Category: Love

What’s For Dinner 2

tlc4women1 Comment
Oasis making meals for others

In the previous post we ask what you are serving. The disciples begin to pass out the inadequate amount of food to the groups of 50. My perfectionist mind would have been in freak-out mode. Think for a second that it wouldn’t have even fed one group of 50 in the natural realm, but remember as well that it was blessed food. So as they are serving the multitude, the principle of multiplication comes forth and the food stretches to feed everyone, so much so. that the scripture said everyone was satisfied and then the disciples went to pick up the crumbs.

When we put this process in today terms, do you consume everything that is blessed by God or do you take advantage of the multiplicity principle? If we are hoarding the things in our hands then although it’s blessed, it isn’t multiplying is it? If our portion has already been determined then what is the purpose of not serving up a good meal to the millions of people who need what we have in our hands? Why not allow the blessing to flow past us to others? Either we believe our God is one of more than enough or we cling to what we’ve been given.

The other thing I want you to notice is that they went and picked up all of the leftovers. This makes me think that the leftovers were of value as well. So take a look at your life, what do you do with the leftovers? How much money is actually going out that you aren’t even aware of, because to you, they are leftovers and of no value. Ask yourself could someone benefit, even you, from them?

What about your food leftovers? Could you warm them up and take it to the train tracks (for us, that’s where our homeless, drug addicted people gather)? Could you invite a lonely widow to your house to come and share a meal? What about the leftovers in your closet? What outfit would bless someone?

In other words, what is in your hand that you can serve? That was the point Jesus was making in his illustrated sermon. Don’t think your little bit can’t help someone. God has provided what you need, not just for you and your house, but for others as well.

I love, love, love the fact that Jesus said, “You give them something to eat.” I love that he handed the food back, broken and blessed but exactly what was given to him to be served by the ones who had given it him in the first place.

As followers of Christ who profess His name and profess to be sold out to him, I ask what are you serving? Have you consumed all that you’ve been blessed with or have you applied the principle of multiplication to your possessions? Have you had the faith of the impossibility of the moment or have you waffled in fear? It shows me that there is a big difference between success and excess. Just because I have the money for something doesn’t mean I am supposed to spend it there. No, I’m not saying we shouldn’t have nice things, we do, and we can, but what about excess? God provided the food that day for the disciples and there was more than enough but they didn’t throw the leftovers away. They gathered them.

My prayer is that He satisfies you too and that if you aren’t already doing it you will take a step out in faith to serve someone else.

Love At The RMA Store!

tlc4women1 Comment

Christopher proposed to Jeannie at the RMA Store! We are so blessed to be a part of these two lives. Two really great people, one really great store and love is the banner over our lives right now! I’m smiling as I write this! I could not be prouder of Jeannie in this moment, I love this girl!

By the way, they asked me to perform the ceremony! Honored and blessed beyond measure!

Our Measure

tlc4women1 Comment
publicdomainpictures.com

This is an article I wrote for Role Models Of America http://www.rolemodelsofamerica.com

You probably don’t even know her name. You’ve probably just heard of her reputation. She is the one by whom we are all measured. We take the story on as fact, never wondering if there was a back-story, and as all tales of evil women go, the man is always missing or is the one being fought over.

Her name was Lady Tremaine. It sounds respectable doesn’t it? It sounds like someone you’d want to meet. Lady Tremaine, the name has an air about it, as if, at some point, it was aristocracy.

Only if it was, when we meet her in the story she has nothing relating to aristocracy besides the fact that she gets an invitation to the ball. By now, if you haven’t figured it out I’m talking about Cinderella’s stepmother. Yes, we all know her as evil and mean and angry. She has a name and like most stories of angst, it seems unimportant.

Only we know that there was progress because the Brother’s Grimm wrote a story about a woodcutter’s wife and she didn’t get a name at all, she is merely known as the evil stepmother. Her stepchildren, Hansel and Gretel were given a loaf of bread and sent out to the witch’s house to be eaten. Now that’s an angry woman!

Unfortunately, those are the characters by which we are measured. Stepmother’s have gotten a bad rap for centuries. Now in 2010, the majority of families in America are stepfamilies and even though we are the majority, there still isn’t a lot of help out there for us stepmoms. Further, there is very little help in the church for us.

I believe that those in the church don’t want to contend with the fact that many marriages are broken and in need of help. We don’t want to acknowledge divorce and death and remarriage, or maybe it’s that the church leaders have never experienced these things and therefore aren’t really sure how to handle it. So most of the advice from the church has been from the perspective of a marriage, but not a second marriage and that, my friends, is a completely different ballgame altogether. Only we must handle it, because there simply is too great a need for some resources and help.

