom!!!! She grabbed me tight and hugged me twice!!! She said she had just been talking about me to somebody the other day and wondering whatever had happened to me. It was exciting, too, to see his brothers! It was a sweet time. I loved seeing them all again! I noted his wife was beautiful! In a different season (had I first known her without him), I'm sure, I would have automatically liked her. It was a sad occasion (I LOVED his daddy!!!!!!), but he'd been sick for 16 years, so in reality, it was truly considered by all (for him) to be a blessing!! I was so glad I went.</span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #134f5c;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In my excitement to my failed "swoon" reaction, I texted a friend (who just might be as surprised as I was that I didn't!) to tell her. She texted me back. <i>"I'm glad that God "made all things new" at the funeral for you!!! How good! how God!!!"</i>.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And yes, indeed, it was! It was good! It was God! I was glad! It <i>WAS</i> "all<i> made new"</i>! It was incredible! I really (as I've earlier said) couldn't thank God enough!</span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I. Didn't. Swoon! </span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Did you get that?! </span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I didn't swoon!!! </span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><u><br /></u></b></span>
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><u>I</u> </b>(ME!!!)... </span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Did</b>... </span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b><br /></b></u></span>
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>NOT</b></u>... </span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><u><br /></u></b></span>
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><u>Swoon</u></b>! </span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>That</i>, my friend, was a biggie! A miracle! A phenomenon! A gift of the sweetest kind from my Savior!</span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And then...</span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I still was not swooning, but (after a whole week and a half had gone by) my mind was still thinking about it! I kept picturing the moment. Kept seeing us standing there. Kept visualizing it. Kept reliving it. Kept playing it back. He wasn't who he used to be, but he was still <i>so him</i>! I couldn't help but hope that he thought that I looked pretty (exceptionally so!). My mind kept wondering what he must have been thinking? My mind kept wondering what his mind still thinks? My mind kept wondering if his mind kept wondering? My mind kept wondering if he had wished he could have talked more to me?</span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Is that silly or what?! Stupid! Crazy! Irrelevant! Ridiculous! Embarrassing! Why did I wonder really? What does it matter? What<i> difference</i> does it make? </span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I can't tell you how much that I had hoped that he'd call me, text me, email me, FB message me. I didn't really, yet kind of did(!), think he'd do something! Say something! Find me! Make his presence known! Speak some sort of way! Acknowledge the happening. Thank me for coming. Not just leave it there, do some kind of thing! </span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But!</span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He didn't!</span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And I wasn't surprised...but I WAS! In reality, I really was! Not knowing I'd expect it, I expected something!</span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But he didn't!</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Crazily, I wasn't sad. It didn't <i>hurt </i>me that he didn't. And though I wanted to hear from him, I didn't at all want it to get something started. Just a quick "hi, glad you came" and "you're welcome, how could I not?" would have sufficed. OR, at least my mind told me it would! But with all the obsessing, wondering, thinking.... I realize now that it wouldn't have. I'm afraid that after he'd spoken that just a quick speak wouldn't be enough. I probably would have expected him to say something again after I responded to what he said.</span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And now? Realizing all of that. I'm so glad that he didn't! I'm so glad that he didn't open a door that would have been havoc and so hard and so painful again to close! I can't tell you how much I have thanked God for that door not being opened! I went through that several years back... and it took a fierce fight to shut that once-opened-again door back again!</span><br />
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<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You are my Shield, Oh Lord! My Provider! My Protector! My Very Great Reward! Thank You for Your love! Thank You much for protecting me! Thank You for knowing what I need! And thank You especially, Lord, for knowing what I do not! And too, as silly as it sounds, thank You, Lord, for times when old girls after a whole lot of years don't swoon anymore over very old yesterday's boys.....</span><br />
.Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12005695519129502934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521590477384744893.post-92211163391741777842012-07-21T18:12:00.001-05:002012-07-21T18:12:31.961-05:00A rant and a rave and a convicted "I'm sorry"<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have been readying myself for travel! For a visit with a very special friend... one that I've not seen in eons... one that I've missed a lot (a lot! a lot! a lOt! a LoT! A LOT!)! And during our visit, our plans included our attending a Beth Moore Living Proof Live event that she bought tickets to while we're at it. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've been readying for months. I (against everything in my nature) had even begun packing my luggage. I've shopped for new mascara, more hair spray, more of the hygiene items that I am almost out of. I've been watching what I eat, hoping to whittle away a little extra. I just recently started tanning. I had scheduled a hair appointment for the day before my planned departure. I've found a place to house my 3 dogs while I'm gone. I've made arrangements to rent a vehicle because mine doesn't seem so reliable. I've picked out the outfits that I'll be wearing and am thrilled that I don't have to do any shopping. I've got the shoes! I've got her a gift. I've cleared my calendar. I'm prepared! I had begun the countdown.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And then...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Life sometimes has an unkind way of changing your already-ready-made-really-want-to plans. Something else came up (my mama's coming to town)... and it fell-ed all the plans that I have made down.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I emailed my friend last week:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"Bridget, I know this may sound silly... but I so very much am wanting this trip. I have bowed out of meetings and conferences and appointments of all sorts trying to rearrange my schedule and clear my calendar so that I can make this thing happen at the end of the month. Wildly, everything under the sun seems to be happening at that particular moment! The latest thing thrown at me seems so radically far-fetched and out of my radar... I wouldn't have expected it. With all of the craziness in my mama's world, if she wants to come here I cannot even being to try to talk her into going some place else. But I am wanting God to do something so Him that it works out without me having to shoo her away. I'd rather it be her idea and not mine.. but it will take an act of God for that to happen. Pray!!! Please pray that He will do something... that He Himself will work it out! I am still preparing... still trying to get things ready... still anticipating, and even in my disappointment still not giving up. Crazily, Ta (my son) will be in Florida, Tim (my husband) in Georgia, Sabrina (my daughter) in Gulf Shores... and supposedly me in Illinois so I already even had the dogs (all 3!) lined up for their spend-over nights some place else... and if you know me very well, I don't do that! It truly doesn't look doable right now, but I am so very much sitting at God's feet asking for a miracle! I need it!!! And even more selfishly, I just plain out want it badly! For it to happen, I am asking that you fervently team up with me as I go to Him in prayer about it."</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She told me,<i> <span style="color: #741b47;">"Teaming with ouY!!!"</span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In my pitiful desperation I emailed again: <i><span style="color: #134f5c;">"Thank you... I don't know when I've been so serious! Oh Lord, I beg Your grace, Your mercy, Your kindness, Your compassion, Your favor... please hear, please consider, please answer, please grant my plea. I feel in such need! I need a Word, I need a friend, I need an absence for a few days, I need a refreshing, a refueling, a renewing, a re-firing, some iron sharpening iron..... I need so much! Your will, dear Lord, please work things out so that I can visit my friend at this month's end. In Your Sweet Son's Name, Jesus, my heart pleads............</span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's been a whole week, so yesterday my friend texted me, <i><span style="color: #741b47;">"How does it look?!!!"</span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I (very lengthily) responded, <i><span style="color: #134f5c;">"I hate to "write" my answer in print. My heart's still hopeful, my desire longs more than ever... but I emailed my sister on Tuesday to tell her my situation... and basically it didn't much change anything. She didn't acknowledge that portion of the email at all when she responded. And I talked to mama right after that and she told me that she had just told her that I was getting her room ready... which would be my room really because it's the only bed we have downstairs.</span></i></span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>:(</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>I got online after talking to her to see if Knoxville is sold out in August. Thus far it is not... but I didn't know if I could twist your arm to go if I offered to buy you a ticket??? I'm sad... and feel horrid... and I've not yet been willing to accept it... thus my reason for not saying so before now. But I guess realistically I'm not going to get to come... I guess you should start looking for someone else to go with you. I'll pay for her ticket!!.. and wish it were me!!</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>And hey, if you're up for Knoxville, I am serious about that!</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>:(</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And then, later that night in my continual ponder, I emailed her... </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">"I am a bit in Stun-Mode. Or maybe it would better be worded as: Stuck on 'Repeat'. My mind is looping over and over and over again around the fact that my next week isn't working out as I had hoped and planned it. Even thinking it might not work out, something inside kept thinking that in the end it would. I guess technically it isn't "the end" yet. But bar my mom getting sick and unable to travel, I can't see it ending any differently. And I feel too guilty to hope for that. I am excited to see her! BUT, any other weekend, but then!!! Maybe God has His reasons?????????????????? Yet inside it seriously doesn't feel like it. Prepared doesn't even begin to give the true visual of all that I've done to get ready to head your direction. I mean truly! Seriously! Really! I'm not kidding!