Partakers of Christ

For the past couple months many of us have been hearing all the controversy about Oprah Winfey's worldwide classroom, and her radio program, as well as controversy over many Pastor's or preachers with television ministries, and their speaking out in what they believe to be the truth on the meaning of "eternal life". I've watched a few of the Youtube video's and have read several articles taken from various news columns written by far left, far right and all over in the middle, journalists, I've heard many describe it all as "scary" and/or "unbelievable". I must admit, when I think about what we may face in ten years down the road my heart could begin to beat just a bit faster out of a moment of fear. Then........His words come back to me......
Psalm 27:1 The Lord is my light and my salvation; Whom shall I fear?"

Hebrews 3: 14
For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end.

The Lord tells us to heed His words, and not to walk carelessly or lay out our own paths for our lives. We don't know what will happen in the days to come.
Our only hope is Him! To have a close walk with Him, hold firmly onto His hand, listen closely to His words.
We can spend endless hours watching and listening to all of the "garbage" out there, and what we hear shouldn't surprise us. So much of what is happening has been foretold to us in His word.
Now is the time we must draw near to Him, know the truth for ourselves through His word, embrace our relationship with Him and His promises.
Read further 2 Timothy 3.

Jesus and only Jesus is our truth and our hope, our answer to any and everything to come today and for all our tomorrows.

May the Love of Jesus bring peace to your heart.

APRIL FOOLS DAY!!!!!!!

Libby got me! Lil snot' put a rubber band around the sprayer at the kitchen sink, and got me good, I soaked myself!

BUT, I had revenge!!!!!!! I greased the toilet seat with vaseline !!!!!!!!!!! tee hee hee !!!

ITS POTTY TIME !!!!!!!!

Thats right, it's potty time! Amazingly, Kammy took all the work out of it for all of us.

Last week-end she was staying with us and she just decided it was time. She came to me with a very serious look on her face, tugged at my sleeve, and then said as plain as could be, "I haf to go potty". She told us she had to go potty every time for the rest of the day! Later I called her Mommy to tell her she'd better pick up a potty chair on her way home. Of course she didn't believe me at first. Here little 22 month old Kammy comes to my house and literally 6 hours later she's potty trained! She has been going in her "big girl potty" ever since last Friday!

The one thing I have learned from being a parent and a grandparent is what a blessing it is to truely realize what is important at this time and what isn't. Taking the time to sit down and play a game is much more important than folding laundry, staying up late to just talk to your teenager sometimes is more important than getting eight hours sleep. Remembering what is was like to be their age, and the things that are important in their world need to be real in our world too, and spending the time letting them know that, know matter what that may entail, is much more important than spending time on our computers or even making sure the house is clean.

Know matter who or what may ever walk into their lives as they grow, we are and always will be the ones who hold the greatest influence on our children and our childrens children. We ought to take that very seriously. If our children have witnessed us on our knees in conversation with our Lord, if our children have witnessed us reading and studying our Bibles, if our children have witnessed us being light and truth in a dark world, they too will seek those things.

Just like Kammy did going on the" big girl potty". I look forward to the day when she looks up with her beautiful brown eyes, and says' "I want Jesus".

Forsaken So We Could Live

Since I have come to know Christ as my Savior I've always thought I understood the "why" of the cross, until, that is, I read this...... This so moved me and has brought such a clearer understanding of the depth of God's love, I just had to share. I hope it touches your heart as well.

Enjoy and may God richly bless you.

