Melissa

I dearly love Beth Moore (big shock huh? wink wink) and both of her daughters have become just as dear to me over the last year. I read Amanda's family blog and the Living Proof Ministries blog where Melissa posts.... here is one of her latest that I wanted to pass along:

Friday, August 14, 2009
I am begging you.

I am begging you to purchase and read "The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism" by Timothy Keller. I am not sure if I have ever mentioned this book on the blog or not... have I? If I have you might be annoyed but I remain at peace because it may just need to be reiterated. I just finished reading it for the second time and I loved it even more this time around. The first time around I was spending most of my energy processing and interacting with the content but this time I was able to sit back, relax on my couch and read it over a cup of chamomile tea and it has blessed me so. Dr. Timothy Keller is the Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. He engages culture and gospel in a unique way and he does it all with the heart of a Pastor.


Here is a sneak peak at just one little selection... I don't want to spoil too much for you.


"The doctrine of the Trinity overloads our mental circuits. Despite its cognitive difficulty, however, this astonishing, dynamic conception of the triune God is bristling with profound, wonderful, life-shaping, world-changing implications... Ultimate reality is a community of persons who know and love one another. That is what the universe, God, history, and life is all about. If you favor money, power, and accomplishment over human relationships, you will dash yourself on the rocks of reality. When Jesus said you must lose yourself in service to find yourself (Mark 8:35), he was recounting what the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have been doing throughout eternity. You will, then, never get a sense of self by standing still, as it were, and making everything revolve around your needs and interests. Unless you are willing to experience the loss of options and the individual limitations that comes from being in committed relationships, you will remain out of touch with your own nature and the nature of things. In many other places in this volume, I've traced out how impossible it is to stay fully human if you refuse the cost of forgiveness, the substitutional exchange of love, and the confinements of community... this world was not created by a God who is only an individual, nor is it the emanation of an impersonal force... We believe the world was made by a God who is a community of persons who have loved each other for all eternity. You were made for mutually self-giving, other-directed love. Self-centeredness destroys the fabric of what God has made... The universe is understood as a dance of beings united by energies binding yet distinct, like planets orbiting stars, like tides and seasons, "like atoms in a molecule, like the tones in a chord, like the living organisms on this earth, like the mother with the baby stirring in her body." The love of the inner life of the Trinity is written all through it. Creation is a dance!" (selected from pages 215-217, 219 of "The Reason for God").


Are you kidding me??


I love it.


Seriously.


Please bless yourself and buy this book or check it out from the library or download it on your kindle or borrow it from a friend or read it standing in the aisle at Barnes & Noble...whatever you have to do, try and make it happen. And then perhaps we can move on to downloading his sermons in the near future. Wink.


Also, please do not forget to pray for God to move mightily at Living Proof Live in Fargo, North Dakota!


Happy Friday Sweet Siestas!




Posted by Melissa


I am adding this book to my "to read" list which is getting mighty long!!! Thought you might be interested too????

~A longing fulfilled~

I was challenged this week by something I read on Beth Moore's blog (Living Proof Ministries Blog):

Deuteronomy 4:9 out of the New International Version.
“Be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.”

Keep telling your stories, Sweet Siestas. Don’t decide it wasn’t that big a deal after all…or that maybe you made it up, or that maybe it was just a coincidence. It was GOD. Revelation 12:11 says we overcome the enemy by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of our testimonies! Let’s open our mouths wide and tell it.

She was reminding us just how important it is to recognize God's work in our lives and talk about it. Sometimes I worry that talking about it makes it seem like I'm bragging about what God is doing and I don't want to be prideful, but I also want to obey God's Word and in order to teach my children I have to remember and in order for this old brain to remember I need to write it down...so here goes.