</span></i><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><span style="color: #134f5c;"><br /></span></i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><span style="color: #134f5c;">I can't help myself, I find myself very down about it. Ugh.. but even typing that just now, I am reminded of when you drove to Chicago to hop on a plane for Disney World and got sent home instead and had to wait a couple of extra days (WITHOUT YOUR LUGGAGE) because of plane problems and full flights. I didn't hear you complaining then... while here I go off about it when it in turn happens to me. I'm sorry for that! I suddenly (just now!) feel rightly convicted!</span></i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><span style="color: #134f5c;"><br /></span></i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><span style="color: #134f5c;">Shall I hush now and go tell God that I am sorry? I should be excited to see my mama! (I am!) She's been gone for a month and a half now! And who knows in her life-span (or mine) how much longer she'll be left here?</span></i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><span style="color: #134f5c;"><br /></span></i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><span style="color: #134f5c;">I went to two funerals in two days. It's reminded me that our Heavenly Home beckons us and our earthly toil here is such a short one. Shall we not trust God with every day?!!?! Shall we not trust in Him to plan it regardless of how we've planned it ourselves and for Him to change the course of our paths if He sees fit to? For after all, "EVERY DAY ordained for us was written in His book before even one of them came to be"! So doesn't that mean the days of July 26th through July 29th of 2012 has been planned for He Himself as well.. and that He knows what He wants, where He wants, and why He wants it... even if we don't? Wow... I feel like He's preaching to me as He uses my hands to type these words that I didn't think to think before I found myself typing them.</span></i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><span style="color: #134f5c;"><br /></span></i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><span style="color: #134f5c;">I'll get off here now. I'll hush. I'll go tell God that I'm sorry and that I trust Him. I'll apologize and repent for complaining, for whining, for grumbling and groaning (I've done so very much of that!!!) I'll tell Him (as I remind myself) that my days are in His hands! May He use them how and where and when and why as He wants to until the day He snatches me from this life and takes me Home for eternity.</span></i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><span style="color: #134f5c;"><br /></span></i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><span style="color: #134f5c;">I love you! And miss you dearly!"</span></i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She responded:</span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> <span style="color: #741b47;">"I'm saddened!"</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And you know... I truly am too. But I also feel better now. I feel better being reminded that we make the plans, but that regardless of the plans we've made, our God directs our path. Father, please forgive me when I whine. If I trust You, then I have complete confidence in how my days are planned and played out regardless of how I first tried to arrange it! Your will, dear Lord, EVERY-DAY rather than mine!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span>Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12005695519129502934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521590477384744893.post-61954378182756398902012-05-09T09:45:00.001-05:002013-01-07T11:19:00.177-06:00Again, awaiting the verdict...<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I found myself sitting yet again in another court room waiting room. On the defendants' side, of course, where faces are plagued with hopeful pleading. An anguished begging inside shows in their every demeanor. A silent plea exuberates from their very presence. They want their loved one set free. They're praying for favor and for their release.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I wonder though what sits in the opposing waiting area? Where the victims' families are waiting. What do their faces show? What do their bodies exude?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If what I've seen in the hearings that I've attended in the past are any evidence of indication of what might sit there... I can only imagine and envision the steam of their wrath rising from the heat that still seethes and simmers and burns within them.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Being "for" is perhaps free-er in some ways than being "against." And yet, I know that that's not always as it is. Even "for"s sometimes seethe. They, too, in their still stale anger, can burn their own blame and their own hatred toward the thing that's happened and the people involved in it. In other words, there's lots of feeling felt in both holding rooms. There's lots of hurt hurting again (or still)! There's lots of blame and shame and pain on both sides of the fence. It's stressful, it's hard, it's tormenting, it's treacherous for everybody... the offender and the offended. The families of both, the friends, and those awaiting the verdict too with them in the prison camp, the teachers, and counselors, and volunteers that have come in to help them.... One person and their actions ripple and reverberate and affect a whole mass of people.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've been to several hearings hoping for parole in the last couple of weeks. Who knew, but God, that I'd one day find myself here? And in all those cases just recently, everyone has been devastated with saddening news and all their requests have been denied. Already this morning one of our girls, one of my favorites, was put off 3 years. Well, yea, only three, compared to some of the others being put off for five.... but I had so hoped she'd get to go home!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And yet, after her hearing I circled and came back to sit again for another girl. One who isn't in our class. One I don't know well, but Lord God, please hear my cry, please let them today grant her a "Yes!" This girl, at least, Lord! After so many "No"s... please help this one to get "Yes"ed today and get to go home. Please, Lord! Oh please!