Feeling God's Love and Blessings

As I sit here today I think of my nephew Kent who got married last Friday and I think of how much he has grown and change.  I continue to pray that God will use him and guide their marriage.  I remember so many fun times with Kent growing up what a joy our kids always were.

Then I sat here thinking about my own children and the crazy paths their lives have followed and I rejoice as my son Josh finally got his freedom today and I can see God working in his life.  He has a job and is getting his life on track.  I often think about how I grew up and what things happened in my life leading up to me becoming a teen mother and then a single mother and all the things that Josh and I have been through.  I thank God for giving Josh to me and for the fact that he was such a sweet and understanding caring little boy. That even though his ears always hurt and that he was often in the hospital that he tried hard to always care about other.  When I was pregnant with Jeffery and after Jeffery was born Josh was so compassionate and loving.  Josh missed his father but I tried to fill in and his grandparents were always there for him.  Josh has struggled and had a hard time throughout life but he is beginning to change and shine.  He is starting to realize that you don't have to settle just because you want to belong or be loved.  Josh knows that he is worthy of love.  Today he became a free man for the first time in a very long time and I am so proud of his.

Good Luck to Josh and Kent in their new journey's in life.

Finding Freedom From A Broken Past

HOW DO I LET GO?

I am not afraid to share my story and I don't care what people think of me.  I am a child of God and he loves me.  He knows who I am and he he walks beside me every day and often he carries me.  He does not cause my pain and he does not get pleasure from my pain, but he does and has allowed it.  Why? You ask, well that is because my trials and experiences are what has made me who I am today.  They made me strong even though there were times that these trials broke me and I felt wearier that a baby.  God was there with me and he knew that like Job I would make it through that trial and the next and the next and the next and even the trial I am going through today. 

Have you ever seen people who let their pasts negatively dictate choices they have made for their future?  Yes, I have seen this many times in my life and I have even been that person but now I have changed.  I saw a girl who was a pregnant teen and she had very low self esteem and her decision was to feel sorry for herself and give up and that decision has shaped her entire life.  I saw a woman who felt a bottle of booze was more important that anything in the world even her marriage and her children.  that has shaped her life.  I know a couple different men who have let drugs and crime shape who the are, and they gave into it and let it ruin their futures and relationships.  I know a guy who chose drinking and the wild life because he didn't get what he wanted and it killed him, that hurt many people but the girl that told him no was devastated. It was not her fault and it does not shape who she is. 

Let's take and assessment of our lives.  Was there an event in your past that dramatically influenced  how you interact with the world?  Do you feel broken and needy or restored and complete?  Are you ready to find all the good God has in store for your life? There were several events in my life that impact how I interact with the world but many of them or why I no longer hide but I face the world and the trials head on.  I feel restored and completed even though I know that I have been broken and needy I have taken those times, experiences and lessons and used them to tackle many of my daily struggles.  I know some of what God has in store for my life but I can't wait wait to see all the rest that he has in store.          
                                             

A Samaritan woman was confronted by her past one day as she went into the city to draw water from a well.  As she was drawing water a stranger spoke to her and asked for a drink.    

Here is John's account of this interaction  in John 4:4-38                              

Jesus Talks With a Samaritan Woman  

¹ Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— ² although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. ³ So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.

⁴ Now he had to go through Samaria. ⁵ So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶ Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon

⁷ When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” ⁸ (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

⁹ The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.^[a])

¹⁰ Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

¹¹ “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? ¹² Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

¹³ Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

¹⁵ The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

¹⁶ He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

¹⁷ “I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. ¹⁸ The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

¹⁹ “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

²¹ “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²² You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴ God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

²⁵ The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

²⁶ Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

The Disciples Rejoin Jesus

²⁷ Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”

²⁸ Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, ²⁹ “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” ³⁰ They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

³¹ Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”

³² But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

³³ Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”

³⁴ “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. ³⁵ Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. ³⁶ Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. ³⁷ Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. ³⁸ I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.” (NIV)

You can picture this woman speaking to the stranger, hoping against hope that He didn't know anything about her circumstances.  Little did she know that she was speaking with Jesus who knows every detail about each of our lives. 
What did Jesus tell this woman about her past?  What would he be able to tell me about my past?

Tune in for the second part of this blog to see what I learned and what God knows about me.
                   