I often wondered why God selected me to become a stepmother and a Pastor’s wife? I believe it was because in this place, not only could I experience the heartache of blending a family, but also write some things down to help others and a platform in which to access the church.

These messages are not popular. We prefer our lives to be of the fairy-tale variety, omitting the ugly part and focusing only on the fact that Cinderella lived happily ever-after. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take much life experience to realize that it’s not always the plan God has for us. Sometimes, he needs to send someone to walk it out so that they can teach it. He does promise to work it out for us in the end, and the great part is that I sit here as living proof that it does work out, but he never promised that it wouldn’t be painful and life changing. (Jeremiah 29:11, Romans 8:28)

So over the course of time, I will unfold these lessons before you and give you strategy to make it work. After all, 75% of second marriages end in divorce before the 5-year mark. The problem is that statistics also show that it takes about 7 years to blend a family or about 1 year for every age of the child. Can you see the dilemma we have? It’s a big one because statistics are saying we are blowing out a marriage just before we get some relief. If we don’t address it, teach on it, and help you stepmoms, then these numbers can’t get better.

Oasis At Work!

tlc4womenLeave a comment

God never ceases to amaze me. On Thursday morning I woke up and had one thought…”Oh God, it’s supposed to be so hot today, 105, and for the next seven days it’s supposed to be like this.” Then in what I know is a God-inspired question…..”What will the homeless do now that the rescue mission has closed?”

From there sparked an idea. Not a fix by any means, but a respite, is probably a more appropriate word. What if we got water and food and went out to the rail trail and passed them out? It’s not a solution but it’s something. Our city spent some bucks on a beautiful walk trail in our city and we can’t really use it because the homeless hang out there and in the evenings they are pretty hammered and sometimes give people a hard time, but we know where to find them!

My next prayer was, “Lord, you know my calendar. Who can help me today? Who can kick this into gear for me?”

As God is so wonderful, upon getting out of the shower I hear the buzz of a text message on my phone. I read with a smile a note from Cruz, my TLC Leader. “I have meeting with Lauren in one hour. After that, I am available to help you with whatever you need help with today.” Father! You are just too amazing for words!

“Cruz, I have a burden on my heart today,” I tell her when I see her. I explain the whole morning and say, “Can you get on the phone and make this happen? It’s supposed to be hot over the next several days, I need some crews to get together.”

Within hours, our sweet little Kingdom Kidz are on the rail trail giving out cold water and a ready-to-eat flavored tuna packs that we had put away for disaster relief food.

A great big THANKS to Cruz for her service to the Lord! A great big shout out to our precious Kingdom Kidz, who know most of the homeless people on the rail trail because their parents take them to Manna Ministries each time it’s our turn to cook for the disadvantaged and so they consider these men and women friends. They greet them when they see them walking around town and they care about them!

Most of all thank you LORD, for the wonderful way in which you direct our path and put such wonderful people in our lives!!

Oasis YOU ROCK! WOOT WOOT!

I’m A Good Person

tlc4women1 Comment
http://www.flickr.com/ photos/ 10141295@N07/ 3647593523/

From the book Healing of Memories by David A. Seamands comes this story on page 49.

The Calgary Herald reported:

On June 5, 1978 seven-year-old Martin Turgeon slipped off the wharf and fell into the Prairie River. The dozen or more adults standing on the same pier did nothing-except watch him struggle a few moments in the water and then drown.

Why didn’t anyone help? Well, just a short distance upstream, untreated sewage is dumped into the river. The water is highly polluted and very smelly. One witness quote an onlooker as later saying, “We weren’t going to jump in there-the water was much too dirty.” A police-man who came on the scene shortly thereafter remarked bitterly, “It makes you wonder about how human people really are. The boy probably could have been saved.”

Luke 18:18 One day one of the local officials asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to deserve eternal life?” 19 Jesus said, “Why are you calling me good? No one is good – only God.

Most people if asked would tell you they are good people. Most people if asked would tell you that they would have been the one to jump in and save the boy from drowning but the news tells us differently doesn’t it? This article also speaks to our delusion that things were better ‘back in the day’.

I don’t write this today out of any sense of arrogant morality. I am a germ freak. I don’t know if I could have jumped in and saved the boy so I am not any better than the people who stood on the sidelines.

Instead I write this because many see God as not good.

Well if God were good, he wouldn’t call my particular brand of sin, a sin. He’d understand that since he created me this way then he has to deal with it. The problem with this logic is that it isn’t true. To say that God made you selfish and prideful when he hates that is to say he made something he knew he’d hate from the beginning. That just isn’t true. Those of us who are creative know that we don’t dream up and create things we hate.

