Fearfully and Wonderfully Made!

I would like to say that I have always appreciated the way God created me to be, but that would not be true. Coming to accept myself the way God made me has taken many years. For years I tried to change who I am instead of accepting myself. I tried to be who people around me wanted me to be, or I percieved they wanted me to be. I tried to manipulate my body by starving it into a size it was never intended to be. I studied things of no interest to me to please people...I wanted to be anything but what and who I was made to be. After years of this things began to change. I began to take the Word of God literally and applied it to my life. His Word says in Psalms 139

13 For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;[a]
Marvelous are Your works,
And that my soul knows very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.

17 How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
How great is the sum of them!
18 If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand;
When I awake, I am still with You.

He made me wonderfully! He had a plan for my life before the beginning of time. A purpose in putting me here! It became important to me to find that purpose and to work to see myself as He created me.

I wander if I hadn't starved myself to be thin, what would I look like, If I hadn't wasted time trying to please man what would I have been doing. I know I can't change the past, I have to focus on the now. Yes I do still workout, watch what I eat, but now it is in perspective to life. I try to eat natural foods at least 90% of the time. The foods that I beleive God created for us to eat. I accept that I may never be tiny, but I am me and I will take care of the body God has given me, for it is fearfully and wonderfully made.

Recently I was really struggling with the time I spend running and studying for my trainer's certification, when I felt God say...you are right where I want you doing what I created you for..you are in My plan...trust Me!

I don't know how, but my love of God and the love He has placed in me for fitness/nutrition are going to be used for His glory! When we seek Him, He will give us the desires of our heart! He is constantly thinking about me! He wants me! Amazing!

Can you trust that God made you for a purpose, the way He made you? I think most of us have no idea what we should look like, because we altered it by eating junk and over eating/ starving or otherwise manipulating our bodies to look like society says they should look or to hide behind...it is time to come out of hiding and discover the wonderfully made person God created!

National Day Of Prayer

In the United States today is a day that is set aside as the Day of Prayer for our Country. Today it is hard to believe that we are a Christian Nation. Our history is one of faith, but it doen't seem to be a priority in our country today!

As a parent what I see, is that my kids are taught tolerance for what God calls sin, the values that were instilled in my, not just in the home, but in school, at friends houses, extracurricular activities are not taught any more. The argument being that it is not the schools place to teach our kids values...yet that is where they are learning their values.

There is much on my heart on this National Day of prayer to pray for...wars, rumors of wars to come, the devestation of storms, the families that have lost loved ones, our govermental leaders, our schools, our kids and teens (they are our future you know!), our churches (it is time that church be about God and worshipping Him, not making us feel good!), our economy, our military men and women...but above all my prayer is for God to move in America in such a way that we will fall on our faces before Him and return to the foundations of our Country...Faith in God..In God we trust!!

What is your prayer for our country today?

Nine and a Half Years Later

When I think back to the attack on September 11, 2001...I remember the shock and the panic that we all felt. I also remember the sense of unity that you saw form around the world. We saw churches overflowing with people seeking God in the middle of the week! Complete strangers risking their lives to go into the towers and look for survivors. We cried over the loss of lives and the loss of security we felt. We united as a nation to bring one man to justice.

This morning I awoke to the news...that Osama Bin Laden is dead! I will be honest a part of me was excited! This was justice for what he did to us. This was justice for the soilders who have died in the last 9.5 years looking for and fighting to get to him! This brought renewed hope that this war may end and yes selfishly I thought and maybe my son will not be deployed into it!

As the day went on, I felt something else...he was a person, an evil person, but a person none the less. He had people that loved him, family that will miss him. For those people I do feel sadness.

The Bible says not rejoice in the death of the wicked, but to rejoice in the salvation of a lost one. So I will not rejoice in his death, I will rejoice in the end of the man hunt, the hope that this could lead to the end of this war...

I will pray for his family and for all that remain to fight until they are called home...

To the soilders that have served, do serve and will serve...thank you for what you do and for giving me the ability to go bed at night knowing I am protected! It is an honor to call my son a Marine!

Believe

Do you Believe in God? Yes. Do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God? Yes. Do you believe that Jesus died and rose again? Yes. Do you believe that God still heals miraculously today? Yes. Do you believe that God still speaks to people today (dreams, vision, audibly, through His Word)? Yes. Do you believe that God can do anything? Yes. Do you believe that God loves you? Yes. Do you believe God has a plan for your life? Yes.

We say we believe in a lot. We believe the Bible to be the inerrant, infalliable Word of God, from cover to cover. But do we? Really? I mean it seems like we pick what we want to believe...but then what does it mean to believe? According to the Amplified Bible other words that could have been substituted for believe are to rely on, to cling to or to trust in...the Amplified Bibles puts these words in parenthesis as other words that mean the same as the greek word that we translate believe...

So if you went back to the questions that started this and ask your self do I fully rely on, cling to and trust in the fact that God is God, that Jesus is His Son, died and rose again. That God heals, speaks and moves in my life today? Would we still say yes? It is easy to mouth a Word, it is another thing to live a life that backs up what we say.

