Thoughts on "The Confident Woman"

I am reading a book called the confident woman by Joyce Meyer, which is an AWESOME book and i saw this and thought it should be shared.. :]

Life can sometimes make us feel like we're in over our heads, but the reality is that, without God, we're always in over our heads. For example, a little 3 year old girl felt secure in her father's arms as dad stood in the middle of a swimming pool. But dad, for fun, began walking slowly toward the deep end gently chanting, "deeper and deeper and deeper," as the water rose higher and higher on the child. The girl's face registered increasing degrees of panic, as she held all the more tightly to her father, who, of course, easily touched the bottom. Had the little girl been able to analyze her situation, she'd have realized there was no reason to panic. The water's depth in ANY part of the pool was over her head. For her, safety anywhere in that pool depended upon dad. At various points in our lives, all of us feel we're getting "out of our depth" or "in over ur heads." There are problems all around: A job is lost, someone dies, there is strife in the family, or a bad report came from the doctor. When these things happen, our temptation is to panis, because we feel we've lost control. But think about it-just like the child in the pool, the truth is we've never been in control when it comes to life's most crucial elements. We've always been held up by the grace of God, our Father, and that won't change. God is never out of His depth, and therefore we're as safe when we're in life's "deep end " as we were in the kiddie pool.

Renew and Seek

I had to do an assignment today for a class I am taking at Regent University.
That assignment made me take a two hour retreat away from EVERYTHING and just spend time in God's word and presence. This assignment was by far the most exciting and refreshing spiritual growth I have had thus far in this class.
Before I began, I had read Ortberg's text, which stated, "We suffer from what has come to be known as 'hurry sickness.' One of the great illusions of our day is that hurrying will buy us more time" (Ortberg, 2002, pp.77).  When going outside to the park by my house and sitting on the playground, I tried very hard to focus on God and discovered this "hurry sickness" Ortberg was referring to. I was unable to concentrate for the first half hour of my time outside. We live next to Oceana Naval Air Station and a highway so I was hearing jets, children playing, birds chirping, and cars driving by. It was extremely hard to get into the focus on my inner spiritual world while so many distractions were lurking around me. After about half an hour of this, God started really speaking to me. He called into my heart and mind the words Renew and Seek. I started trying to find scriptures on these two words and then spent time meditating on them while listening to His voice speaking to my heart.
       For the first word He gave to me, Renew, I found several scriptures with several meanings. There are many types of Renewal that I learned today. There was Isaiah 41:31: the renewal of strength, Psalm 23:3: the renewal of life for His sake, Psalm 51:10: the renewal of the spirit, Romans 12:2: renewal of the mind, 2 Corinthians 4:16: renewal of the inner person, and Titus 3:5: the renewal by the Holy Spirit. Never having thought about all the different types of renewal we can experience, this was an extremely useful fact for me. With these types of renewal available to me, I decided to pray and ask God to help me renew each of these every morning from now on before my day begins so I can further benefit His kingdom for His sake.
       After learning about Renewal, I started looking up scriptures on the other word He gave me, Seek. I found several of these scriptures as well, but the one that really stood out the most for me was Deuteronomy 4:29. It declares, "But from there, you will search for the Lord your God, and you will find Him when you seek Him with all your heart and all your soul" (Holman Christian Standard Bible, 2005). In order for us to fully seek Him and His kingdom, we have to allow Him to first renew us. If our hearts, minds, and souls are daily renewed by Him, then we will be ready to fully seek Him everyday of our lives. In this same instance, the bible says, "For the Son of Man has come to seek and save the lost" (Holman Christian Standard Bible, 2005, Luke 19:10). When we preach to other people about God, we have to be renewed and seeking Him first in order to show other people how to correctly and fully seek Him. You can only teach others what you know and have experienced, not that which you are clueless about. I think it was very significant that God showed me this correlation between these words this morning in my quiet time.
       To retreat away from the world was very difficult but it was a great time of intimacy with Christ. When starting, I was easily distracted and thinking of all I had to do today, but when locked in on Him, I began to take on a new perspective of the world around me. The loud, laughing children became God's beautiful children whom He loves, the jet noise became the sound of freedom for the country God is with, and the the chirping birds became a beautiful part of Him in nature while in His presence.
       When we are open to God, He can transform our perspective into His own and we can start to view the world through His eyes a little more clearly. If I had not done this exercise, I would have continued throughout the rush of the day and missed His beauty in the world around me. I plan on implementing these two important words from today into my everyday routine as well as planning for more retreat times in my days. I encourage anyone else to do the same if you have not recently because it is incredibly rewarding when we stop our lives and just tune in to Him.