Well if God were good then why do bad things happen? Because the world is a place filled with imperfect people who make wrong choices. God gave us the earth and told us to multiply, subdue and take dominion. So therefore, our responsibility to each other can’t be ignored.

The list of supposed wrongs that God has committed goes on and on and the fact is that we blame him when the fault lies squarely on our shoulders if we’re honest. People go hungry while many die of obesity. We can’t really say we don’t have the resources to feed them, we do, we simply don’t care enough.

Jesus came to earth and jumped in that sewage filled lake as we struggled to stay alive. Rather than merely peer over the edge and watch us die, he had more grace and mercy that we could ever imagine or feel and jumped in to save us.

Let’s not kid ourselves. I believe most people try everyday to be good but we all fail at some point. Either through a decision that is selfish or an action made in haste without much thought. The one thing we can always count on to bring us peace is that people will fail us, give us enough time and we’ll do it every time, but God is ALWAYS good!

Lucky

tlc4women3 Comments

When my husband calls me these days my ringtone sings a Jason Mraz song whose lyrics go, “Happy to be loved by my best friend, happy to have been where I have been….”

Hold up though, where I’ve been has been pretty rough. A widow at 35, held at gunpoint in a stalker/attempted kidnapping, married my husband and then went through the hell of blending a family and being labeled the wicked stepmother. So how can I relate to a song that says, “happy to have been where I have been”?

Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.

Somehow when all is said and done, I have walked through the darkness and come out in the dawn. My faith has been tried and tested and it looms larger than life. I have huge faith for you too because I know that I am not God’s favorite kid, he treats us all that way.

I have learned big huge lessons and today it’s good to be alive, I couldn’t always say that. I have somehow fallen into the arms of the Father and he has placed me in a wonderful place. I have a husband who loves me. We aren’t perfect but I could tell you stories that would show you the miracle of our marriage and that we survived the white water rapid-like beginning of it. My kids are grown and doing well. My stepkids, whom I call stepkids for this writing only, have settled down and we have a good relationship now. I work at a job I love. I have good friends.

So here you have living proof that even when we go through trials and it feels like you’re not going to make it, you will! You’ll learn something with every goodbye. You’ll somehow or another wake up each and everyday, and if you’ll apply your faith, forget about your “right” to be okay all the time, realize life happens and suffering happens, you’ll see the dayspring as well. The bible says, it rains on the just and the unjust. Meaning life is just life, there are hills and valleys for all of us. There are great lessons to learn if you’ll walk it out and not throw yourself down on the ground and throw a fit. Through this process I’ve learned that God was with me even in the dark days, that all I had to do was take his hand and trust him to lead me to light and show me a few things about the process in the meantime.

Just like the day, it’s always darkest before the dawn, but the sun does eventually come out. Here is a Josh Wilson song that touches my heart.

Before The Morning
Misc 1
(PRE-CHORUS 1)
Someday somehow you’ll see you’ll see

Chorus 1
Would you dare would you dare to believe
That you still have a reason to sing
‘Cause the pain that you’ve been feeling
It can’t compare to the joy that’s coming
So hold on you gotta wait for the light
Press on and just fight the good fight
‘Cause the pain that you’ve been feeling
It’s just the dark before the morning

Verse 1
Do you wonder why you have to
Feel the things that hurt you
If there’s a God
Who loves you where is He now

Verse 2
Maybe there are things you can’t see
And all those things are happening
To bring a better ending

Verse 3
My friend you know how this all ends
You know where you’re going
You just don’t know how you’ll get there
So say a prayer

Verse 4
And hold on
‘Cause there’s good for those who love God
But life is not a snapshot
It might take a little time
But you’ll see the bigger picture

Misc 2
(PRE-CHORUS 2)
Once you feel the weight of glory
All your pain will fade to memory

Chorus 2
It’s just the hurt before the healing
Oh the pain that you’ve been feeling
It’s just the dark before the morning

CCLI Song No. 5520800
© Ariose Music | Ben Glover Co-Publishing Designee | Meaux Hits (Admin. by EMI Christian Music Publishing) | (Admin. by EMI Christian Music Publishing) | (Admin. by EMI Christian Music Publishing)
Ben Glover | Josh Wilson
For use solely with the SongSelect Terms of Use. All rights Reserved. http://www.ccli.com
CCLI License No. 2285171

Stain?

tlc4womenLeave a comment
blog.evidenttech.com/

Work out (cultivate, carry out to the goal, and fully complete), your own salvation with reverence and awe and trembling (self-distrust, with serious caution, tenderness of conscience, watchfulness against temptation, timidly shrinking from whatever might offend God and discredit the name of Christ). Philippians 2:12 Amplified

I think that’s the crux of the issue we have as Christians in America. We trust ourselves more than we trust God. Do we worry about whatever might offend God? Do we say we are Christians and then live like fools doing whatever is pleasing to ourselves and forgetting that in the process we discredit the name of Christ, which includes the church, and the congregation? If I am calling myself a Christian, and living contrary to what the bible says, then do I stain your name as a believer?

