Recall Notice

A friend send this to me by email. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Recall Notice

The Maker of all human beings (GOD) is recalling all units manufactured,regardless of make or year, due to a serious defect in the primary and central component of the heart.
This is due to a malfunction in the original prototype units code named Adam and Eve, resulting in the reproduction of the same defect in all subsequent units.
This defect has been technically termed "Sub-sequential Internal Non-Morality, " or more commonly known as S.I.N., as it is primarily expressed.

*Some of the symptoms include:

1. Loss of direction
2. Foul vocal emissions
3. Amnesia of origin
4. Lack of peace and joy
5. Selfish or violent behavior
6. Depression or confusion in the mental component
7. Fearfulness
8. Idolatry
9. Rebellion

The Manufacturer, who is neither liable nor at fault for this defect, is providing factory-authorized repair and service free of charge to correct this defect.The Repair Technician, JESUS, has most generously offered to bear the entire burden of the staggering cost of these repairs.. There is no additional fee required. The number to call for repair in all areas is: P-R-A-Y-E-R.

Once connected, please upload your burden of SIN through the REPENTANCE procedure.. Next, download ATONEMENT from the Repair Technician, Jesus, into the heart component.

No matter how big or small the SIN defect is, Jesus will replace it with:

1. Love
2. Joy
3. Peace
4. Patience
5. Kindness
6. Goodness
7. Faithfulness
8. Gentleness
9. Self control

*Please see the operating manual, the B.I.B.L.E. (Believers' Instructions Before Leaving Earth) for further details on the use of these fixes.

*WARNING:* Continuing to operate the human being unit without correction voids any manufacturer warranties, exposing the unit to dangers and problems too numerous to list and will result in the human unit being permanently impounded.

For free emergency service, call on Jesus.

*DANGER:* The human being units not responding to this recall action will have to be scrapped in the furnace. The SIN defect will not be permitted toenter Heaven so as to prevent contamination of that facility. Thank you foryour attention!

- GOD

P.S. Please assist where possible by notifying others of this important recall notice, and you may contact the Father any time by 'Knee mail'.Because He Lives!

A Thrist...

I've been thinking about water lately. I've noticed some of the children are not drinking most of their water at meal times and then I noticed that they weren't drinking much water at other times. We don't usually buy soft drinks or Kool-aid around here so they always seem to be served water with their meal. Occasionally, after they eat, I'll serve them fruit juice, and of course with something sweet or breakfast they sometimes have milk, but water is our main source of drink around here. With all that said, I've been a little concerned about their intake and kept thinking about it.

Water is an important part of our diet. It cleanses, lubricates, and moisturises our body. But do we get enough to quench our thirst? Your thirst is not quenched by milk or juice, or soda/sugar drinks. They are digested for what they are. But water is a different story. It satisfies the feeling of being a thirst. If you do not provide your body with the water necessary,( half of your body weight in ounces) you eventually drown out that a thirst and you lose the desire for water because you are offering it a substitute but not a remedy.

Our time with God is like that. There is no where else we can replenish our peace and strength but going to the source of living water. I often think of the woman at the well who Christ spoke to. She knew not of the living water He spoke to her of and hadn't tasted of it because she kept looking to be made complete. She was looking in the wrong place for satisfaction.

We do that sometimes even in Christ. Instead of seeking living water from the Master, we fill our time with amusements of all sorts. We feed the flesh and substitute His presence instead of getting from God what we really needed. Instead of taking the time to take our cares to Him. Instead of crying out to Him when our inner being is saying, " I'm A Thirst!" We ignore it or do something else that fills the quietness in the room and busies the mind from hearing His small, still, voice.

Our Spirit notices though. It sends warning signs through our unrest and our moodiness. It notices. It seeks and cannot be calmed so it feels discontent and we try to appease it.

For a Christian and an unbeliever, this is a great gift of God, to be able to feel our Spirit A Thirsting. For if you are thirsty then He can quench your soul. If you can feel it, your heart is not so hard that it cannot be touched. If you're thirsty, and take a drink from His living water, He can satisfy your thirst.

These are good things to ponder on.

My moment...

This picture is called Simeon's Moment by Ron DiCianni. It's a beautiful portrait to me of what Christmas is all about and yet so much more.

If you look at it for a while, you'll see how tenderly he holds the baby. He was holding more than just a mere baby, and Simeon knew it. He had met the Redeemer, his only Salvation, held Him, and looked into His Eyes.

This is the way I want to hold Christ in my heart.


"Thanks be to God for His indescribable Gift!" 2 Cor. 9:15

A little something about the Christmas spirit.

Christmas will soon be here and the retail stores make sure to have a jolly Christmas spirit. The thought of how to approach Christmas was never something I really dwelled on very much until I had children.

How does one present Christmas to them? Should we continue the tradition of Santa Claus the fairytale, the theme that Christmas is a happy one if one gets several presents, and perhaps that one should have good will to all during this festive season? I'm not being sarcastic. I'm serious.
These are questions I started to seriously consider. How was I to raise them to honor God during this holiday and yet build wonderful thoughts and memories about what Christmas really meant?

