God Doesn't Need Us To Say Yes

I apologize that the post is late this week. I forgot how crazy life is with a newborn! So, while I am busy with our family's YES, please read and click through to a post that really resonates with me. We (Heartland) are in no way affiliated with the blog or work they are doing, I just think it is awesome and pray the message is one you can relate to or be empowered by!

- Katrina

But here’s the truth we must understand: GOD DOESN’T NEED US TO SAY YES.

He’s God. He created oceans and land and the world with a thought. He doesn’t depend on us to say yes. He can accomplish in a second what we labor in for years.

But He invites us to say yes.

He invites us because obedience changes us from the inside out. Saying yes causes us to depend on him because His ask is always bigger than our ability. He wants us to experience the impossible, the miracle in the mess so that He will be glorified.

...head over HERE to Kristen's blog We Are THAT Family to read more and see a short video about her family's YES.

 

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A True Warrior

Knowing our identities in Christ is like layers of a never ending onion.  Just when you think you've grasped it and are getting to the core of the thing you discover another layer...and another, and another. It's exciting, it sometimes feels like hard work, and it's a kind of Good that I can't seem to find elsewhere in this life. Sometimes God places people or circumstances in my life that call out a new strength I have in Him, His Word (The Bible) comes alive in new ways I hadn't seen before, and my faith muscle is stretched.
This week we are looking at who we are in Christ as true warriors for his kingdom.  For me, this is one of those topics that is really stretching my faith and I sense God calling out a newer, stronger belief and understanding in who He has created me to be in His image and in His kingdom right here on Earth. It's like I just arrived at boot camp and God's sharpening my skills and showing me all He has equipped me with for battle. Are you there with me?  Let's look at the characteristics of a TRUE WARRIOR and learn what it means to "fight the good fight" (1 Tim 6:12)

A True Warrior...

· Called not hired. 

 Have a strategy and vision. Focus on one battle at a time. 

· Intentional vs reactive. Develop a plan for how to fulfill the vision (Psalms 90:12, Psalms 90:17) .

 · Establish covenant relationships (accountable relationships built on deep trust and honesty).

· Practice long and hard to perfect skills and develop discipline. Requires practice and being intentional with time.

 · Mentally tough and determined.

 · Dedicated to serving God.

 · Mindset of victory and not of fear - God is victorious.

 · Constantly learning from their current situations or challenges because they know those learnings will help build skill and strength needed at a later time. 

· Honor-bound to something higher than themselves. Follow and surrender to stringent guidelines that require commitment and discipline.

Heavenly Father, give us kingdom vision to see ourselves as the warriors You have created us to be.  You instruct us to "guard our hearts above all else" (Prov 4:23) and we thank you for the weapons to do so.  We ask for strength to stand in the face of evil and a holy determination to do your kingdom work in our own lives.  It's in Jesus' name we ask, Amen.

Jena

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He is Our Lamp

I think it’s safe to say that we’ve all been stuck before. And what I mean is that at some point in our lives, we’ve likely felt hopeless, afraid and unsure of our next step. And in a moment like that, regardless of how we arrived there, we have a choice. We can choose life or death. We can choose to follow a path that God has created for us, or we can try to figure life out on our own.

 

If you decide to follow God, it’s a decision that will forever change your life. And the honest truth is that you just don’t decide to follow Him one day. You have to choose Him over and over again, with each step along life’s path, for as long as you live.

 

I’ve often heard Jesus described as being a light at the end of the tunnel. It sounds inspiring and I’m sure whoever said it first, the intention wasn’t likely to cause confusion. But yet it does. It’s confusing because Jesus never promised to be a light at the END of the tunnel. He promised only to illuminate the path in front of us, which inadvertently leaves the rest of the path dark.

 

King David wrote in Psalms 119:105, “Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.” I believe God specifically chose the word “lamp”. He wanted to make a point based on how a lamp functions. For example, if I were taking a late night stroll through a dark forest, I probably wouldn’t reach for my lamp as I walked out the door. I’d grab my flashlight. I can point a flashlight in front of me and see so much further out than if I was carrying a lamp.

 

The purpose of a flashlight is to reveal what’s coming up, with plenty of time to decide your next move. For example, walking through a dark forest, a flashlight can help one avoid a fallen log, hide from a night animal, or turn a different direction altogether. Obviously, using a flashlight can be tremendously helpful. But that’s not how God intended us to walk with Him.