I can't recall if I've told this story, but I feel like telling it again. When Jason and I had been married just over a year we started talking about kids.. we were a little older when we got married and I was a lot older to be just now thinking about kids. I read an amazing book about the female body and it basically said if you follow these principles you should get pregnant within 3 months. Well more than 3 went by and nothing..not even a false hope. When I went in for a routine dr. visit she suggested a few tests. The results came back and the phone call I received said we should start thinking about options because it didn't look promising for us getting pregnant without intervention. We decided since we were building our house to put it on the back burner. There were tears of frustration and sadness especially as others around me got pregnant with ease and some who didn't even want to be. God worked through that time in a way that I can hardly explain to teach me (yet again... remember I waited a LONG time for Him to bring me the man He had planned for me to marry) He taught me about waiting on His plan, His timing, and about obedience. Of course everyone knows the day came when we did find out we were pregnant (with only God's help). I will never forget a drive by myself to Wenatchee -- it was early in the pregnancy we hadn't told anyone yet and I was bleeding and worried that I was loosing him. As I drove the song came on by Third Day "You Are So Good To Me" and the lines that spoke to me were:

You poured out all Your blood
You died upon the cross
You are my Jesus who loves me

As I drove I prayed telling God that I knew that He loved me and that He loved this baby and that as much as it killed me I knew that this baby was His more than he was mine and that I had to trust God's plan, and because of all I'd been through I can honestly say I meant it!! I'd love to say that I would be in the same place spiritually had He chosen to make me prove it, however I am beyond thankful that He didn't. He fulfilled the longing of a mother's heart and placed a baby in my arms. Proverbs 13:19a says "A longing fulfilled is sweet to the soul." And Proverbs 15:13 says "A happy heart makes the face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit. I know so many who have had extreme heartache and my thoughts, prayers, and heart go out to them in ways that I could never express verbally. I praise God for answering my prayer and I have hope for those who need it because I know His word says He heals the brokenhearted. This is one of the stories of something my eyes have seen and I hope that you are encouraged to write out some of your own.

Don't ya just love it when that happens????

So we are reading through Proverbs in our journey through the Bible (chronologically)as a church this year. For weeks I have been questioning and struggling with how David started out strong and finished terribly and Solomon as well. When we began Proverbs I was thinking to myself what good did this wisdom do him if he turned away from the Lord, and why would I want to follow it?? God spoke directly to my questions through our sermon at church on Sunday and I so cherished this new understanding that I wanted to share it. Our pastor explained to us that this is God's Wisdom not Solomon's and that just like any human who falls to sin we should use discernment and not "throw the baby out with the bath water" as they say - by the way I added that not our pastor!! I hope that if you have ever had this question that you are encouraged by this as I was and hold fast to God's Word as His Wisdom!!!

Desire For a Servant's Heart

Last week as I got to my Bible study I was weary. Dinner had been hectic and I was running late because I wanted to clean up so I wouldn't come home to a sink full of dishes and a bed covered with laundry. I was grumpy and in no mood to feel guilty about my behavior, but as the Holy Spirit so often does He used the words of our lesson to soften my heart enough to see that I don't always have a servant's heart when it comes to my home and family. I am praying and hopefully you will lift some prayers on my behalf to have a genuine servant's heart with my husband and children. I don't want to make them all co-dependent unable to care for themselves in any way, but what I do want is to have a smile on my face as I serve in my home and take care of my loved ones. I want to stop muttering under my breath and feeling taken advantage of and replace that with the contentment of following Christ's example. I love my family and most days don't mind my role -- especially since I am so thankful to be a stay at home mom!! I pray that the next time the waves of self pity start to crash on my head that I will picture my Savior on His knees washing the feet of His disciples and that it will focus my attitude to resemble His!!

