On My Mind

2 Thessalonians 1

Verse 3:
We ought always to thank God for you, brothers, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love every one of you has for each other is increasing.

Verse 11:
With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may count you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may fulfill every good purpose of yours and every act prompted by your faith.

3 Posts in One: A Word, School Transportation, and Recycling

Part One: A Word
The very next day after my plea for prayer and help, I got this word in our morning devotions. I felt it was a direct word on our situation..... And so... this is my hope for now. I especially love the wording of the verse: "Give thanks whatever happens." Not much else I can say except we will just wait and see and give thanks whatever happens...



And in case I didn't get it...it went further....


And now for something completely different...Part Two: School Transportation

How did you get to school when you were a kid? Bus? Car? Walking?

How about sliding down on your backside and stomach? They totally crack me up every day!



They said it scratches their back and feels good... oh well, who cares..as long as they get there...

On to part three: Recycling. I posted a request a while back on a homeschool loop about wanting ideas for how to reuse old medicine/vitamin bottles. I have accumulated quite a few since we are very avid supplement takers! :)
They had various ideas such as storing craft supplies, pins, etc. They all sounded good but not useful for me because I don't accumulate things like that, I just have other containers or whatnot. ANYWAY...
We were doing our morning workout routine (that we now do regularly as a family and I counted down for educational time) and the kids desperately wanted to have hand weights to use.
Katie used two Barbies one day (not so great or useful) and canned foods were too bulky for them. Then it came to me:



These are small stones from some bags of decorative stones they got for Christmas one year. Yeah, they got stones for Christmas...and they LOVED them and played with them and cherished them... then they got put away in a bucket under the kitchen sink till further notice.
Turns out, combined with an old empty kids vitamin bottle, they made perfect, kid-sized hand weights!


Here they are doing some lifting for me so I can take a picture. I put about 5 stones in each one so they aren't really heavy, just enough to give some resistance when they exercise. They are loving it and I am loving having this down for school time because it is an even bigger motivator to not skip it! Katie is in such a better mood when we do our exercising and she enjoys it even more than Noah. He doesn't love doing it, but he does some of it.

Congratulations on being a part of my three posts in one day. Does that make me a little more green? ha!

Asking and Seeking

We are approaching this sign it seems and we won't have a chance to make a different choice once it is made.
Actually, life may make the choice for us,
so we will have to just have wisdom in what to do with it.

(For a couple of you reading this, it isn't what you think it is.)
Please pray for us.

We need:
Wisdom.
Peace.
A Word.
Clarity.

God Stop Sunday

".....so that your faith would not be based on human wisdom,
but on God's power."
1 Corinthians 2:5

Hello friends. Welcome to God Stop Sunday where we look back at how God has been showing up in our lives this week.....through sharing our stories and testimonies we can strengthen one another and

Savor
The
Observable
Presence

Feel free to join me by just leaving a link to your post in the comments and I will add you to our post! I would love to read how God has STOPPED by in your life in an OBSERVABLE way.

Participants:

Karen, at Hallelujah Anyhow!

My STOP for this week:

I can't believe I have only posted twice this week. Wow! I guess my God Stop this week is related to my last post. My cousin, the one who gave birth to the beautiful baby boy pictured below was in a car accident last Friday, just a few days before she delivered. Not only was she hit on HER (driver's) side of the car and it was totally crushed (as in the car was totaled), she was completely unscathed except for some bruises! Isn't God GREAT?! That is the thing that comes to mind when I think about how God stopped by this week and how I can SAVOR the fact that his protection and purpose always prevail! She was monitored and SENT HOME from the emergency room, to wait out a little longer before bringing Matthew into the world. That is GOD!

God Stop Sunday

".....so that your faith would not be based on human wisdom but on God's power."
1 Corinthians 2:5

Hello friends. Welcome to God Stop Sunday where we look back at how God has been showing up in our lives this week.....through sharing our stories and testimonies we can strengthen one another and

Savor
The
Observable
Presence

Feel free to join me by just leaving a link to your post in the comments and I will add you to our post! I would love to read how God has STOPPED by in your life in an OBSERVABLE way.

Participants this week:

Karen @ Hallelujah Anyhow!

My God Stop this week isn't as "concrete" as the others I have shared. It is more of an assurance. A peace. Sometimes I doubt myself...that I am doing a good job as a homeschooling mom because we weren't as "on" as we have been, or the house will get into a state of complete CHAOS and I feel like a failure. When we first decided that I would quit working at be a "SAHM" (stay at home mom), I thought how easy my life would be now, that with so many hours of NOT working outside the home I would have PLENTY of time to keep everything in perfect working organized order.

And every single day I fail.

I must fail. I am human.

And this week I had to give myself a break.