Inasmuch

tlc4women1 Comment
http://www.payvand.com/

Mark 11:12 The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. 13 Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. 14 Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it.

Matthew:25:34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ 37″Then the righteous will answer him, ‘LORD, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’40 “The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’ 41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

Just a quick thought today. Do you have fruit to feed others when they are hungry? Inasmuch as you have fruit to feed others you feed Jesus. Nothing goes unnoticed. Let’s be fruit bearers. Fruit bearers who notice people who are not just hungry for food, although that’s a big consideration, but hungry for life giving word and love.

For The Future

tlc4women3 Comments

So last night we had V.I.P.’s, our youth group, service at the new building. It was significant in that our vision is reach the next generation for Christ. That building is not the church until the people unite there. It was built so that generations from now, followers of Christ will still have the opportunity to unite in the name of Jesus.

I don’t know if the youth understood the significance of the moment until I pointed it out. Then I saw the lightbulb go off and the smiles come onto their faces and I saw a different posture. A posture of ownership and meaning. We had communion there last night, before the grand opening and the first sermon, a gathering the willing leaders of the future.  The youth looked as solemn as youth can look when in the presence of other youth.

You’ll never know how that touched my heart. I am part of something so much bigger than myself and it makes everything else in my life so insignificant. To work to bring Jesus to the hearts of youth blesses me. To work daily in the service of our Lord is a privilege. Sometimes, I must admit, that I am like the youth were yesterday in that I fail to recognize the honor in what I get to do, and then it hits me, and humbles me, like it did last night.

We sang this song last night, acoustically, a guitar and youth voices. It doesn’t get better than that!

Where There Is A Spark

tlc4women3 Comments
ww.flickr.com/ photos/najy/ 3713597345/

This blog was written three years ago in honor of my godparents. Sadly, my godfather passed away last Monday, on their 63rd wedding anniversary, and we will bury him in the morning. I have deep sense of sadness but also amazing gratitude at having known them and at having the privilege to be their goddaughter.

Last week I got a chance to visit with my godparents. I love them so much. They are both incredible role models to me and have treated me well all of my life. They took their roles in my life seriously and they accepted their responsibility for my spiritual upbringing to the fullest. To this day they send me prayers by mail and I get solid hugs, love and words, both correcting and edifying.

In a few weeks they are celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary! Yes that’s 60 like 6-0, like 56,57,58, 59, 60! They were married on June 14, 1947. She was 19 and he was 21 or 22 and just back from World War II. I am so very proud of them.

I remember for their 50th I asked what the secret was. My Nina Lola, as I call her (Delores as the world calls her), said, “We stuck it out. You don’t always feel the ‘in love’ feeling, there are ups and downs but the ups always come back and the downs are there too, but you begin to understand that it’s life. That’s the problem with you kids, you give up too easy and you miss out. The first down and you are out.”

This year, we asked her again what the secret was. She said, “Love, communication, you have to be able to have things to talk about, respect is very important and morals.” She still calls, my Nino George, “Hun”. My Nina Lola will be 80 next month and Nino George will be 82 I think or 83 in July. He listened to what she had to say about how they sustained 60 years and he chuckled and said with a sparkle in his eye, “Who’s been married 60 years? Not me!” He’s always had a great sense of humor and can keep you laughing with these kinds of typical retorts. She said, “Not 60 years, 50 years. Oh yeah, it is 60 years isn’t it?” Then we all laughed. How cool it was that to them it didn’t seem as though it was a life sentence!

I don’t know if when they first met and felt that first spark of love touch them both that they ever imagined 60 years but I’d like to think so. They are parents, grandparents and great-grandparents and they live in the very first house they bought. That spark has created security for all of us and for that I am so grateful. I can’t express the love that I feel for them. They are funny and rich in character and I am so much better for having them in my life. They have taught me that the things that are important in life are simple. Love your family, work at something you are good at and don’t expect perfection, set down roots and go to church. Monetarily they could have moved to a bigger house at any point, taken lavish vacations or done whatever they wanted. Instead they taught us to save our money and be content.

60 years. What a blessing. I can’t even imagine them apart. 60 years. What a legacy. When you realize that some people don’t live that long so to be married that long is a blessing. To find a couple who are at peace with each other and who have learned to get along is a gift. That is truly a gift worth thanking God for!