Needed Encouragement

I started reading Beth Moore's daughter Amanda's blog a few months back and I am so grateful for it. She has a way of putting the most challenging of motherly moments into perspective and helping me feel like my occasional outbursts are normal. If you, like me, struggle with thinking that other mom's just seem to have it all together and that I must be the only one who has ever screamed at her child to "shut up" or told him I might give him away. I encourage you to be honest with other mothers you know and realize that we ALL have moments and days with our little ones that we aren't proud of and we all struggle with feeling like we just don't know where to go from here. If you are interested her blog will come up if you google "baby bangs". I realize that sometimes I am not entirely honest just because I figure people don't want to hear about my problems, but let me tell ya...I've got 'em, heck we've all got 'em so let's be honest and help encourage one another in our parenting instead of hiding the fact that we don't always know what we're doing and feeling alone!! Here's to one more area of trying to be more authentic!!!

Hesitant When Called

One of the revelations I enjoyed about Esther was taking the time to notice that she hesitated when her calling came a knockin. I am by nature massively hesitant to make decisions one way or the other and fret over making the wrong one. I was relieved to see one of the heroins of the Bible pausing and momentarily refusing the role that lay in front of her. As we discussed Esther's calling this week I realized that it is normal for most of us to have this weakness and in and of itself that is not a sin. The sin comes in if we stay in that state of indecision and don't rely on our ALL KNOWING Heavenly Father to help us make a decision that He already knows the outcome to and has the wisdom to direct us into His perfect will. When the greatest struggles of decision come as they most certainly will into each of our lives we have to test ourselves and see if we are making our decisions out of "convenience, earthly comfort, or carnal pleasure," and as Beth pointed out take that critical moment to (like Esther) make the Godward decision and not the man-ward decision. I once heard a quote that when you can't see God's hand trust His heart and that goes along perfectly with our study (note from my previous post that the name of God is absent from the book, but God is most definitely NOT absent). Trust what His word says about Him and His character and not what our limited mind and feelings are allowing. I may feel He isn't listening, but His word guarantees that He is. I may feel alone at times, but His word assures me that I am never alone. I may think He is denying me an answer, but that is not Truth that lines up with scripture. Every time you and I are tempted to believe our experience over our God I pray that the Holy Spirit will bring to mind precious words of scripture that penetrate us with the knowledge of who our God is and what His character looks like and we can wipe away the images and thoughts in our head and replace them with the HOLY TRUTH! I want my moments of destiny to be met with the resolve of a complient Esther and to do that I need to have more of His Word hidden in my heart. I think I'll start with this one: Psalm 119:37 "Turn my eyes away from worthless things: preserve my life according to your Word".

Do you love your Bible?

I have a heart for Bible study; not just any study, but it seems my heart quickens for Beth Moore studies. I don't consider myself a groupie (if that is even a bad thing), but a found wanderer. I read the Bible for years and it was just that -- a time of reading. I never knew what I was missing! I want everyone I know, but more importantly every woman I know to stop reading and start understanding. There is nothing special about me - in fact I feel rather inadequate when it comes to study. That is what draws me to Beth. Where I read through a passage and don't think to ask the question she stops me and asks and allows my unfocused mind to clue in on miraculous details of God's Word that make me know and love Him even more. For example we are studying Esther and I never noticed that the name of God is not mentioned in the book. The entire book is a lesson in God's providence and His unseen hand. I don't know about you, but I for one have had many times in my life where God seemed from my human perspective to be absent. God is as intentional in what He doesn't reveal as in the things He does. When I am in the throws of a study I am excited to pick up the Bible and delve in...when I'm not my interest wains. It is my heart's desire to impact the people in my world, and to see us being more real with one another. We spend way too much time trying to be impressive to each other... See what a good housekeeper I am, or a good mother, or a good wife, etc. etc., and far too little time praying for one another and asking the true questions.. How is your walk? What is on your heart today? and What can I do to help? I want to know more about the things God is working on in the lives of those around me, and share more of what is going on in mine. So the next few entries will be dedicated to sharing the lessons from Esther since that is where God has me right now. I hope my excitement is contagious -- I hope the awe of things revealed draws you to sign up for the next Bible study you can find because I know there are lots of good ones out there and all that really matters is that you are excited to study God's Word and that you are finding more of Him each time you pick it up. I also pray that you know His will for your life. Seek Him and His will will find you!!!!