 

And I guess that’s the point altogether. He doesn’t want us to walk to Him; but rather, He wants us to walk with Him.

 

God wants to be our lamp. A lamp is bright enough to guide your next few steps, but certainly isn’t bright enough to prove that all is safe in the woods. If God showed you how everything in your life would turn out, either it wouldn’t make any sense at the time, or worse, you would never learn to trust in Him. We would never experience the kind of faith that can move mountains as we take steps towards Him.

 

And it may sound scary to move toward God with only a lamp to guide you. But the good news is He is with us. You don’t have to walk down a dark and scary tunnel to His light at the end. He is the light that will travel with us every step of the way. My prayer is that we, as mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, and friends, continue to choose God every day. And know that we don’t have to walk alone. If we choose to follow the one true God, He is with us every step of the way.

- Rebekah H.

 

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Jesus Lives!

Image courtesy of morgueFile

Easter is here!  Hopefully you have been enjoying the season and finding some time to learn and study as a family just what this time means.  

Did you know…

Easter eggs, which symbolize the resurrection of Jesus, originated from early Christians of Mesopotamia, who dyed the eggs red to symbolize the blood Christ Jesus shed for us on the cross. 

While the Easter bunny doesn’t make his appearance in the Bible, rabbits are an ancient symbol of new life and fertility.  

The date for Easter is determined by a lunisolar calendar (I read a bit about this and it was quite confusing so we’ll leave it at that!).  Easter will be on April 5^th next year for those of you who like to plan ahead! 

I also found a few ideas I thought were really cool for teaching children about the resurrection of Jesus Christ:

Resurrection Eggs:  using visual representation, tells the Easter story in simple terms 

Resurrection Rolls:  super easy, fun to make with children, and a really cool way to explain the resurrection to young little minds!

Resurrection Cookies:  similar to resurrection rolls but maybe for slightly older children 

Jelly Bean poem:  great visual but very sweet (no pun intended!) way to explain the true meaning of Easter to children.  

Hopefully you can find a few moments today, Good Friday, to take time to reflect on the significance of the cross, either alone, with a friend, or with your family.  Have a wonderful Easter Sunday!

Julie  

Building Community

Kanary Family Mission Statement

God designed us to be in community.  Soon after creating Adam, "The Lord God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone.  I will make a helper suitable for him.'" (Genesis 2:18)  The word "helper" gets under the skin of some women, but the intent was that Adam have a companion to help him share the responsibilities God had put before him in his dominion over the living things of this new world.  We were never meant to be alone.

We form community in a variety of ways, through small things and large, each and every day.  Chatting with a neighbor, offering an acquaintance helping hand, inviting a family from your kid's peer group to church with you, taking the time to ask about the life of your server at a restaurant, or giving a compliment or word of encouragement to that fellow mom you see around, but don't really know. These are only some of the ways you build community.

A couple years ago James and I wrote a family mission statement.  Part of it reflects our innate desire for community and relationship: "Together with Christ, we are passionate about building the village with and for our family..."  This part of the statement brings up a few important things.  First, we have to invite Christ into the center of our family in order for anything we do to bear the kind of fruit God intended.  "Together With Christ" has been our motto as a couple since we were engaged 13 years ago.

Community doesn't always come easily.  Sometimes you have to work for it...be intentional about it. "We are passionate about building the village" - community is something that we are passionate about creating.  We make intentional decisions every day, big and small, that allow us to contribute to building the village.  Whether it is inviting people over for dinner, pitching in when someone needs help, dropping a care package off for a friend in need, or giving of ourselves (time, talent, treasure) in some other way - we are living life in such a way that we hope builds community.

Community building isn't as much fun in isolation!  We do it "with and for our family".  We try to model the village for our kids so they join in the community building culture we are trying to create in our home.  Those moments when our kids think of others first make the occasional, "do we have to" worth it.

Community doesn't look the same for everyone.  I can assure you that it comes much more easily to my extroverted husband than it does for introverted me.  I am much more comfortable behind a keyboard than a handshake, but God didn't intend us to rely solely on virtual community to the exclusion of personal, face-to-face interaction.  Just look at the mess that became of the humans in the movie Wall-e! Community can consist of the people you only interact with online, but those can't be your only relationships.  Sometimes it requires us to step out of our comfort zones and allow God to stretch us in areas that don't get a lot of use.

