Category Archives: Faith

What’s in a name?

I was reading through Matthew chapter 1 – verses 1-17, “Person A is the father of person B, Person B is the father of person C” and so forth… There are straight names for 17 verses, and like the book of numbers and judges its so easy to just skip over this entire section… but what I noticed was Rahab was mentioned. And it got me thinking… wow… God has such a huge plan for us. It might not have anything to do with what we can imagine. I’m sure Rahab NEVER thought she would one day be the great great great great…. (etc) grandmother to Jesus.

Now – while i’m not a prositute – I definitely need rescuing and have my own sins that i’m accountable for, and there can be seasons in my life that I feel down, or wonder what life’s purpose is. For some reason this song kept popping into my head while reading chapter 1, and i just kept thinking of Rahab.

I’m sure Kerrie Roberts didn’t write this song from Rahab’s perspective… but she easily could have.

I can’t imagine what story will continue to unfold in the next thousand years!

John – How He Loves

John 3:16
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 

I’m in a strange season in life. On February 20th after speaking to my
neighbors 26 year old son- who was living at their house – after he was
discharged from the Marines – he shot and killed himself outside
in the street.
I heard the gunshot though I didn’t know that that sound belonged with him until 20 minutes later.
I’ve wondered relentlessly to myself these past three months what the purpose is in me
talking to him moments before his unforeseen death, and though I have
an idea how God will use that – all I can do right now is lean into all power verses
that speak of Gods incredible love for us.This song has been a source of refuge for me.
Imagining that God himself is holding me like father holds his child
when they are sad afraid, and tired.
 

*There are no pictures – just a blank screen. I invite you to close
your eyes and drink in these truths*

And done.

I will have to go back and post the rest of my thoughts from the other chapters, but I am officially done reading through the entire bible! I will continue to blog my thoughts here however.

It was an incredible journey. If I think back to the first post and where I was a year ago with my understanding of who God was, and how much he unbelievably loves me is unexplainable in a blog post!

For the sake of time – since I fell off the wagon, but still want to capture thoughts – with your permission I’m going to post small clip videos and songs of what spoke to me through the new testament, and as I get time I will go back and add commentary.

My goal for the summer is to really go back through Psalms and rake it through and drink it in! In my small group right now we are raking through Galatians, and that has been a blessing to me to sink in now and get deep with the word.

House Groups

I recently started attending a new church! While I love ebc it was time to move on and find a smaller church, where I could connect more easily. They have a very similar set up, except that its not multi-campus church. Just one church of about 250 attendees (instead of 30,000). The bonus is, that K loves the new church. She says there aren’t as many kids in her class. (Before there were anywhere from 22-40 depending what service we went to! Now she has 10 or less.

They have a really neat set-up during the “school year” September-May called “House Groups”. Essentially 30 people or so, show up at a house, and mingle for about 30-45 minutes, and then break out into different areas of the house (gender specific) into groups of around 8 or so to discuss that past Sunday’s message.

Can I even tell you what a blessing this is to find this church? The house group I “belong” to is absolutely amazing. The nicest, most genuine people you’d ever meet, and everyone is very transparent. They don’t pretend that they have it all together, and are just very real! I am looking forward to next fall when it starts up again. But I still have 1 more week left with them! 🙂

God is so amazing!

God is so amazing! He answered the #1 prayer I’ve had!