Forsaken So We Could Live Tuesday, March 25, 2008

I was one of seven people who each spoke at our church's Good Friday service on one of the seven sayings of Christ on the cross. I chose, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?"
In my more skeptical days, I viewed the question as odd -- almost ammunition for the cynic. Why would Christ, if he were truly God, need to ask God about anything? Also, why would an all-powerful God have been in such a vulnerable position?
I now realize that these questions are no more unique than the basic misunderstandings of Christianity and Christian doctrine that give rise to them. But interestingly, this utterance of Christ that was once a stumbling block for me has now become a powerful reinforcement for my faith.
I used to wonder how the crucifixion, no matter how much physical suffering Christ endured, could cancel out our sins. After all, other human beings have experienced similar physical punishment. But I was completely unaware of the spiritual wounding that was involved. The Scripture tells us, "The human spirit can endure in sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear?"
But Christ was spiritually separated from and abandoned by God. To atone for our sins, he took on our sins, and God cannot look upon sin. We cannot begin to comprehend the agony he experienced in this separation after he had enjoyed infinite bliss with the Father and the Holy Spirit in eternity past.
After having lived a sinless life, the full force of mankind's accumulated sin was heaped upon his human soul. All the spiritual forces of darkness were joined together in their collective hatred and fury in one last effort to defeat the conqueror of death because if they failed, death would be defeated forever.
Human beings had no power either to comfort or deliver him; the Father wouldn't because he had to allow him to complete his redemptive work. At that moment, Christ was the loneliest man who ever lived. Yet consider this staggering irony: At no time was Christ more perfectly in his Father's will. And through it all, he never renounced his Father, referring to him as "my God, my God."
Although we sometimes separate ourselves from God, he will never abandon us this side of eternity. Witness the prodigal son. And consider the martyrs who died joyfully because even in their death, though hated and persecuted by men, God did not abandon them. Ignatius, waiting to be thrown to the lions said, "Let me be food for the wild beasts, if only God be glorified." Christ, unlike the martyrs, did nothing to deserve his abandonment.
Skeptics should note that the Gospel writers never would have invented this potentially embarrassing saying of Christ because it suggests Christ's powerlessness to deliver himself from his own predicament.
But I believe the statement is only comprehensible in reference to God's Triune nature: Christ's nature as both fully human and fully divine and God's salvation plan for mankind.
Christ's question to the Father on the cross shows not that Christ wasn't God but that he was also a distinct divine personality in the Trinity and also fully human. If he had not been fully human, he could not have taken on our pain. Nor could he have died. If he was not God, he couldn't have lived a sinless life or wiped away our sins.
Evangelist John Stott wrote: "We are not to envisage God on a deck chair, but on a cross. The God who allows us to suffer, once suffered Himself in Christ, and continues to suffer with us and for us today. I myself could never believe in God were it not for the cross. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of His. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark -- the Cross, which symbolizes divine suffering. The cross of Christ is God's only self-justification in such a world as ours."
Despite his indescribable suffering, Christ would not rescue himself, precisely because he was a co-conspirator in the salvation plan, which required him to fulfill his prophesied substitutional sacrifice.
As Bishop Fulton Sheen observed: "Every other person who ever came into this world came into it to live. Christ came into it to die. Death was a stumbling block to Socrates -- it interrupted his teaching. But to Christ, death was the goal and fulfillment of his life, the gold that he was seeking."
Christ died forsaken by God so that his people might claim God as their God; he endured abandonment so we would never be abandoned; he tasted hell so we'd never have to taste it ourselves; he endured loneliness so we'd never be alone.

What an awesome God! I just loved that part where he says "that at no other time was Jesus more in the will of God than on the cross". Even though He was in agony physically, mentally, and spiritually, He was" in the will of God.

Sometimes I think we get caught up in a misconception that everything has to be all perfect and pretty looking to be in the will of God, when just maybe being right in the middle of a painful situation is exactly where God is at work within us and/or others!

This article was written by Jim Limbaugh ( I don't know if he is any relation to Rush)

Thats My King !!!!!

I heard this once at the "Just Give Me Jesus Conference", and it so touched my heart! It truely describes our Lord and King, Jesus!
Click....Turn Up The Volume.....Be Blessed!

That's My King

I think at one time or another we have all thought our contributuion to the building of Gods Kingdom, to be insignificant. We may even think the same of some of the disciples that followed Jesus, that we don't hear much about, such as Andrew. We don't read about the great speeches he may have delivered, or the thousands he brought to the Lord. But, what stands out to me is in John1:40-42 One of the two who heard John speak and followed Him was, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He found first his own brother Simon and said to him, "We have found the Messiah" (which translated means Christ). He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, "You are Simon the son of John; you shall be called Cephas" (Which is translated Peter).

I would imagine even Andrew didn't realize the significance of what he was doing when he brought his brother, Peter, to see Jesus. We've read about Peter's impact on leading thousands upon thousands to Christ, but we don't hear much else about Andrew. Yet the way I see this, is that Andrew did indeed lead thousands upon thousands to Christ, and then some. "He brought Peter", and I am sure, although it's not written, Andrew continued to lead others to Christ. Another point that stood out was, Andrew found "first his own brother". I see this as instructive to us to seek and lead those in our families as priority. Not that we are not to lead another to the Lord when or if the opportunity arrises.