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I wonder at all the pleas of "please" that are being begged right this very minute as I write and are bombarding in unison the ears right now of my Father in Heaven? So many "please"s, Lord, but only You know! You know what's best. You know who needs to go home and you doesn't need to leave yet. I trust Your "know," Lord, You know what we don't. You hear and see and know our will.... but not our will, Lord God, but Your will alone.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span>Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12005695519129502934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521590477384744893.post-21402359717219140712012-05-04T15:56:00.001-05:002013-01-07T11:15:27.652-06:00A hodge-podge of quick catch-up<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well... it's been a minute since I've been on here. No? It's been almost a month since I've voiced something on this reserved space on the Internet of mine. I'd like to write an excuse to tell why I've been absent. Why I've been gone. Why I've been silent. But I don't really have one. I haven't died. Nothing sadly seriously horrible has happened. I've not been sick. No deaths in the family. I've not slept through the last 29 days. I've still gotten up every morning. I've been busy, but I've not been more busy than normal. I've still gone about the normalcy of my everyday stuff. Honestly? I don't know why I've not written.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've often had lots to say. Too much to say perhaps. But as I find often, sometimes somethings and feelings and events and findings are too big for words. I've simply failed at knowing how to verbalize them. It's been too hard to capsule my thinking and stuff them into a few black words typed upon the stage of a white canvased page on a computer screen. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've been studying a lot. I can't tell you how often in Scripture the words that I've read have jumped into the very depths of my soul and stirred my mind's thinking. How they've moved me to wonder. How they've pierced me to ponder. How they've caused me to plead in prayer the things that they've said and have been saying to me. I wonder at why I've heard them? I wonder at why my Father has said them?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The words that woe (whoa!) me are more times than not the same words that woed / whoaed me the last time that I passed by their stayed place on the pages of Holy Writ and read them. I suppose that God wanted me to see them again. He not only wanted me to remember, He wanted to remind me. He wanted to emphasize the seriousness again. He simply needed to tell me again in case I'd forgotten them. And I have no doubt, I know that with that again telling, that God has reason and purpose in His plan to tell me. It makes me want to get-it deeper this time! It makes me wonder what He's got ahead for me and what He's equipping and preparing me for through His saying in what lies ahead of me on His Divinely Kingdom Prepared Calendar.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I love His voice! I love His Word! I love to hear Him! I love when what He's said hits hard and pierces deep and provokes to thinking to then hopefully move me enough to do and obey them.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Along with basking at the feet of our Great Teacher in the past month, I've sat in a boat load of parole hearings. I've been in and out in the prisons talking more extensively with those people in them. I've picked recently released prisoners up and spent the day with them in their first few breaths of new again felt freedom. I've labored over their hard and have continued to bring so many of them to the Throne of Grace for all the variety of ways that they need Him. I've had the faired share of family crises with my mom and my siblings. And I've both pageant-ed and prom-ed and shared so many fun times with my husband and children. We've had Ups and Downs and All-Arounds... and God is always faithful and GOoD! So GOoD, in fact, that I feel I dare never have reason to complain because even through the trials He's blessed us so greatly!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I make no promises, but I'll do my best to try and go back and catch up on some of the things that have happened in the last month so as to document and not lose memory of those failed-to-be-voiced days that I've been given. I now regret that my fingers have been on lock-down from their typing, I feel too behind now to catch up. The pondering processes in my mind were obviously too slow with too much of a cycling to be able to release my mind's activity to blogged memory. Oh, that I would take time to write every day to record them! If only for me alone, I LOVE to go back and see the trail of where I've walked on this pilgrimage that I've been assigned to.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"All the days ordained for me have been written in Your book before one of them came to be"</i>.... Oh, to see the written ordained days of mine that my God has written! Oh, to know that He not only knows, but that He takes the time to write them!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'll close with this. I found myself singing these words today before I had time to think of what my mouth was singing. It was only as I sang them that I thought of the words I was saying. <i>"This is my story. This is my song. Praising my Savior, all the day long. This is my story. This is my song. Praising my Savior, all the day... Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! O what a foretaste of Glory Divine! Heir of salvation, purchased of God, Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood. This is my story. This is my song. Praising my Savior, all the day long............" </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well, I have a story! And I have a song1 And you have a story and a song, as well. Oh, to be able to tell of it while praising your Savior! For if not for Him, my story would be so horribly different!