A hot, lazy morning in South Africa……
Please let me in!
Me too!
Snowy and Frodo waiting outside the back door to be let in.
They have been banned from the house till we can figure out what to do with the electric cables in our house.
Frodo has chewed through the internet cable, the mouse wire, a charger wire, two bedside lamp wires, all the christmas tree light cables, the wall heater cable …….
……..and the Lord God made them all!
The hands remind me of God reaching down to us but we just keep walking, too busy on our cell phones to look up …..
“It was whilst I was reading the Book of Exodus that I realized there was still plenty of hope left for me to become the person God created me to be. Like Moses’ example showed me, it was not going to be a quick process!
I began reading Exodus prior to turning forty years old. I was filled with a sense of excitement; this was going to be the year I started to fulfil my dreams, straighten out my life, and let go of past hurts to become the person God intended.
On the morning of my birthday, I told my husband what a wonderful feeling it was to be forty years old, how I was going to release the burdens from my past and start trusting God to equip me for the future.
Shortly after I declared this, our eight-year-old daughter walked into the room. “You know, Mommy,” she said, “God let the Israelites wander in the desert for forty years then brought them out of the desert into the Promised Land. You are forty today.”
In Joel 2:28 God declares, “I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy.” It was as if God were speaking directly to me through her, confirming what I was feeling. In fact, someone once asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up; she said she wanted to be a prophet. This response from a child who dislikes Sunday school, tolerates going to church, but loves her Bible.
I then realized the only way I would be able to discern God’s divine purpose for my life was to spend significantly more time studying His Word, praying, meditating, and asking Him to reveal His purpose for me.
The same daughter stuck a sheet of paper on the wall above my desk with the following words written from Isaiah 40:8: “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever”.
She typed out these words in big black letters then decorated it with beautiful stickers. It is a reminder to me of how powerful the words in the Bible are.” Extract from God’s Promise for Families
Today I turned 51!
As I reflect on the past 11 years I am filled with a sense of awe, amazement and gratitude to God for keeping all His promises to me. Some are yet to come to pass but others have already come to fruition.
I am growing into the woman God created me to be. On a daily basis, as I spend time with Him, I am beginning to develop confidence and realize that I am worthy in His sight.
My life still has a sign “CAUTION, WORK IN PROGRESS” but on a daily basis there is progress!
Ruth Bell Graham, the wife of the famous evangelist Billy Graham, has these words inscribed on her tombstone:
“End of construction. Thank you for your patience”
She chose these words herself before her death. She had once seen this sign posted by the side of a road that had been many months under construction. It told drivers that their faithful patience was now being rewarded and the road was finished – no more delays. She reputedly commented:
“What a marvelous image for the Christian life – a work under construction until we go to be with God. That’s what I want as my epitaph.”(Disciple’s Diary, R.Wayne Stacy)
I want my epitaph to read “God made and painted me!” (1) but I agree fully with Ruth that my life is continually under construction until I go to be with the Lord.
(1) http://godspromisebook.blogspot.com/2013/02/broken-vessels_12.html
I have decided that for this year I am going to change the name of my blog from “Growing into Motherhood” to “Under a Juniper tree”.
I will obviously be continuing to “Grow into Motherhood” but this year I am going to make a concerted effort to spend more time “under a Juniper tree”.
I am going to spend a lot more time just sitting and resting under the Juniper tree. Spend more time reading God’s Word, praying more and listening to God as He speaks into my life. I am going to grab hold of His promise that I am the “apple of His eye”.
You can read more about the significance of the Juniper tree and why I want to spend more time under it on the following link:
“Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland”
Isaiah 43:18,19
In 1992, John Gray wrote a book titled Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Catchy title, but the notion that there is a vast difference between men and women is so true!
My husband and I have been married for twenty-two years and there is not a year that has gone by that we have not, on numerous occasions, thought the following:
“What is he on about?”
“What could she possibly mean by that?”
“What planet does he/she come from?”
And, then, there are some questions my husband really struggles with answering. It is normally when I am waiting for a response from him after asking him what I look like in a certain outfit or whether my new hairstyle suits me?
Even after all these years I can see him pondering:
“Do I tell her the truth?”
“Should I just try and be tactful? “
“I know I am a Believer Lord, but surely in this case it’s okay to lie???”
Men and women are SO DIFFERENT but if you keep your sense of humor intact, recognize from the first day of marriage that there are times you are just not going to understand how your spouse feels and will often find yourself dumbfounded at their reactions to certain events, you will have the makings of an amazing marriage.
Over the years I have come to the conclusion that the one thing missing from most pre-marriage counseling courses is that the couple are not forced to take a class on “How to Communicate Effectively” before they walk down the aisle. This could be a vital component in the counseling sessions!
Communication in a marriage is a key ingredient and it is one of the things most of us struggle with the most.
The dictionary defines “communicate” as: to impart (knowledge) or exchange (thoughts, feelings, or ideas) by speech, writing and gestures.
Be honest ladies, when last did your husband exchange and impart his feelings to you through speech and writing? Generally, your husband assumes you know how he feels about you.
Now, that is where one of the major problems of communication lies. Women often ‘assume’ things but when it comes to a man’s feelings for a woman, most woman want that verbally communicated and the bonus would be to have it in writing as well!