I thank God that he allowed me that privilege.
Some people are not able to give themselves a break. The people around them do not allow it or try their best to "kick them while they are down" so to say.
I am surrounded by people who love me and who support me and God was gracious enough to give me a husband who cares not one iota about the clean laundry being piled on the couch or the dishes being left in the sink.
I am thankful today for a supportive and loving family and for a house that is just the right size when it comes to those times it has been let go and must be cleaned top to bottom!
I am not trying to say we are total slobs by any means...it is just lived in and sometimes let go for the higher purpose of relaxing at night with my family instead.
I am so thankful. Thankful that I have a family that I would prefer to spend time with over cleaning. Some actually don't.
So, my God Stop: I am SAVORING THE OBSERVABLE PRESENCE of GOD in our family. Only HE could be responsible for the happiness we share and enjoy together every day.

God Stop Sundays

I know that I have started a "weekly" meme on here before, only to ignore it and never do it again...but I have a feeling I am onto something with this one....
I know it isn't Sunday...and many don't even post on Sunday. BUT, this is the first time I am posting this and I feel that having it "ready to read" on Sunday should be the goal. So, if you want to participate after reading the explanation, just go ahead....leave a link to your blog (the actual post) and I will add you to THIS POSTING so others can be encouraged. By Sunday, maybe we can have an entire list of uplifting testimonies to read together!

Participants for this week: (click to read their God Stop)

Karen @Hallelujah Anyhow!

Our book club at church is currently reading "Believing God," by Beth Moore.

In the book she talks about ways to build your faith and without just re-writing the book here I will say that it is one of the most amazing books I have ever read. It really has spoken to me personally in every single chapter so far. One of the things she suggests that you do is to record "God Stops" and re-read them, or share them with others as a way of building your faith. She loves acronyms, so the STOP stands for Savoring The Observable Presence (of GOD of course.) So, ways God has shown up in your life this week. In big ways, little ways, every day ways, it doesn't matter, just ways you have observed God in your life.
We shared some last week at our book club get-together and it was just amazing to hear everyone "testify" about what God did for them over the past few weeks...actually not all of them were ways that affected THEM personally, it could be for anyone or anything.
We had one person tell about someone suffering from a seizure while sitting in their car, in park, at a railroad track...(what great timing!)....we had someone tell about getting two job offers (amazing right now), someone shared that they got a very clear answer about whether or not to buy a house....it was just such a *faith builder* to hear how these things could only have been from God...God definitely STOPPED BY to see them personally!

So, it came to me this week that I should definitely start a meme where I share my GOD STOPS and maybe coax a few people into sharing in the comments as well or on their own blog.

This is what I shared this past week:
An amazing thing happened right before our vacation. I cannot go into the entire history, it is too long, but my dad was able to accompany us on our family vacation this past week when we thought he wasn't going to be able to. He got really sick right before we left and where this might have put him being sick for several weeks, we prayed for him and he was able to go with us....and he felt GREAT while we were gone, he slept well, and even discovered something while we were gone that could help him tremendously to feel better more at home. That may not sound impressive, but to anyone reading this who knows the history with my dad, it is a HUGE deal and an obvious way that GOD SHOWED UP because WE BELIEVED that HE could and HE WOULD!

Now, I challenge you to share or link to your blog where you share:

How have you Savored The Observable Presence of GOD in the past week? What is your God Stop Sunday?

(PLEASE let me know in the comments that you have a post on your blog and I will ADD YOU TO MY BLOG POST so others can come and be encouraged by your post! I hope to get this spread around because it can be so uplifting to others to read how God is showing up in our lives!)

A Lesson in faith...second year in a row!

It started snowing a bit here at our house around 6:00 or so. It was coming down pretty good but not sticking, so I didn't even tell the kids (they were distracted by a movie and I was making dinner). So later, they discovered this fact on their own. By this time the snow was just truly a "flurry" and it just looked like it had rained. They quickly got out a blue plastic bowl...."Mommy!!! Mommy!!! It's snowing! We have to put the bowl out there to catch some snow!!!!!"
Really?! "Well," I said, "it isn't sticking to the ground, I don't want to go out in the wet."
"Come on, we ALWAYS put a bowl out to catch the snow!!!" (always meaning we did that last year)

And, I remembered what happened last year. So...I reluctantly went out on the back deck and put their bowl out in the middle where it *might* catch some snow.

Low and behold if the snow doesn't pick up....here is a picture after about an hour. Nothing huge, but hey, it's something. I thought it was over...but after it was dark a couple of hours it started sticking. Here is what they were excited to see after we finished eating:
The snow has stopped at the moment, but it calls for a low of 26 degrees tonight and scattered flurries, so they may end up with a bit more by morning.

After seeing their bowl, this verse jumped in my mind:

"Then he touched their eyes and said, "According to your faith will it be done to you" -Matthew 9:29

There's a lesson in there somewhere. It kind of goes along with my Bible memory verse for the second part of this month also......"whatever you ask for in prayer, BELIEVE."

The bowl was set out BEFORE it started snowing hard and sticking.
What bowl has God asked you to put out there?
"According to (our) faith" will God do great things for us.

This brings it all around to my verse for the month:

Mark 11:24
"Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer,
believe that you have received it and it will be yours."

"According to your faith........"