I love this prayer!!!!

 

 

This is exactly where my heart is right now. I just want to enjoy closeness with God and dependence upon Him. 

Waiting For My Greater While I Become and Overcomer

I am so glad that I had a weekend full of single mom love.  I always come away from any Arise Ministries event having grown in some way.  As you know from my previous post I have fully committed my heart and my relationship status to my heavenly fiancé until He is ready to hand it over to His earthly counterpart here on earth.  I still have so much peace about the place I am in now.  Friday night Ms. Alice Richardson gave the most AMAZING sermon (really it was, I mean the woman PREACHED it!) about waiting for God’s greater for our lives and not settling for anything less. It was such a great confirmation and reinforcement of what God has been teaching me!

 

 Then the beautiful Ms. Pam Kanaly spoke about making sure that we allow God to fortify us and give us peace and joy in our singleness.  We are OVERCOMERS!  I sometimes forget to allow Jesus to be my champion and start to feel defeated because I feel like I am losing the battle! The truth of it is it is not my battle to fight and, in fact, My Lord has already won it! I had been very anxious, worried and upset about my son’s father coming back into the picture over the last couple of weeks.  It had been almost a year since he had seen him and now he decided he was going to cooperate and start scheduling visitations again.  I spent a lot of time crying and dwelling upon it in such unhealthy ways! I was taking back a burden that I had already given to God! I was allowing Satan to have ALL KINDS of access to my thoughts.  After listening to Pam’s lessons something clicked! She reminded us not to allow those negative thoughts in but instead to focus on the good and the blessings! Although she was referring mostly to the holidays, it was just what I needed! On the way home that night I started praying the word of God over the situation and my thoughts. I covered myself with the Armor of Salvation and rebuked Satan and all of his lies. I felt an instant peace and have not felt that fear again since.

³ For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. ⁴ The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. ⁵ We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. ⁶ And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete.

                                                                                2 Corinthians 10:4-6

If you do not pray the Word over yourself and your family, I would HIGHLY recommend you try it. It makes a world of difference. The bible says, “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” Hebrews 4:12. 

The other break-through I had this weekend was that I realized that I have not truly forgiven my ex-husband. I have forgiven myself, I have not allowed him to hurt me further, but I have not truly forgiven him. I thought I had, but God has convicted me and I now realize that I have not.  This is my next journey, and I think it may just be the hardest one yet…even harder than finding my way back to purity. Please keep me in your prayers as God leads me through this time of uprooting and healing.

I Love God The Most...

Many of you may have read my earlier post, God Loves Me Most. I would love to say that the events and lessons I chronicled in that entry were the beginning and end of that struggle and the beginning of my new journey in purity. But, alas, they were not. I was able to live it out for awhile, but over this summer I made several poor choices and rode what I like to call "The Pinball Machine of Relationships".  I bounced back and forth from one relationship to another, I was sexually active, I was promiscuous, I was making REALLY BAD CHOICES and I allowed my heart to be trampled yet again. There are a few things that I finally happened that changed my trajectory.

First, I decided to bow out of the CR study that I had been doing since the first of the year and went back to the Women's Bible Study on Wednesday nights at church. I have nothing against CR. It did help me in many ways. I would recommend it to anyone who is hurting or needs to work through issues or injury.  For me that season ended and I felt that God really wanted me to be with the ladies that He had chosen for me as mentors and friends, they are all older than me, wiser than me and teach me what it means to be a Godly woman. 

 

Secondly, I was asked to be on the Women's Ministry Council.  This was an answer to prayer and a great honor for me.  I long to be more involved in the church, to be able to minister and serve others and this was my opportunity! But one of the things that the leadership in our church is called to do is "Lead by Example" and to strive to "Live a Life of Purity.  OUCH! Well I prayed about it and God really started getting into me and convicting me and revealing the lies that I had used to justify my actions.  He also started reminding me of His amazing love for me. I cut off contact with all of the guys I had any communication with and deleted all of my online dating accounts. I want to be an example of a Godly single mom, one that trusts in the Lord for EVERYTHING, even my mate. I also started reading a book called "Lady in Waiting" and it has called me out on A LOT of things and helped me realize some of my wrong thinking and how to correct it.

 

Lastly, through other Godly women, God started showing me what His word says about being single, His plan, and His desire for me. He gently convicted my heart and drew me close to Him again. I love my Lord, more every day. He showed me how His Son is the only man who has pursued me relentlessly and continually, even to hell and back! He reminded me of His forgiveness and grace. He showed me the story of Hosea, how over and over again Hosea's wife cheated on him, left him, hurt him, but he never stopped loving her and pursuing her. God is just the same way with us.  He wants our hearts to be pure and unblemished, to wait for His perfect mate for us as if we are waiting for Jesus himself.  Sometimes we are going to sin and run away from him, but He will never give up, he will chase us to the ends of the earth. I finally realized that everything that I long for, someone to love me unconditionally, to chase after me, to make me feel wanted and adored, Jesus already does, He is the only man who can perfectly fill my emotional needs. He is the only one who will never let me down or disappoint me. He is the perfect man and he is MINE!