DATE BOX-Movie Date

My husband, David, drew our date for this weekend, which ended up being a movie date. He picked Star Trek, even though we are not big Trekkies, because he really wanted to see it. I was not expecting much but it was actually a really good movie! I enjoyed it a ton and the visuals were incredible! I would not mind seeing it again. So, here are some pictures of us on our date night. :]


After getting dressed up, we decided to take a cute pic of us before leaving for the movie...

After we got there & bought our tickets, we thought we would share our movie choice..

Then after finding our seats, we got bored waiting for the movie and started talking and taking pics...

And finally..even though you cannot see it, we decided kissing in the rain was the perfect end to our date

DATE BOX-Picnic At The Park

So, David and I started this date box day/nights idea recently when we lost our first baby. We needed to open up lines of communication and grow our relationship even while enduring the hardships in life. We thought it would be a fantastic way to treasure our time together since we are so busy and have so much going on, and always to keep our relationship going strong. We have been very fortunate and blessed with an amazing marriage, in which it is very rare for us to fight.
What happens is that we made this box together and put in over 200 different date night ideas. Some are simple like: go out to eat, have a picnic, go to a museum, spend a day at the beach, etc. Others are more outgoing such as: Go on a hike, go canoeing, ride jet-ski's, etc.
We take turns every weekend drawing our date night slip of paper out without looking and have to do whatever the paper says. If it is his turn, he has say so. For example, if it says go out to eat-he chooses the restaurant..or if it says go to the beach-he can choose which one or what to do there. I am so excited about this new idea and cannot wait to show pictures of some of the exciting things we are going to be doing together! Here are some pics from us on our date:
PICNIC AT THE PARK


We had so much fun lying in the beautiful sun together,
talking and snuggling...

AND stuffing our faces! I had a brisket sandwich
and he brought a HUGE turkey sandwich

After laying there for awhile, we figured...
what the hey...let's make some funny faces...

he is so my superhero :] can you tell we're in LOVE?

we played frisbee that day and I learned
I am not very good...and apparently get hurt easily

THE END----FOR NOW! :]

Married to The One

When first deciding what to post on my blog page, I had NO idea. Then, I spent a moment in quiet reflection with God and He made me start thinking...who am I? I am a bride of Christ. Being a bride of Christ means that I am committed to having a lifelong, exclusive, and intimate relationship with the one and only Jesus Christ. He gets all of my attention and affection. Being married does not mean that it is always easy, but that you work hard at achieving that "perfect relationship." Before I was a believer, I had a veil over my eyes, just as a bride, and when I approached His majesty, the veil was lifted. I was able to more fully view the character of who He was and still is. Christ is Love. Pure and simple, behind all of the theology and doctrine that is presented to us, He is Love. If I am a bride to Him then He is a bridegroom to me. In John 3:29, John says, "He who has the bride is the bridegroom." Wow! I get to be His bride! What an amazing gift He has given us, through His death on the cross, that we can join into this union with Him fully. In Song of Solomon, chapter 1:15, the Bridegroom declares, “How beautiful you are, my darling, how beautiful you are!” In verse sixteen, the Bride declares, “How handsome you are, my beloved, and so pleasant!” We are so blessed that the Lord our God loves us so much that He says this to us everyday. I can just see Him with outstretched arms, waiting for His bride to walk to Him fully in awe and trust. In this same instance, we should be anxiously running to our bridegroom ready to start an even deeper relationship with Him. If you have never accepted Him, let Him be your bridegroom today and enter into a lifelong marriage with Him who is always loving and always forgiving. Just as in a wedding ceremony, the bridegroom is willing to enter into marriage, but he waits at the altar for the bride to arrive at her destination by His side. One day, we will be reunited with our Bridegroom up in the clouds and there we will forever dwell in His presence.