The Laying Down of Burdens

Laying down your burdens to the Lord requires the first step of laying down your pride and tight grip on these burdens. We fixate on the problems and thus they grow while our faith hangs put on the sidelines and shadows waiting its use. We need to humble our heart and visualize placing our problems/burdens at the foot of Jesus who can actually help and grab our faith up and then let go of those burdens. Then focus on God who just helped you yet again and thank Him for it. Ponder His amazing ability to handle every problem in the world simultaneously. Really try to n wrap your head around that and then be thankful that such a powerful God delicately made you and sustains you because of His enormous, unfathomable love for you.❤❤❤

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Asleep When My Head Hits the Pillow

Most of my life, I was asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow. I have been asked my secret. I will tell the whole world now because many people are apparently having difficulty getting to sleep. Here is my lifestyle that promotes restful sleep as soon as you lay down for bed…

1. Faith and trust in God. I understand that sounds like a simplistic, pat answer but I assure you it is legit. I do not worry for I put my life and everything going on into God’s hands before going to sleep.

2. Pray right before bed and read the Bible. This is where you put all those things into God’s hands.

3. Guilt-free, clean living. Now those few years of my life I did not get right to sleep were the years I was steeped in sin. Hard to sleep when #1 and #2 above are unattainable because of sinful, guilty living.

4. Hard work during the day. I work hard at living and serving in the day and worship God and cook and clean and so on. If there is yard work, I do that too. I also walk the dog with the kids 4 times a day for more exercise.

That is it. I believe I put them in the order of importance also, so please be encouraged that your sleep is important to the Lord. If you do these four things every day and pray for sound, quick sleep, God will provide that to you and bless you for it. God bless you!😴❤

God’s Grace is Abundant

God pours grace into us. He lets it flow freely. It is our means of salvation, offered as a precious gift as soon as we accept Jesus as our Savior. It is not earned or we could provide our own salvation and we can not. It is not up in the air, our room in heaven is secured, certain, guaranteed. The work we do in life to worship God and serve others is not to earn anything but to show thanks for the free gift n of grace and salvation God gave us. We need to be grateful for it because that is the right response when we have been given so valuable a gift freely of eternal life with our Creator. Grace is that important and enormous. It is an extension of God’s love for us and is motivated by it. All we have to do is truly accept it. And the correct response is gratitude, which is our motivation to worship, love, and serve others and share the gift.❤

A Life Lesson From Carrots

Our carrot harvest was small. Lots of carrots were there fully matured but tiny. Half of them were too skinny to eat of any use at all. Of the half that were edible, only a few had reached their full potential. I realized what I did wrong. I did not thin them and planted the seeds too close together. I let them be comfortable.

However, my lack of thinning them made them be overcrowded. They had no room to expand or grow. They needed me to disturb their comfort and move them around, separate them from their comfort in order for them to grow stronger and healthier. They would have benefitted us more had I disrupted their comfort.

This is how life is. God has to mess up our comfort a bit because we need to grow stronger, for our benefit and His kingdom’s benefit.

A comfortable life can never be the goal… growth is. A closer relationship to God, deeper roots, healthy strength to help nourish others and praise God. God would not be showing us the most love and care by leaving us alone in comfort, just as I did not show my carrots the greatest love and care by leaving them aline in comfort. Comfort spoiled the carrot harvest. Comfort spoils our usefulness.

As children of God, we need to appreciate and thank Him for the struggles He allows in our lives. Proves He loves us and wants us to grow stronger. I will be grateful and not grumble anymore to the best of my ability. God knows what is best for me and has always done that for me despite my lack of understanding at the time. He is God and I most certainly am not.❤

Valentine’s Day Encouragement

I want to encourage all of you who are single, single again, struggling married, whatever. I just received today my first dozen roses, in fact first flowers of any kind from my husband of 9 years. It is never too late and sometimes ya wait, but by golly hang in there. Even though he gave flowers to other women, and that is part of why this is glorious, this was the first I ever received. And even though he has an illness and sin struggle, my marriage commitment was in sickness and in health, and sticking it out deepened my trust in God and lessened my trust in everyone else and that is a very good place to be. Only God should have our trust and worship and I get that so much now. No amount of easy days teaches you that to a livable extent. So hang in there. Draw close to God and He will reward you someday with blessings like these. And God loves you biggest and best and unconditionally all the while. I love you too.😄❤

Choose Discomfort

Weird thing to say. Especially as I say that you have arrived and matured spiritually in life when you are content in any and every circumstance, trusting God with the details.

No, this is more of a comfort matter. I can be content and not be comfortable. In fact, this is my M.O., my credo, my life story. I can name on one hand the times I have been truly comfortable AND content being myself naturally. Most of the time I was trying to fit some mold or obey parents or obey teachers or please parents or fit in at church or not seem crazy despite my being so often. I don’t think like anyone I know… I am naturally a nature girl, pianist, singer/songwriter, artist, writer/author, sports girl, leader, seamstress, fashion designer, machine tinkerer, carpenter, mechanic loving, farming, mommy, wife, animal and children and elderly-loving, mission-minded Christian. Tell me where I can ever be myself. Does all that seem to fit together cohesively? Does it fit any person in church maybe? Work? Who can handle all that? No, I have always had to tone me down to some standard of social normalcy.

That being said, there is wisdom and greatness involved and resulting from not getting too comfortable. I believe if we choose to act, serve, do, be, love rather than sit around being comfortable, we please God. I have yet to find the verse some people live by that God is pleased by those who sit around in comfort and please themselves. It is not n in the Bible, does not exist. It is a device of the devil. An idiot believes God expects nothing of us but our comfort. Like Jesus dies for our sins so we can hang out watching TV and feeding our faces or be in social media all day making sure we do nothing to be censored by their demonic agenda (why I quit facebook and all social media over a year ago). No, God says to live out our faith, serve, love, help. We are not in existence to pamper our own behinds. We are here for God, to demonstrate and worship His glory and encourage each other in home and church.❤

Some Godly People Still Exist, They Are Just Different Than You Thought

I am blessed to be in a good church now. The one I left was full of hot air… looked and sounded great but no one volunteered to help or serve and they cleared or couldn’t handle a problem. You were not allowed to make a mistake, sin or be real. It just wasn’t something they could handle.

Being raised by a missionary family on my mom’s side and Bible believing salt of the earth farmers on my dad’s side, I was raised with love and unconditional acceptance and realness. Jesus knew more about people than they do and loved them where they were, hoping to restore them to Him but always working toward that relationship. Every person matters is loved desperately. God wants every single person saved and close to Himself.

We as Followers of the Way of Christ need to be the same way. That is what a follower is…. a person who humbly follows their leader. We happen to have the best leader, Jesus who loves us enough to die a horrible death for our eternal n life with Him. So we need to remember that and follow.

I believe pride and ego is at the root of every stupidity, judgmentalism, bad philosophy, sin, horrible choice, bad judgment, everything ungodly. But there are some Godly people still out there, they just don’t look the way you think. They may not even be at church (gasp) right now by being treated so evilly by a wounded prideful person who is masking their own sins by beating up other more obvious sinners.

A Godly person, a Follower of the Way of Jesus Christ, looks like Jesus… full of love, accepting, serving, humble, light, truth telling, angry at evil, rejoicing at truth, and teeming with the fruits of the Spirit. That is our goal, our passion. We are out there. Do we screw up sometimes? Oh yeah. I sin a lot. But I don’t want to and try to search it out and face it with truth, pray with contrition/humility, turn away from it, and move on with forgiveness and appreciation for God’s amazing grace.❤