 

I have a new perspective now. I am not just "obeying" God's rules about purity and singleness. I am being faithful to my heavenly fiancé, Jesus, until he gives my heart to his earthly counter-part. I am relishing the time I get to spend with Him without the distraction of another man. My love for Him increases everyday as He shows me in the Word, or the quiet whisper of the Holy Spirit, or the beauty of His creation, or even the gifts of His blessings, how much He completely adores me.  I have finally found the contentment I have been searching for the last few months. It is in my Lord's arms, and there, I am home.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

                                                                  Romans 8:35-39

Our Deepest Fear...

God Loves Me Most...

18 Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. 19 Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, 20 for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.
                                                        1 Corinthians 6:18-20 (NLT)

 

I am sure that I am not alone in my struggle with sexual purity. Seeing as this blog is a chronicle of how God is shaping me into an amazing person, I feel I would be remiss if I did not write about my journeys of late in the hopes that it may help someone else along their journey and also as a reminder to myself of the lesson learned.

 

I wandered have off the path for a bit.  I felt the need to "look" for God's match for me instead of waiting for God to bring him to me when I was ready for him.  It is so true that we often want for ourselves what is not best for us.  It is so easy to convince ourselves that what we are wanting is what God wants for us! Justifying this, rationalizing that, before we know it we will find ourselves knee deep in the gunk we had worked so hard to climb out of such a short time before. Alas, that is exactly where I found myself!

17-20 But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.

 

                                                                Romans 7:18 (MSG)

I chose to become sexually active.  I was chastised by my dear friend who reminded me of the promises I had made to myself and to God as well as how God saw the subject. While I heard what she said it took me a few days to work through. I spent several days trying to rationalize my disobedience and how it was okay and how I deserved to be able to experince this kind of relationship. 

12 If you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall. 13 The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure.

                                                                   I Corinthians 10:12

But then the spirit started really dealing with me. I was chastised for my choices, which in truth I knew were wrong all along. As the spirit really started talking to me I was asked this question,

"Who do you love the most?"

"God" I replied.

"Who loves YOU more?"

"God" I said.

I want to please Him. I want to make Him proud and I want to feel His closeness.  I have been choosing to do things that have pulled me away from Him lately. I was starting to feel scattered and insecure. Unless you have experienced this centered perfect place in Christ for yourself, there is no way for me to describe the wonderful peace and joy that is there.  Once you have experienced it though it is something you will long for if you are not in it. I am finding my way back again.  I feel like a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders.  My mind feels clear and my heart feels light.  I am choosing my God over myself.  His will over my own. I am choosing to be obedient to Him and trust in His plan for me instead of my own in this area.

 

Something I learned last summer has really stuck with me and that is to consider each desicion you make not on it's immediate result but how it will affect your life in the long run.  I have been making choices based on what I feel in that moment and it has not served me well.  My focus has been on my flesh and it's wants instead of God and His truth. The bad news is that I cannot take back the choices I made and I have to live with them.  The good news is that my God is one of mercy and grace and that with the my obedience and confession of my failures He will forgive me and I can start today renewed in the knowledge that I belong to my God first and always will.

  

 

Give to God What is Gods...

I know it has been a little while and I have lots to catch  you all up on.  I have been learning some really awesome things about finance the last few months and I want to share that with you first.  I will have some more posts to catch you up over the next few weeks.

So I realized after I had been working for a little while that I needed to start planning for my future financially, and figure out what I needed to do to ensure I don't ever end up in the financial mess I found myself in again. My first step was tithing.  I know that you might wonder about that but I can ensure you that when you faithfully give to the Lord his portion, He will faithfully give back and then some! Not once since I started tithing regularly have I had to worry about having enough money to pay my bills! Some months I have extra income left at the end of the month and I'm not sure where it came from! God truly does reward faithfulness!

¹⁰ Bring to the storehouse a full tenth of what you earn so there will be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord All-Powerful. “I will open the windows of heaven for you and pour out all the blessings you need.

                                                                         Malachi 3:10

Next, I decided to complete the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University program, as I told you in a previous post.  My goal is to become debt free and so I decided to learn from the best on how to accomplish that goal.  I would recommend this program to every person I know, whether you feel you have your finances in order or not! It is just amazing.  There are several steps to becoming debt free in this program and I am right now working on step two, which is the debt snowball! 

The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.

                                                                        Proverbs 22:7 

God has faithfully provided for me in abundance since I started trusting Him and honoring Him with my finances.  I have continually had more than enough and have been able to do things just in the last few months that would have never been possible a year ago.  It is so true that if you are faithful to the Lord, He is faithful to you!