I found this point about Andrew refreshing and fitting to our study with "Made to Count".

No matter how insignificant we may think our actions to be when we are seeking to serve others for the building of Gods Kingdom, we don't know God's plan. Andrew had no idea the ministry Peter would come to when he asked him to come meet Jesus, any more than we do when we do the same.

Not one of us is insignificant in the eyes of God, nor our actions when we are serving Him.

As we approach the Easter celebration, I pray many of us will step out in boldness and ask another to "Come meet Jesus".

Libby is now an Official Babysitter!!!!!

Libby passed the Red Cross Babysitting class today !!

Yeah Libby!!!

Now, she's just waiting for the calls to come rolling in!!!

Angels To Watch Over Us

Matthew 18:10

"See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that, their angels in heaven continually see the face of my Father who is in heaven".

My daughter called me yesterday all excited to share with me once again something amazing my 22 month old granddaughter, Kammy had said. This time though she was more surprised by the content than her ability to say the words. She said they were sitting in the living room watching "Nemo", when Kammy said, "Mommy look" as she was pointing up to the ceiling. Her mom looked up and asked "what"?, Kammy answered, "the angel, Mommy, look the angel"! "The what"? "What did you say"? She again pointed up and said, "see her"? "See the angel mommy"?

My daughter said she wanted so much to see the angel, she continued to look up even after Kammy seemed to lose interest, as if this angel was someone she'd seen before and was use to its' presence.

I later shared with my youngest daughter that we shouldn't be surprised, God's word speaks of each of us having a guardian angel, sent to watch over us.

I believe when we are yet still very young and our time since we have walked along side the Lord in the heavens, before being sent to earth, has still been quite short, we still have the ability to see the heavenly things upon the earth. As we grow older and experience more of this world, we somehow spiritually distance ourselves, and lose the ability to see.

As I grow closer to the Lord, I can only pray I regain the ability to see the heavenly things while still here on earth. Then again, everytime the Bible tells of someone being visited by an angel they appearred frightened, because the first words the angel would speak would be, "don't be frightened"! Maybe that too, was due to being older. Gods' word says we must come to Him like a child. Kammy sure didn't speak as if she was the least bit afraid, she sounded happy that the angel had joined them for their evening of watching "Nemo"!

Being the Favorite

Its' always been fun when the whole family gets together and the girls start to tell their stories about when they were little. I will hear about things that I never even knew happened back then !!!! But the thing that I have always found the most humor in, is how they will each joke about how "they're my favorite". And they'll argue between them on their proof of just how they know that they are indeed "the favored daughter"!

Yesterday I had recalled one of those times and it just got me to thinking about how God does that very thing. We know that God is not a respector of persons and loves us all the same, yet comes so close and so deep into our hearts that we get that feeling that we just know we have to be His favorite. I couldn't pick one of my girls over another even if I tried. My relationship with each of my girls is so very unique, and I enjoy a multitude of things between them, yet my love for them is uncomparable.

I hope that each time I spend time with my girls I do make them feel like they are my favorite, because I know what that feels like. When I sit down in the quiet and call out to my Father and He hears my voice and He comes to me, I feel special. I feel like He has ears only for my words at that moment, that He has all the time in the world, and it's all mine, for as long as I choose to sit with Him. I know he has an open door policy at all times and at any time I need Him or even just want to sit with Him when I don't need anything except Him.

Once a Mom, we are always a Mom, no matter how old they become they are still your little girls, how precious the moments.

I can't help but think, this is exactly how God feels about all of us, no matter what we do, no matter how old we become, in His eyes we are all His little children, each one His favorite!

How many sheep did I feed today?

This is a quote from Chilly Chilton's blog,


see, here's the problem...
“blah, blah, blah”
Yeah: talk.
we can say it, think it, blog it, sing it, quote it, preach it...but do we, each and every day, LIVE IT?

If all of us would grasp on to this truth and make the change within ourselves we would soon be living life the way its really meant to be. Jesus told Peter, "feed my sheep". That was meant for us also. How many sheep are we feeding in a day?
You can read the rest of his blog by linking onto his site from my list below.
Its a convicting message we all need to hear. I'm praying the conviction in my own heart stay strong to seek out the lost sheep, and not just talk about it any more.
How about you?