Tuesday, August 14, 2012

We Show Such Faith in Chairs...

Just a small thought I have today.

Why do we so easily, with no anxiety or hesitation, sit down in a chair--any chair, putting our whole weight on it; never questioning the strength of the bolts, screws and/or nails holding the chair together? BUT when we need to trust God for things more important than just bearing our weight as we sit, we have such a hard time putting our whole "weight" on Him.  It's not like the "Him" I'm talking about is a flawed human being or even an animal of lower conscience than humans. The "Him" I'm talking about is the God who made our every cell......every atom....every particle of the atoms in our bodies.  The "Him" is the God who made our physical bodies, our personalities, our talents and giftings, our skin color, our height, our family (lineage) and our souls.  It's such an amazingly strange thing that we struggle so much trusting someone who knows everything about us, who knows everything we have done, are doing and will do; who knows everyone we have met, do know and will meet.  This great God knows our every weakness and loves us SO much He chose to die on a cross for our sins...taking our punishment so that we could be brought back in line with God and become children of God. (John 3:16,17 and 18)
I understand that there is a big difference between physical trust (like sitting on a chair) and spiritual trust (like believing the invisible God will help, guide, teach, protect, provide, restore, etc.)  I get that. But still it is interesting to think of these two things together. I hope you are following my train of thought. haha!
We so easily collapse on a chair or couch at the end of a grueling day, resting our whole weight, physically on it. We need to pray and ask our great God to help us collapse into His loving lap (so-to-speak) in our hearts, our minds and our souls each day.  We need to pray and ask our loving Savior to show us what we can do to trust Him deeper.

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil.  It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones."
 -Proverbs 3:5, 6, 7, 8

We show such faith in chairs each day with our physical person.  Can we show an even deeper/stronger faith in God each day with our spiritual/emotional person; thus showcasing to the world around us that our great God is able to bear the weight of any soul......that He holds the whole world in His hands?

Let's get real, women! Let's rise out of our anxieties and doubts by the power of God and shine to the world around us----showing them Who we trust with our every breath!  Let's be women who seek truth; knowing there is only one Truth, Jesus Christ. Let's quit worrying about bringing ourselves fame, recognition, status, etc. and start turning our hearts to the LORD, living to bring God glory and honor each day in our world of influence---for He is worthy.

Monday, August 6, 2012

Music Video "He's Always Been Faithful To Me"

David Crowder Band - I Am a Seed

Happy 1st Anniversary Blog!

During most of my pregnancy and the whole first year of my son's life, I spent many hours thinking up topics and ideas for a blog I might create in the future. I had and still do have a strong desire to encourage women of all kinds; young, old, naive, mature, serious, silly, wealthy, poor....and whatever else in between. I was overcome with much anxiety and lack of confidence during that time span of a year and half. So my dream to reach women with the love of God and a love for His Truth through a blog format didn't really become realized until 2011. However, my desire to minister to women started many years before and became very strong in my heart during the year 2009 and continued to grow until I began writing in August of 2011.

Many nights during my son's first year I would think about--pray about how I wanted to encourage the world around me using the gifts and talents God has given me; thinking what I would say/tell my reading audience and what topics to address.  At the time of all this thinking and praying, I had no exact direction on how to pursue this longing in my heart to be an encouragement to a larger audience of women than friends at work, friends at my church, family and students in our ministry.  But somewhere in the time span of 2009 to 2011, I got the idea to share my thoughts with the world through writing a blog.

When my son was born and for those next eight months, I was awake every three hours....every night. (please don't judge me (haha!).....you don't know what my circumstances were....that's a WHOLE other story. haha!).  So during those times in the night, when things were very boring and I was feeding our son, or just having a bad case of sleeplessness, I thought of the idea of beginning a blog. I spent many nights praying the Lord for direction; asking Him to help overcome my fears about starting this blog.  I had created the basic idea of my blog in my mind. Sketched it all out in my mind, but never did anything (according to my memory) about setting up a blog account, writing my topics and stories down on paper or even telling anyone about it.....well, okay, I told one person--my husband.

After much thought and many months of postponement of my vision for this blog, the last week of July 2011 came and I felt like I should just attempt to look into blog-creating websites.....and just get an idea what I was about to "get into".  So, one late night in late July 2011, I sat down on the couch, with my computer in my lap and went to the blog website I already knew a bunch about (blogspot.com) because my family's ministry blog site was created on blogspot.com.

Deciding to start "goofing" around on the website, I clicked a button for creating a blog. Then the site asked me to register for an account and submit a username and password for all future access to my brand-new account.  So I sat there and thought about what username I would like to make for this new women's ministry blog account. And then I thought about what password I would submit. All that time, I knew I had not done anything with the ideas in my head about a women's blog, so my choice of username and password were new and fresh. I, to ALL of my knowledge, did not have a personal account on blogspot.com. So, I was thinking that I was creating an account for the first time.

Well, when I clicked the submit button on the registration screen up came a 'live' blog.....already set up. It had the format that you see right now.  It already had the title "Get Real, Woman!" and a little paragraph of what the blog site was to be centered on.  I sat in shock.....looking at the screen.  What I had been praying and dreaming about for about a year and a half was already set up and ready to contain it's first blog post!!  I couldn't figure out how it all happened. I still can't figure it out.  The paragraph describing the theme or reason for the blog was my heart's words exactly that had been swirling around in me for many months.  The only person who knew was my husband, so I basically thought he had done it for me and forgot to mention it to me.

That night, I worked on the already created and 'live' blog. Yes, it was 'live', meaning it even had it's own web address set up, so that anyone could have typed in a browser the address and pulled up this very blog site which had no posts written yet before I even knew it existed.  So, I never got to choose the name of the website address.  It was already there: womengetreal.blogspot.com!! I was stunned. I thought my husband had done it all and somehow got every word correct that flowed from my soul about my vision for this blog.

Naturally, the next day I thanked my husband. I woke up and was eating my breakfast on the couch in the living room and my husband was in the kitchen. As I walked through the kitchen to put my dish and spoon in the sink, I casually mentioned to him that I was up really late the night before working on my future blog. I immediately added with a big smile and gentle 'thank you' to him for creating the blog for me to use as a ministry tool. Before he could speak, I also said how blessed I was that his description paragraph for what my blog was to be about was SO spot on what my heart was telling me to focus on.

My husband casually looked up from his cereal bowl and said that he did not do any such thing.  He said he had never even attempted to create a blog web address for me, or to create a title for the blog and an introduction paragraph.  Obviously, I was SHOCKED!  I asked him if he was serious. He said he most definitely was. So, to this day, I don't know if any human being actually created this blog. They would have to have chosen the EXACT username and password combination that I chose when I was "registering".  I believe God made the blog site; that He set it up for me. After many months of great anxiety struggles, self esteem issues, sleepless nights I believe God was telling me He believed in me and my purpose behind the blog. And since then, God has helped me in so many ways to share my stories.  He is the mastermind behind it all. So, Happy 1st Anniversary to the blog that God built.

P.S.--This is the list of all the countries in which someone has read my blog in this past year.
USA, Russia, Germany, United Kingdom, Sweden, Latvia, Brazil, Spain, India, Uganda.