Honestly some of this I had to learn the hard way. I had to learn God is faithful to heal because I have a child that can't take most modern meds...yes we fully rely on, trust in and cling to the healing power of God.
We lived 7 months with no income at all during the 'recession', we learned to fully rely on, cling to and trust in God's Word when it said that My God will supply all my needs according to His riches in glory. We learned His Word is true!

I have known for as long as I can remember that Jesus was God's Son and He died and rose again for me. It became real for me when I was 21. At that point I took my head knowledge and it became heart and life relying on, clinging to and trusting in what He had done for me...It was years before I came to a point where I really got what He really did, but I did come to the point that I rely on cling to and trust in the completed work of the cross....

really ask yourself when you say you believe these 'basic' facts of the faith...do you rely on, cling to and trust in them...or are you giving lip service to the Jesus who you say you believe died for you???

It is all about Him

I grew up in a traditional church that was confusing in what I learned. I heard the message of the gospel...I was taught that you are saved by faith, but then I also heard you have to do this and that. I was taught the law. I grew up dressing a certain way, living by this code of conduct set out before me in order to insure God loved and accepted me. For a long time I even questioned if I went to college and study to be a youth pastor in order to earn something from God...like how could God not love me I am in ministry!. My whole life was obsessed with trying to perform well enough and in my twenties I was burnt out and gave up! I quit trying and I quit seeking God. I didn't do anything extreme, I was just tired of trying to be good enough.

In my thirties I began to seek some counseling for some issues and ended up in a Christian Discipleship Counseling program. It was then that I began to understand the grace of God, the concept of His life exchanged for mine, of letting Him live through me...I began to see that nothing I could do was going to change God's love for me, but on some levels I still struggled with the legalistic stuff I grew up with and I couldn't just negate obedience to the Word...which is NOT the message of grace...in time I came to understand that God loves me simply because I am His child, like I love my kids. He loves me no matter what, but just like we have rules and expectations for our children, God has rules and expectation for His. None of these will save us, none of them will change His love for us.

We choose to obey His laws, to serve Him not out of a need to justify ourselves before Him, but out of our love and commitment to Him! Just like we tend to want to bless our children when they are doing all we expect or trying to...God wants to bless us as we seek to honor Him!!

Our salvation is based on what God did by sending His Son to die for us. Our faith in that is all that is required....everything else is just us loving God and wanting to honor Him with our lives.

Romans 28, 31 (Amplified Bible)
For we hold that a man is justified and made upright by faith independent of and distinctly apart from good deeds (works of the Law). [The observance of the Law has nothing to do with justification.]Do we then by [this] faith make the Law of no effect, overthrow it or make it a dead letter? Certainly not! On the contrary, we confirm and establish and uphold the Law.

Created Equal

In the USA we say that all men are created equal...but that is not how we treat people...In the church, sadly, we really don't treat people equal. I have been in churches where race, education, statas, socail class and gender carried the weight. Basicly if you were a white, successful male that had all the nicer things...you were a leader in the church...there was no place for anyone else...this was years ago and I wish I could say that was then, this is now, but there are still many churches that hold to lines of division among people and judge people for being who God created them to be.

I cannot change the fact God created me female and gave me a voice. I can't stop the passion that He has given me to share His message with whowever He opens the door for. I really don't want to debate women leaders in the church. I want to challenge you to look at what you believe about the roles of different people in your church...Could a woman share a message with the body...not be the pastor, share a message, could she be a pastor...would your church be open to someone of a different race, denomination coming in and sharing...what if the guest speaker arrived driving a broken down truck and in torn clothes, would his message be recieved?

Romans 2:11 says "For God shows no partiality." Thank God He treats all of us the same and died for each of us!

Lets try to do the same and treat each other with the respect that we want and love each other as Christ has loved us!

Desire Him

I hear people say that God will give you the desires of your heart or question why God is not giving them what they want, what they think they deserve in life. The verse that they are quoting is Psalm 37:4 (Amplified Bible)Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He will give you the desires and secret petitions of your heart.

Yes it does say that God will give you the desires of your heart, but it also says to Delight yourself in Him! There is a promise here, but also a command. If you delight in Him, He will give you the desires of your heart.

We have three daughters...one of them is rebellious and fights at tooth and nail...we have a hard time giving her things she just wants...we love her, but we feel like all she wants from us is what we can buy her....on the other hand we have another teenage daughter that we would give the world to. She is a plesant, loving, fun child that delights in spending time with us and sharing her life with us. She desires to please us and honor us...see the difference.

I think a lot of the time we approach God like my oldest daughter, demanding what we want and getting mad when He says no! He doesn't want us to just want Him for what He can give us! He wants us to delight in Him! Think about when you fell in love...how much pleasure did you take in making time for that special someone, getting ready for him....you could talk all night and then some, you went out of your way to find ways to spend time with the them...that is what God wants...He wants us to want to be with Him...to desire Him...

When we desire Him, we delight in Him, He will give us the desires of our heart....granted they may change as we build a relationship with our Father...but He will honor His Word and give us the desires of our hearts as we delight in Him!