What does community mean to you?  How are you nurturing and growing your village?
- Katrina K.

ID Protection

There's nothing new or modern about identity theft.  Think about what happened to Adam and Eve in the Garden.  The devil convinced Eve and Adam to question their God-given identities.  Look at David and Goliath...how many people questioned and tried to "steal" David's God-given identity from him as he faced down Goliath? Jesus even faced down every attack possible on His identity in the wilderness (Mark 4:1-11).

This week we are moving into our final phase of learning about our identities in Christ as we round out this spring semester.  Week after week it's been a beautiful, long journey of discovering who God made us to be, who we are in Christ, and how we can live out those identities in every faucet of our lives.  For the next several weeks we will be looking at how God has equipped us to protect those identities, and what that means for the "dailyness" of our real lives.

As we go through our week, let's meditate and really soak in these three sections of Scripture from today's teaching. Read them often and ask God to open up the eyes and ears of your heart to know His ways.  Let the truths and principles outlined in these verses really soak in as you ask God to reveal himself to you.  How do these verses challenge your "God is..." or "I am..." beliefs? 

 ROMANS 3:10-12; 21-25 

We cannot earn our way to righteousness.  Our righteousness comes through faith in the Son of God.  There is only One who is righteous and that is Jesus Christ.  It is HIS righteousness in us that moves God to “justify” us—to “declare us righteous. “ Our identity does not come from how we see ourselves or how we see one another.  Our true identity comes from how God sees us.  God sees us through the shed blood of His Son and He declares us righteous.

DEUTERONOMY 6:4-9
Ask God to give you a hunger for His word.  Ask His Holy Spirit to give you a supernatural ability to know His word so that it is IN you.  Ask God to give you the grace to BELIEVE what He says about your true identity.

EPHESIANS 3:16-19
May Paul’s prayer for you become a reality for you.

Couples Discipleship

Tonight we had a couple over for dinner and fellowship.  They are young, newly married, deeply in love, and faithful followers of Christ.  We had a wonderful time and our kids had a new audience to impress (I don't know about you, but our kids get super excited when they have an audience that consists of more than my husband and I).  Our young friends brought their dogs, which endeared them even more to our kids.  We ate, played, talked, made s'mores, and had a great time of fellowship.  We looked at pictures of their wedding and talked about our engagement and wedding - all along sharing little bits of what we have learned in the fifteen years we have been together.  We are excited to get to know them better and to share our journey with them as they invite us into theirs.

You see, discipleship looks a lot like our lovely Sunday evening.  It is relationship with intent, but at its core is the relationship.  Jesus invited his disciples alongside him, not merely to give them instructions and send them out, but to enter into relationship with them.  He equipped them to carry on his discipleship movement as they traveled with him: telling them stories, showing them the way through his actions and inactions, and giving them outright instructions.

We can seek and do the same in our lives.  We humbly pray that God uses us for good in the lives of this young couple.  By inviting them alongside us and sharing any wisdom we have gleaned from our years together, hopefully we can help them avoid having to learn some of our lessons the hard way.  Hopefully we will learn things from our young friends as well - seeing a marriage unfold from the outside and watching the branches of their family tree unfurl as they add children into the mix.

As James and I talked after our friends took their cuddly puppies home for bed, we realized that we too need an older couple to come alongside and learn from.  You are never truly done being discipled.  There is always something to learn, a new perspective to see, and prayerful counsel to receive.  You will always need someone that is building into you so that you have the energy and experience to build into someone else.

Who are those people for you?  Who do you seek counsel from?  Who do you build into?  Are there current relationships you have that you can make more intentional in either of these ways?

Time for EASTER!

Easter is right around the corner so it’s time to get busy doing some crafting!  Even though I’ll be posting one more time before Easter, if you’re like me, you’d like to go ahead and do a few activities now to enjoy them through the next few weeks of the Easter season.  I found some fun, cute, fairly simple Easter crafts you can “whip up” with your children, grandchildren, niece, and nephews.  I hope you enjoy!    

Tissue paper chicks

Marshmallow Easter Bunny activity

I love that this one can be adapted in so many ways such as big bunnies on big paper for older children, little bunnies on little paper for younger children, estimation skills, patterns using colored marshmallows, symmetry, etc.  You may even have your own creative extension! 

