I’ve just started the current bible study from church, Anointed Transformed Redeemed. Within the first few pages of the study I came upon an exercise that really made an impression on my heart.

On day one we are looking at the verse, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you” John 15:16 (HCSB).

As you look at this verse, just as I did, you may have heard it many times and it may have touched you. But the next step is so important and yet I think we miss this part often.

Considering the people who have rejected us in our lives the study has you write the initials of these people down on a piece of paper. Now cross out these initials as you consider that God has chosen you and that it is not your friend, spouse, parent or child’s responsibility or even in their ability to make us always feel “wanted and needed”.

If you choose to put your faith, hope and love in people you will soon be disappointed and hurt. The truth is that no person is perfect and everyone will make mistakes and disappoint you at some point in your life.

To put your trust in a person and not God will only lead in disappointment. God is there with us through good and bad. He is perfect. If you lean on Him He will not fail you.

I have many people in my life that I love and adore yet when I forget about putting God before them I soon am reminded that only He can be there for me through all things.

But this was a blessing in disguise. I notice my Zune was filled with praise music. Which I was loving aa chance to just listen and enjoy.

As the anxiety of the first flight by myself started to fill me I then got to enjoy the amazing glory of God through the beauty of the scenery and music. It was wonderful to just enjoy the beautiful land that God had created and the music just filled me with even more awe.

Wow what a blessing to just bask in His glory and majesty.

The bible we bought him is The Jesus Storybook Bible. It is written so beautifully shining with the love of God.The illustrations are just as lovely and Zane likes to look at them as we read.

Tonight was our first night of reading. I read the introduction to him. One of my favorite lines was:

“It’s an adventure story about a young Hero who comes from a far country to win back his lost treasure. It’s a love story about a brave Prince who leaves his palace, his throne – everything – to rescue the one he loves. It’s like the most wonderful of fairytales that has come true in real life! You see, the best thing about this story is – it’s true.”

I enjoyed reading it to him so much that I read him the next story also. This one was about how God created the light and dark, the world, the animals, and us. I love how they wrote “‘You’re good’ God said.” You can see how a child would relate to being told they were good.

This year I hope to read a story from this Bible every night Zane gets his story. That way we can make a journey together that I hope will teach him the love that God has for him.

But things got hard after graduating high school. My dreams were squashed by many things in my life and my faith started to fade into all the pain. This too also happened with my husband. He needed a break from the church and so I took a break with him.

But now we are taking extra steps to commit ourselves to a new church. At first it was hard and we struggled with it. We had trouble finding a church that we fit into. But last year everything finally came together. We found our new church. We have made a commitment to go every week. I teach in the childrens’ church every other week. I go to bible study every week. We have actually become members of the church.

For my husband this is a struggle to learn what it is to be a “member” of a church. His mother was a pastor but of a tiny little church that never grew to having official membership. And when she was not pastoring the tiny church then they were hopping from one church to another. But this is something that he needs in his life to help him through some of struggles in life. This is something we both need in our lives.

Have you made a commitment to go church regularly? Do you struggle with it? What helps you make sure you get there every week?

This January I have made a resolution to work on growing in my faith and spending more time with the Lord. I have always attempted to read my Bible and stay in the Word, but I struggle to make time. Even though I know that God gives back the time that I spend with him. It’s hard for me to stop and make a point of reading and praying. To have a time devoted just to that and nothing else.

I have taken an hour out of my day and even blocked it out on my calendar for time to spend reading and praying. I have placed it right after I put the boys down for bed. This time is usually a quiet time and a time without the boys and a time before I start working on things that need to get done.

Yet I still struggled with getting to my Bible and to know what to read and pray about.  After talking to a friend about how she also was struggling with this I told her that we should stay accountable to each other.  We live on opposite time schedules, so we made a Facebook group page just for us. So we could discuss our devotional time and check in with each other at least once a week.

We have chosen a devtional to read together: The Sacred Romance. This book starts out so fittingly:

“…a voice speaks to us in the midst of all we are doing. There is something missing in all of this, it suggests. There is something more.“

I grew up in the church but then stepped away for a while. When things in my life seemed to overwhelm me and when I had experiences that soured my vision of the church. My love for the Lord has never faded but my faith faded as I was away from the church.

My desire has grown so strong to bring to right my life with the Lord. I have been making great strides in working on spending time with Him. Now I want even more to become closer to Him.

This January I am going to share with some of the things I have been adding to my life to grow in my walk with the Lord. Some of the things I am adding to my life and some of the things I am changing.

I will also be following the series Fresh Year, Fresh Start. I encourage you to follow along also!

Have you made any resolutions this year? Anything to better your life? Have you made resolutions before?

It’s that time of year when you go out in search of the perfect pumpkins. Well I am lucky I have three perfect little pumpkins at home. But we were a little unlucky with our bills this last month and were very tight on money. It’s amazing the meals you can figure pull out of a bare pantry when you are worrying about it 24/7.

We had an offer to go and get pumpkins free this years from a family friend, but trying to find the time between work, TJ’s work and Zane’s two year old crankiness was going to be near impossible. And since money was short I was sure that we would not get pumpkins this year. Which I know Zane and Zarek would not remember not getting pumpkins and they wouldn’t feel like they were missing out, but I wanted to do it for them.

One huge blessing this week was from one of our patients and a friend of my co-workers. She came by with her truck with the back filled with the most perfect pumpkins I’d had ever seen. She let me have as many as I wanted. I was so excited. I was able to have pumpkins for the boys. God is so good, he knew my hearts desire and He found a way.

We got four pumpkins. Zane painted his, Zarek got to footprint his, Zane designed mine (with directions), and TJ carved his. Here are some fun pictures of the evening…

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