About 5 years ago a new Charter School opened up near my house (about 1 mile away) and they had an open house/information session – so I went to it… when K was 9 months old! Now i know this sounds kind of crazy, but I was really interested in knowing what it was all about. It sounded super exciting. 
I was the only one who attended that still had a baby – because everyone else that went to that information setting was normal and they had school aged children – so began my desire for K to go to DaVinci. 
Years went by and DaVinci quickly climbed the ranks becoming the #16 school last year for elementary and the #3 school district in MN out of all schools! (Standard tests). This just increased my desire for K to go to DaVinci.
Other bonus’:
Uniforms – lets face it. Kids are mean, and K is already trying to impress her preschool friends by her stylish outfits and the wearing of LIPSTICK!!!! So this is one thing we don’t need to worry about!
K-12
This school goes K-12 and has small class sizes. Max class size is 18 students, and average is 15 students per class. I take this as super awesome, and one reason I believe that their test scores are so high
Creation as a theory: I believe in the theory of creation, and a lot of public schools simply won’t broach the subject, but DaVinci will teach it as a theory at least!
Gym every day! – enough said…..
There are myriad other reasons I’ve wanted K to go here, but these are just a few.
So – this past January came by and we applied for the Lottery (cos they’re pretty popular)…I sent out prayer requests to family, friends, facebook, church, KTIS prayer works etc, took a fast from Facebook (and continued through Lent, but mostly a fast to get into DaVinci)…. and by the grace of God we ended up #4 on the  waiting list. I was very disappointed, but my cousin Heidi assured me that we’d get in for sure. I had a glimmer of hope!
And today…. THEY CALLED AND SAID THEY HAVE A SPOT!!!!!! Weeee! I literally screamed with joy when I heard my voicemail! Unfortunately all of the all day kindergarten spots are taken up already – but they had either a morning session (8am-11am) or an afternoon session (noon-3pm). I decided with my schedule we’d take the morning session. 
SO I’ll drop her off at school, and then a daycare center will pick her up at 11am – feed her lunch, and integrate her into their own programing they have until I get off work.
Because i work for the best place ever – I will just change my hours to 8:30am-4:30pm (starting tomorrow). 
Her first day of school will actually be missed however – because we will be far up north on the Pontoon Boat trip – so she’ll start school 1 week late. Anyways – I’m just completely tickled pink, and am so excited about this!!!

Matthew

I was so very excited to start this chapter in the New Testament. The old testament was filled with wisdom and warning, and at times was very bleak and dark, but the promise of the Lord sending his only son down to us was promising, and I couldn’t wait to dig in.

Now, I’ve read through the book of Matthew many of times, but this time I read through it like I was really studying the word. Before I began this journey of reading through the bible, I would only occasionally mark the bible as i grew up thinking that the bible was to have clean crisp pages, and that writing in it, or highlighting in it was purely sacrilegious.

My bible now probably has more highlights than not, and more side notes written on the margins than my college text books! 🙂

Now the book of Matthew really bridges the old and the new testament together wonderfully. Matthew shows how Jesus fulfilled the prophecies of the old testament.

After coming through the Old Testament and fully knowing, and realizing now the true need for a savior I ended the book with Jesus’ crucifixion and then watched this video.

(Video from my church’s Easter service a few years ago)

Sunday’s Coming from Eagle Brook Church on Vimeo.

I cried at the end, and couldn’t stop myself. Between realizing what my sins cost Jesus, and the bright promise that death did not stick, and that death did not keep caused me tears of joy! Whats more – is that I finished the book of Matthew on Valentine’s Day, “For God so loved the word that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16. ~ Now that’s LOVE!

I Will Prevail

 “Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.” ~ Proverbs 19:21 NIV11

Since this verse has been posted I have been breathing in every word of it this week.

We have in our neighborhood an outstanding K-12 charter school. Not only is it ranked for test scores one of the highest in our state, the children wear uniforms (which I have a daughter – and lets face it… girls are mean, and not worrying about if she is wearing Holister or Old Navy is a blessing of itself, school is almost year round, and the class sizes are petite! (max class has 18 or 20 students – as opposed to our public schools which are around 32-35).

My daughter will be entering Kindergarten next fall, and I have dREAMED of her going here since she was 8 or 9 months old. Many are the plans in a person’s heart….

The only downfall – is because of the petite yet amazing classes, teachers, and high test scores – a lot of people want to attend – but they only have so much room. So, what do they do? A lottery!

Since last November I have been praying that if it is in Gods will that my daughter attend this school He can provide divine intervention and get her chosen.

So last month I entered my daughters name in the “hat” so to speak. Since January 3rd I have continually prayed over this every morning, noon and night, and again – stating that if this will fit in God’s plan for my daughter, and our family to please allow us to get into this school!  Last year over 200 people applied for the kindergarten classes and only 54 got in (3 classes)…. So I’ve she’s got about a 25% chance of actually getting chosen.

Yesterday was Lottery day. I sat glued to my phone the entire day, and anytime it rang, or alerted me to a text message, or a weather alert I jumped thinking it was the school.  Later to find out they ran the lottery last night (February 12th). I couldn’t take it any longer. At 6:30 p.m. I anonymously called to school to find out the process of notifying families, and they said they would start calling families today (Wednesday), and hopefully be done by the end of the week.