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I read once that during a particular war in the Transvaal in the late 1800s that when the soldiers going to the front were passing other soldiers of theirs in whom they recognized that their greetings used to be, 'Four-nine-four, boys; four-nine-four'.... and their salute would quickly be answered with, 'Six-further-on, boys; six further on.' The significance of this was that in a song book sent to the front, number 494 was "God Be With You Til We Meet Again;".... and six songs past that one ('six further on', on page 500) was "Blessed Assurance, Jesus Is Mine"... this song of which just now that I quoted from above.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Four-nine-four, reader, four-nine-four!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And too, Six-further-one, reader... six-further-on!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We're in such a battle on this earthly sod! May God be with you till we meet again! And may you have that blessed assurance that Jesus is yours as you let Him write your story and you sing His song!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12005695519129502934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521590477384744893.post-77086393576241291772012-04-16T12:12:00.004-05:002013-01-08T00:40:17.604-06:00Dressing Our Mess<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDILdGI5btrNqIA9aPGMZ0TNGuw1Ax-qgmbR2d8OE4sAKsSxuczlYnbi3iC-NGrh9H48F2WiedTgZpTnhyphenhyphen0xD26WZcu97AgCqtC-BhLlTC3W9m11IpZQmTfp4Rofr-m84dpgmp6Nnfcik/s1600/dior-haute-couture-2008.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDILdGI5btrNqIA9aPGMZ0TNGuw1Ax-qgmbR2d8OE4sAKsSxuczlYnbi3iC-NGrh9H48F2WiedTgZpTnhyphenhyphen0xD26WZcu97AgCqtC-BhLlTC3W9m11IpZQmTfp4Rofr-m84dpgmp6Nnfcik/s320/dior-haute-couture-2008.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I read her post several times. And as I commented to her, I loved it anew with every new next time that I read it. I love the statement that she opens her post with, <i>"Every time we get dressed we tell the story of the Fall of humanity"</i>... </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hmmm... <em><strong><u>EVERY</u> <u>TIME</u>(!!!) </strong>we get dressed!!!</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em></em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em><strong><u>EVERY</u></strong> <u><strong>TIME</strong></u> that we get dressed(!!!).. we tell the story of the Fall of humanity!<strong> </strong></em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How true that is, I told her! How perfectly "fitting" to sum up our dressing! I've realized for years that we do a whole lot of dress-ups, but Carole Chaput put a whole new spin on my mind's thinking of it. Click here:</span> <span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://internetcafedevotions.com/2012/01/dressing-our-mess/" target="_blank"><b>Dressing Our Mess</b></a></span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">if you'd like to be as blessed as I was! I'm sure you'll find (as I did) that the picture she paints is a profound one! Enjoy! Profoundly said, Carole, thanks so much for sharing! I'd say more... but I don't need to. Why? Because she did. :)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span>Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12005695519129502934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521590477384744893.post-32035035185401948622012-04-05T11:38:00.000-05:002012-04-05T11:40:09.978-05:00That's what they did to my Savior<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Betrayed. Denied. Falsely accused. Tried. Condemned. Convicted. Rejected. Ridiculed. Persecuted. Mocked. Beaten. Bruised. Scourged. Flogged. Whipped. Ripped. Split open. Spit upon. Slapped. Hit. Shamed. Nailed. Hung. Yelled at. Scorned. Despised. Shunned. Scoffed at. Pierced. Plotted against....</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That's what they did to my Savior! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While He... was lead to His death, He was as silent as a lamb before them. And while hanging in agony upon the tree that held Him, He pleaded with His Father, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do"........ </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">WHO, but a Savior, does that?!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"They" weren't the only ones that did this. WE did it too! I did! And He died anyway... knowing we would!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I remember a long ago Sunday morning. I was by myself. Driving old winding country roads to the old country church that I grew up in where my parents still attended. I was living a lie, I was ensnared by the enemy, caught in an evil trap, doing things that I knew better to do because a Christian is taught not to do them... And yet, I was doing it anyway, but hiding it. All the while, still wearing the fake facade, the masquerade, still pretending to be what I wasn't, being a full-fledged hypocrite and hating myself for it. On that morning driving toward that church I heard this song below play on my radio... and the agony of the reality while I listened and tears streamed is what started the change in me. I couldn't bear the thought of hurting (again) the Savior Who died to set me free! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u>Does He Still Feel the Nails</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">by Ray Botlz</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="281" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/XpHYJScbxCY" width="370"></iframe></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They tell me Jesus died</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For my transgressions</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That He paid that price a long, long time ago</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When He gave His life for me</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On a hill called Calvary</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But there's something else I want to know</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(Chorus)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Does He still feel the nails</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Every time I fail</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Can He hear the crowd cry "Crucify" again</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Am I causing Him pain</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then I know I've got to change</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I just can't bear the thought of hurting Him.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It seems that I'm so good at breaking promises</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And I treat His precious grace so carelessly</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But each time He forgives</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What if He re-lives</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The agony He felt on that tree</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(Chorus)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Does He still feel the nails</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Every time I fail</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Can He hear the crowd cry "Crucify" again</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Am I causing Him pain</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then I know I've got to change</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I just can't bear the thought of hurting Him.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Holy Holy</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Holy is the Lord</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Holy Holy</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Holy is the Lord</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Do You still feel the nails</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Every time I fail</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Have I crucified You, Jesus, with my sins</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I really want to change</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I never want to hurt you again</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Holy Holy</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Holy is the Lord</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Holy Holy</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Holy is the Lord</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span></div>Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12005695519129502934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521590477384744893.post-15479538455877767042012-04-01T19:26:00.000-05:002012-04-01T19:26:09.087-05:00What was it like?<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What was it like for Jesus? What was it like for Him on the week before His crucifixion? What was it like on the days leading up to it? What was it like on Sunday... on Monday... on Tuesday, and Wednesday, and then the morning of Thursday?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What did His mind think? What did His heart feel? What did His prayers pray? I can't imagine... though I wonder.... what was it like?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Often a horror can happen in our life. Something the likes that we've not thought of or prepared ourselves for. Something that devastates, robs, hurts, beats, bleeds, persecutes, excruciates, steals, kills, destroys, and leaves us raw and writhing and desperate. And yet, when that kind of thing happens to us rarely do we know it ahead of time... Rarely do we anticipate it with troubled throbbed heartbeats of fear, or I don't want it to, or I wish it wouldn't, so that we might pray against it ahead of time. What was it like for Jesus... to know in advance? To know <i>what</i> those days were leading Him toward and taking Him to? Each tick and each tock clicked Him closer..... What was it like for Him to feel that?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I know it's what He came for. I know He knew that that was what He came for. Yet even He prayed that if it didn't have to, for it not to happen. What was it like as He sweated those great drops of blood bowing before His Father in pained begging anguish? Splayed in the garden, laid out before Him, telling His Father that He didn't want it, but that He'd do it still if His Father wanted it for Him? What was it like for His Father to hear Him? To see Him? To watch Him? To feel Him? To know Him? To hurt with Him?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And yet.............they Both did it anyway! For me! And for you! Because we would be lost and doomed to Hell without it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What was it like? The suffering? The anguish? Who did it, did what He both did and didn't want to do..... He did it "'for the joy set before Him"... the joy that was me, and was you, and was all those that He fights for everyday to save in order to one day take to His Kingdom!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What <i>was</i> it like? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Wow... at the price He paid for me! Knowing my sin. Knowing my wrong. Knowing my rebellion. Knowing I'd hurt Him. He did it anyway.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What was it like? What did He think? It's something that cannot be fathomed. And yet, His focus was on my face, on your face, on the face of your loved ones, on the face of your enemies (who He still seeks to save!)... and the joy of the knowing that He was one day closer to bringing those who love Him Home!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span>Sharonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12005695519129502934noreply@blogger.com0