I started out with the easiest one for me. I ditched Santa right from the start. As a matter of fact, my kids call him Jingle Bells because the little ones forget his well-known name to this day. (Though we have respect for the original man called Nicholas.) I decided he was not going to get one ounce of glory from us, since he had nothing to do with salvation.

The others have not been so easy to deal with though. The hardest would have to be the great emphasis on presents. God the Father gave His utmost gift to us by letting His Son become man for us that He would save us. Jesus gave His life willingly. He forgave willingly. He gave up His home on high willingly. I've often thought that when they get older, I would like to begin taking them to places like orphanages/children's homes or soup kitchens to help on or during the Christmas season. I want them to see that Jesus came to serve, not to be served. That Christmas if celebrated correctly should be a time to demostrate His love through us. All this said, we've kept the gifts to a minimum of 1-3 presents per child, some years slightly more and some years less. We try to get them something they like and something they need. This is hard to do sometimes because I think of the nice things that I could give them. But it grieves my heart to think that they'll grow up and leave Jesus on the side as a religious afterthought compared to Santa, presents, etc.

Christmas music plays in our home any time of the year. It really does. It could be April or September and you might just hear it were you to call me or visit. During this time, the children love to take the manger out and position the pieces just as if they were setting up the stage for that great day long ago. We listen to Adventures in Odyssey's episodes about Christmas. We go and visit churches that have excellent Christmas plays about the birth of Christ. One year the children participated in the Best Christmas Pageant Ever production in our town. I want them to remember us remembering Jesus. I want them to desire Him like the faithful did long ago in that little town of Bethlehem. I want them to look for and find the Messiah . To seek Him out. I want them to see what I see and hear what I hear, and many others like me. To look into the eyes of the Saviour, and forever be changed.

Jesus is the Reason for the Season. Let this be your guide in making Christmas a wonderful season to remember.

The Rules

Jesus leads us to Holiness.
Holiness does not lead us to Jesus.

I heard these two statements recently and thought they were jewels to store up. There is so much truth in both statements if fully digested and thought about. But I guess to do this you must understand what Holiness is:

Some people put Holiness in a religious category of very conservative beliefs from old-time full gospel churches. Other people might think it is referring to holy living. In my mind, I'm referring to both.

Holy living- is it....abiding by the Ten commandments... the Golden Rule...right living...etc? What else could we add to this? This is where the rules come in don't they? Don't do this and you shouldn't do that. Pray, read your Bible, and so forth.
This must be why the Bible tells us that the Law killeth, but the Spirit giveth Life.
This is also why I want to store forever these two statements in my heart.

Jesus leads us to Holiness.
He does. That is if it is Jesus who leads us there. Jesus represents everything we should be and nothing that we shouldn't. If we fall in love with Jesus then we will love His every way of living. Jesus is our way to God. He is the molder of our clay and the strength of our being. He knows exactly how to mold the clay and how much the clay can take. He is our propitiation. We are made free to show forth a beautiful work in progress by the Savior of our soul.

Holiness does not lead us to Jesus.
In our righteousness, we are as filthy rags to God. In our best we are but what without Jesus?
Nothing. Standards and the law are dead and a sacrifice in themselves. They bring grief in the long run because unless they are written in your heart by Christ himself, they are works of man that will perish.
One can be molded by man, but the clay will not tolerate but so much from someone besides the one who made it. Holiness ends where it began without the author- In a separate state from God. It can leave a heart in servitude instead of freedom from sin.


Oh, but to love God and His Righteousness! This is a product of those who have been redeemed.
The good that God produces as He burns up the chaff in one's heart comes after someone has been born again by His Spirit. It is the scent put forth by His very presence.

Rules are good because they bring things into order and set forth boundaries of safety and well-being. Standards that are biblical show us how much we truly need God. They show us sin for what it is and this is good. God's written Word is a beautiful story of what Holiness is and what it is not. God's Spirit is the one that sculpts this picture in our lives. He makes us living epistles to be read of all men.

Those kind of rules are indisputable.

I spent sometime reading in Romans the other night, and this verse stood out. It has been on my mind since then.

"But God commendeth his love toward us in that,
while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8

He showed His love for me while I was a sinner. It was underserved then and it is underserved now. The difference is that I now love Him. Can I say more?

I realize this is a serious sort of post. They are my thoughts. Thoughts that one day I may want to reread or that my children may want to read about. I want them to see that what we do, we should do because it has been revealed in our heart by God- not because a man is teaching it from the pulpit or because we have decided this to be a good thing. It is this kind of work within us that lasts for eternity and brings forth fruit that abounds.

Dear Journal Letter (a casually long update)

Dear Journal,

I've been wanting to write but I've had all kinds of thoughts running through this mind of mine. Topics ranging from how I'm going to teach Lewis and Clark to 1st and 2ND graders in our co-op to Suzuki piano becoming more Traditional to the definition of apostasy. You see, how could you possibly come up with a sensible post? My days go from good when I'm caught up with my laundry and the downstairs is organized and tidy to a poem that describes my heart is heavy and I need to take my cares to the Lord. And yet in all this storm raging within me, I find my Savior cares so much for me.