Why God Made Me Unique

Making a Difference

"God shaped man from the soil of the ground and blew the breath of life into his nostrils, and man became a living being." Genesis 2:7 (NJB)


"You made my whole being; you formed me in my mother's body.  I praise you because you made me in an amazing and wonderful way. What you have done is wonderful. I know this very well.  You saw my bones being formed as I took shape in my mother's body. When I was put together there,  you saw my body as it was formed. All the days planned for me were written in your book before I was one day old" Psalm 139:13-16 (NCV)

“Your hands formed and SHAPED me…” Job 10:8a (GN)

Your S.H.A.P.E. is one-of-a-kind. It's a combination of your Spiritual Gifts, Heart, Abilities, Personality and Experiences. 

Spiritual gift - God gave you a special ability when you started following Him. We call this a spiritual gift. God gives us this gift to build up our church family and reach out to the world with Christ’s love.

Heart - God gave you a unique passion for particular activities, subjects and circumstances. He gave you a Heart for the things you feel deeply about to help define how and where He wants you to serve Him.

Abilities - You have Abilities, given to you before you accepted Christ, that God can use in specific ways to assist you in your ministry.

Personality - God needs a Personality in ministry that's exactly like yours! He wants to use you whether you're an extrovert or an introvert; whether you enjoy routine or variety.

Experiences - God has placed a multitude of Experiences in your life to help mold you for ministry. He can use many of the experiences in your background to help heal the hurts of others in your church and your community.


My shape is...
      unique...inter-related...fixed...irrepressible


Form follows function whenever you are doing a project or building a new building.


But Spiritually function follows form. 


This was just the beginning of the message on Sunday October 11, 2011 at Shadow Hills Church given by Pastor Michael Rochelle.


This really started making me think more about who I am, why I am here, and what is my purpose.  I often reflect on my past and my passion, but today I am putting my feelings and experiences into words so that just maybe my SHAPE can help someone else.


I am who I am today because I have God in my life and because he knew me before I was born and allowed me to have experiences that are different from what others have experienced.


Throughout my life many people have crossed my path and inspired me and I often sit and reflect on the impact that they had in my SHAPE.  I grew up in a very small town in Michigan called Homer.  There was a church in the Country when I grew close to the lord and learned thing about myself that I may have otherwise never learned.  If I began to list each and every person from Cook's Prairie Baptist Church that influenced my life I would not only have a very long list but I am sure that I would accidentally leave somebody off the list.  So I thought long an hard about how to tell my story and my experiences while showing how I have learned about my shape.  I will try not to bore you but I am am going to tell you my version of how a few wonderful people touched my life and taught me some valuable lessons.


I never thought I had many friends in school or that anyone ever noticed me or would have even missed me, but in the last few years as I have begun searching my life for answers and looking for my true purpose while putting the past behind me I have found that more people cared than I ever knew.  
I remember that because we were from a very small town that it seemed like not only did everyone know who you were but most people in our town were related to each other in some way.  The reason that this is so important is because there was one very special lady in our town that made a huge impact on my life and my SHAPE but so did her entire family and many of them may not even know it.  The thing about our town was often the teachers you had in school where also your Sunday School teachers or your youth leaders.  
Our Pastor was Larry Fulton; he and his wife Betty were warm and caring people even when they no longer served our congregation if you called they would be there and that is something that is still true.  I must say that Larry is now in heaven but often I struggle and reach for help and I am reminded of things that he told or moments that he and Betty gave me support and loved me.  When my dad I made one phone call and Larry, came all the way just to sit with me and pray.  He could have could have prayed or the phone or told me or how sorry he was or even said that he was my pastor so that he couldn't do anything for me, but that was not him.  Whenever you called he was always there.
Then there was Maryann Egnatuck and her sisters and their families that touched my life in ways I can never put into words.  I won't go into a ton of detail on this right now because I plan to expand on their impact in my life in a future blog.


This is the beginning of my journey to show how I found my shape, when I came from, where I have been and where I am going.  i hope that many of you will follow me in this journey and I hope that just maybe one little thing that I write, have felt or experienced will help at least one person that reads this.  


I was weak but now am strong
Was blind but now I see...