Today (Wednesday) came and went, and while I literally sat next to my cell phone, again jumping at every single alert and text message, my phone miraculously did not ring until 6pm when my husband called me.

Today has come and gone, and I find this verse popping out at me.

“Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.” ~ Proverbs 19:21 NIV11

Still tonight I am praying that we will be one of the lucky chosen ones but you’re called in the order that you were chosen, so as a day goes by my chances are seeming less and less. Obviously “it aint over yet” and I am still hopeful that I will get a call tomorrow… but I need to be ok if she is not chosen.

Thought I’ve had my heart absolutely dead set on her going to this school there is a real chance it may not happen. And I can get mad about it and cry and cause a fuss, but I have to remind myself that I haven’t been just praying, “Oh please God, please get her into this school… pretty please with a cherry on top”, but I’ve been praying that if it is in HIS WILL….

I do have plans for my daughter as any mother or parent does, but the Lord our Father knows best, and I feel so grateful I have this verse to really lean into – to hold me up if I do hear those words, “wait listed” and if I don’t get my way. Will I be completely heart broken and devastated even if it is God’s will? Yep. I will…. but I will prevail, because it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails… and that’s something I can bank on!

**Update** My daughter did NOT  originally get in to this school, but we were #4 on the waiting list [which is somewhat hopeful]. ~ They called about a month later to tell us they had a spot for us! YAY!!!!! Over the course of the waiting period I really really felt God prepare my heart for the ‘no’ answer. Only He could have calmed my heart and prepared it in this way. Thank you Lord for your unwavering love, and support!**

New Testament!

I have finally made it to the New Testament! When I started this journey back in June I had no idea the strong effect it would have on my life. Sure I knew I would become more knowledgeable in the rich history of the bible, and where my faith comes from, but I can see God speaking to me through his word, and more – I wake up and crave Jesus, and the word of God every day now! James 4:8 explains this so succinctly, “Come near to God and he will come near to you.” 

I look forward to this section; hearing the promise of the future, and following after Gods heart!

Daniel

Brave. When reading through the book of Daniel, all I could think of was, WOW! how brave is Shadrach, Meshac and Abednego, and how brave is Daniel?
Ok- if i’m the least bit honest, my faith has hardly ever been tested. I mean really! We live in a time and country where we aren’t religiously persecuted as they were back then, and the only real persecution i’ve faced is stuff I’ve made up in my head, like, if bring up God in a social setting, or even worse – if a song is speaking to me at church and I feel the urge to raise my hands to the Lord, will the people behind me and to the sides of me think I’m a huge dork?
Really?
These guys literally went into a FURNACE, and a lions den.
This is kind of a corny video, but also drives home the point too.
Ok- you only need to watch the first 20-40 seconds of this to get my point
Lions are scary when they are angry, (ok all the time) and a hungry pack of lions in a den that
Daniel is getting thrown into? And he’s still like, nope, i’m still going to pray the way I want to
even if it means getting thrown into a pack of hungry hungry lions.
And I’m self conscious of raising my arms in praise with fellow Christians.

On deaf ears – the book of Jeremiah

Oh how many times I have said things that have just fell on deaf ears.? Spoke to my daughter, “don’t do that – you’ll get hurt”, “Don’t do that – you’ll make a mess”, or even in the bigger scheme of ‘real life’ politics etc when people warned of things such as the AIG financial collapse – warnings fell on deaf ears.

So we come to Jeremiah. Oh how he preached and lamented to his people of the wrath of God. Turn away from your sins or the wrath of God will be upon you…. and his people, just looked at him, and said, “yeah – yeah whatever you say”…. and turned and went on their merry way.

Are things so different today? You have people on the street corners with their huge signs saying “repent and turn from God, or you’re going to Hell”, and people look and say – yeah and go on their merry way. We even have this amazing thing called the church, which I think is a better approach than the sign holding folks, and people still say – yeah whatever you say and turn on their merry way.

We have things like MTV leading our society in what is hip and cool. We have social media, and instant connectedness that prevents an escape from the mold that society wants us to fit into. So its no wonder that the Good news  falls on deaf ears.

Of course one of the verses I often lean on to is Jeremiah 29:11.
“For I know the plans I have for you, ” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future”.

Whenever life gets tough I just repeat this promise over and over again.