My husband and I had been married for three years when he discovered just how important ‘communication’ in a marriage is.
I love receiving presents and I really don’t care what it is, as long as it is wrapped up. It could be a small bar of chocolate but as long as I can unwrap it, I will be content.
My husband, unfortunately, did not know this about me when, on my birthday, he handed me an unwrapped birthday present. I was devastated. I couldn’t believe he would do something like that. I ‘assumed’ he would know how much I love the act of unwrapping something. Birthdays are not a big deal to my husband so he hadn’t even thought twice about it.
These are the thoughts that went through my mind as I stared aghast at my unwrapped birthday present:
How can he give me an unwrapped birthday present?
He couldn’t even take the time to look for wrapping paper and sticky tape.
He doesn’t love me anymore.
He is so lazy (nothing could be further from the truth!) and just could not be bothered.
This is just so terrible, I feel like crying (actually I did cry).
Surely he must know how I would feel and how devastated I would be?
How could he be so unfeeling?
And to top it all off, he hadn’t even bought me a birthday card!
When I finally came out of the bathroom after crying my eyes out and had stopped sulking long enough to tell him how I felt, he looked like someone had punched him in the solar plexus. His face took on this amazed expression and he said in wonderment “You mean to tell me that you got all that, felt all that, just from me not wrapping up a present? Wow!” I don’t think it was meant as a compliment!
As far as the lack of birthday card was concerned he explained that all the birthday cards he had looked at had been really expensive and he thought he would rather put that money towards my birthday present. That is something I agree with totally . . . except that he did not ‘communicate’ that to me at the time. He just assumed I would know that was the reason I was not getting a card.
You can save yourself a lot of stress and misunderstandings in your marriage if you learn to communicate with each other and listen to each other instead of just assuming things about your spouse!
We had been married for fifteen years when we went horse riding together for the first time. In all those years I had just assumed that my husband knew how to ride a horse. In fact, if you had asked me at any time during that period whether my husband could ride a horse I would have replied yes, without even thinking about it. I had been living with this man for fifteen years and had no idea that he had never ever been on a horse before.
Talk about making assumptions!
Originally posted on: http://www.startmarriageright.com/2014/12/men-and-women-just-dont-think-the-same/
“You shall not go out with haste…for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard”. (Isaiah 52:12)
“Our yesterdays hold broken and irreversible things for us. It is true that we have lost opportunities that will never return, but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past rest, but let it rest in the sweet embrace of Christ.
Leave the broken, irreversible past in His hands, and step out into the invincible future with Him” – OSWALD CHAMBERS
29 degrees in the shade, the sun is shining and there is not a cloud in the sky!
For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favour and honour; no good thing does He withhold from those whose walk is blameless. O Lord Almighty, blessed is the man who trusts in you.
Psalm 84:11-12
I was amazed to discover the other day that there are 27 Spiritual gifts mentioned in the Bible!
They are prophecy, service, teaching, exhortation, giving, leadership, mercy, wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, discerning of spirits, tongues, interpretation, apostleship, helps, administration, evangelist, pastoral, celibacy, voluntary poverty, martyrdom, hospitality, missionary, intercession and exorcism.
I have to laugh sometimes at how practical our God can be. Here we have all these lovely ‘spiritual’ gifts and in there somewhere is this amazingly practical gift of administration!
Romans 12:4-6 says “JUST AS EACH OF US HAS ONE BODY WITH MANY MEMBERS, AND THESE MEMBERS DO NOT ALL HAVE THE SAME FUNCTION, SO IN CHRIST WE WHO ARE MANY FORM ONE BODY, AND EACH MEMBER BELONGS TO ALL THE OTHERS. WE HAVE DIFFERENT GIFTS, ACCORDING TO THE GRACE GIVEN US”.
If you look at the list of gifts there are some there that each one of us should be practicing.
The gift of giving, the gift of mercy, the gift of helps and the gift of hospitality are all gifts that we are capable of exercising.
The gift I found very interesting was voluntary poverty. “It is the special ability that God gives to certain members of the Body of Christ to renounce material comfort and luxury and adopt a personal life-style equivalent to those living at the poverty level in a given society in order to serve God more effectively”.
Well, Mother Teresa was certainly given that gift in abundance. She founded the Missionaries of Charity ministry in Calcutta and for 50 years she lived and worked among the poorest of the poor. She cared for orphans, AIDS patients, lepers, tuberculosis victims and many more in need.
God was speaking about material poverty and yet how many of us live in absolute poverty spiritually and emotionally. This kind of poverty is something that we have control of and it is in our power to change.
Even though, on a daily basis, Mother Teresa saw people starving with hunger she could still say the following:
“We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our homes to remedy this kind of poverty. Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat”
Each one of us is capable of doing something about this kind of poverty – all it takes is love.
In the seventh year of our marriage my husband and I were contemplating divorce.We had reached a stage where we were finding it difficult to be civil to each other and all pretense of praying together or caring for each other had fallen by the wayside.
Proverbs 19:13 certainly applied to me: “A quarrelsome wife is like a constant dripping”.
“Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
Resentment and gratitude cannot co-exist since resentment blocks the perception and experience of life as a gift.”1
We had lost sight of the fact that the marriage God had given us was an amazing gift.
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UNDER A JUNIPER TREE 