Pom Pom Easter Egg Painting Activity

Again, this is a great activity to teach and reinforce patterns, colors, fine motor skills, estimation, etc.  

A few alternatives to traditional egg dying

I must confess, I have yet to try any of these, but I will and let you know how they turn out!

Kool-Aid Dyed Easter Eggs

Tie Dye Easter Eggs

Rubber Band (or sticker) Easter Eggs

Simply place rubber bands around the eggs in different ways before dying.  The same can be done with stickers as well.

Baking Powder Easter Eggs

I want to try this one with my own children, but instead of using powdered tempera, I thought about just trying food coloring.  It may not work as well or the color might not be as bright…I’ll let you know!  You can also make your own “powdered tempera” by simply crushing up sidewalk chalk.  Put one color of chalk per zippered baggie and hammer or smash away until you have a fine powder.  This would be much more economical since sidewalk chalk is so inexpensive!

And the hum dinger activity for my post…Paint filled eggs!  See this blog (http://www.growingajeweledrose.com/2013/10/paint-filled-eggs-on-canvas.html) for the instructions on how to do it.  I figured with all these eggs around, why not try it?!  I mean, how much fun would you and your kids have and how awesome would the artwork look after?!  

If I am totally honest though, I saw this idea a while ago and thought it looked WAAAAAY fun and cool.  Then I read about it.  And I deleted the idea from my mind.  Until now.  I still really want to try it with my kids.  SO, while I have committed myself to trying some of the above activities for you all, I don’t know that I can fully commit to this one…yet, but stay tuned!  If anyone tries it, or has tried it, please let me know what you think!  

That’s all ladies!  I hope you can find one activity to challenge yourself and your children with these next two weeks until we meet again!  Happy crafting! ☺

Julie 

Before and After

Last week our challenge was to go home and just do the "next step" in forming our own Identity Statements.  For me, that meant I needed to go home and compile a list of everything I believe about who I am in Christ and who God is in my life.  As I pour through Scripture and do some heart analysis about what I honestly believe about my identity I'm remembering who I was before.  There was a good portion of my life where I didn't even know Jesus. After I came to know Him as my Savior there was a good portion of my life where I didn't know or believe what the Bible says about who I am in Christ. My experiences and God's truths collided constantly and I had (have) to humbly ask God for the faith to believe Him over whatever it was I had experienced or was feeling.
So...

...I trade in fear for trust (1 John 4:18, Jeremiah 29:11, Proverbs 3:5)

...I breath in peace instead of anxiety (Psalm 56:3-4, Phil 4:6-7)

...I cherish instead of cling (Hebrews 13:16, Luke 6:38, Phil 4:19, Luke 12:33)

...I hope instead of dread (Romans 15:13, Isaiah 40:31, psalm 71:13, Hebrews 11:1)

...I offer love instead of indifference (1 Cor 13:13, 1 John 4:7)

...I choose joy in the ordinary (Gal 5:22, Rom 15:13, Prov 10:28, Psalm 126:5, John 15:11)

...I choose Jesus' way over my own  (Matt 7:1-2, James 2:8, Gal 5:14, Gal 3:28, Isaiah 58:6-14, 1 Cor 6:19-20, Matt 25:34-36, Luke 10:25-37, Rom 5:8)

...And every moment and every thought where I trade my old ways for Jesus' new ways it's like the buffing of a dull rock.  His glory begins to reflect off my newly polished surface in ways I never would've imagined and instead of a common rock God reveals a diamond shining through. It's a lifetime of Him polishing and refining me, but there is unbelievable joy in the journey.

Where are you today?  Are you just getting to know Jesus?  Are you wondering if you can trust Him and His ways that feel so foreign and far off? Does reading the Bible feel like a complicated electronics manual instead of a love letter to you? Wherever you are just know that all you have to do is take the next step.  What is one thing you need to trade in or lay down in exchange for Jesus' way right now?  If you aren't sure of your next step then ask someone:  ask God, ask me, ask your Table Leader, ask a trusted friend. 

Will you join me in asking God for a big, bold faith?  To see with an eternal perspective? Asking God to reveal our diamonds in ways that bring glory to Him and unexplainable joy to us?
It's an honor to be in this journey with you,
Jena M.