Co-op has been good this year considering I have 3 children to home school and toddlers to keep me busy. The prep time for this one hour class hasn't been hard and I've really enjoyed teaching them. I'm sharing our teaching with another dear mom who I'll alternate every 7 weeks with. So two more turns of mine and then she'll have to do the prep work, at least for 7 weeks. We've learned so far about what an explorer is, Marco Polo, C. Columbus, H. Cortes, and Capt. Cook. I've learned a few things along the way. I've been reminded of a few things -those being that greed is a great motivator and inflicter of sorrow, that perseverance and good workmanship brings forth great things, and that there is a great will to live beyond the mundane.

Music has lately troubled my heart torn by what I feel would be most appropriate and an excellent teacher who has a different opinion than I. We began Suzuki piano when my little boy was 5. If I had to do it all over again, I would have waiting till he was 7. He has had good piano theory and very good ear training. But alas, we are moving to a more traditional approach. We
have decided to drop the Suzuki Vol. 2 book and pay more emphasis on his reading. His teacher is really a good teacher and has the better in mind for him. But the Suzuki method, I feel requires more time than I have to give now, plus I want his reading to progress further on. She wants him to have the freedom to untimidly move about the keyboard, to be able to feel the music. Who would know that this would be such an issue in my heart, to play by ear or read the music? She has began to introduce an option that I'm beginning to see as a wonderful compromise. He's in the process of memorizing A Gift to Be Simple and Kumbayah after the fact that he can play them both fluently by reading the music.

It seems that it has been so long since I've spoken to anyone about Apostasy, that I kind of forgot the exact meaning of the word. I had to look it up in the dictionary. I knew it either meant someone who was saved and left the truth or I was thinking it might be someone who knew better and was teaching false doctrine. Turns out that it was someone leaving the truth.
I read 1st and parts of 2ND Peter along with Jude today. The thoughts that stuck in my mind was the dog going back to its vomit, and having been better not to have known of the truth and left it since the end of apostasy is worse.
I'm not a believer that once you're saved - you're always going to be saved. I believe you can walk away from God. I also believe someone who has genuinely been born again will have quite a time leaving the Savior. For He will not easily let you go. He tugs at your heart through His Spirit. But His Spirit can only be grieved so long. That makes apostasy ever so sadder I think.
I've been thinking about that and the parallel of marriage came into my mind. Salvation is like that vow of marriage. Perhaps they forget their first love. It is a decision to stay married. A decision to be faithful to the groom. A choice made out of love for Him who first loved me. When you break the vow, you've committed adultery and unless you make things right with the groom, you are an adulteress. The Bible tells us about no adulterers entering into Heaven. Or perhaps it was idolatry or.....
The prophet Hosea comes to mind. He loved Gomer yet she would not.
This apostasy that I speak about could happen to me, to my heart. Would I go back to the heart I had previously to coming to Christ? I could if my heart gets hard. I could if my eyes waxed dull. I could if my love turns to other and I forget the Savior. And the scary thing is that it all could happen and I could remain in church. A waterless cloud with no savour, with withered fruit that has no roots, or perhaps I could leave it all and start over -but that I don't know how to do. For how would I erase the feeling of His presence or face life all be myself again. It could happen, and if it did, mark that I would be what is called an Apostate.

Illumination

From Hebrews 10:32 - A sort of Poem

I remember those days on the other side of grace
When my heart did not see nor my mind comprehend
God's great plan, His desires, my self-will, and my doubt.
Those were days when the light that illuminated upon me
caused a stir within my heart and offended my inner being.
Those were days when the light that illuminated
brought me smack against a wall that was not yielding.
Since those days I have learned that illumination is good.
It helps you see the crooked ways that feet trod to.
Illumination shows ugly for what ugly is and does.
Not small or big nor insignificant.

I couldn't see why God set up all those laws back then
When Moses gave the Ten Commandments plus,
Which no man really kept completely.
"What was the point?"
My blinded eyes would ask.
The point struck home when illumination came.
It showed me I was needing more
Than what the law could do back then.
I needed help, blind people often do.
I needed guidance, lost people do so too.
I needed Jesus -
The Light, the Truth, the Way.

Now I see much clearer.
It started blurry at first.
Kind of like the blind man Jesus healed in Bethsaida.
It seems I saw the world much more different.
Its lures no longer shined.
I saw the true condition the Bible showed of my heart.
I once was lost but now I'm found...
Was blind but now I see....
Illumination- the Grace of God,
Shown in Mercy and in Love.

Sacrifices

I was driving back home today and a song came on the radio. It went something like.."There'll come a day.." It was telling the story about a little boy asking his daddy why they had to offer up sacrifices again.The father begin telling him "There'll come a day....." It was a beautiful song.
Can you imagine the faith to tell your son about a sacrifice that would not only cover his trespasses but take them completely away? After years and years of only knowing the altar where the innocent lambs had to pay the price for sin? It only covered their sins. Hid them from the sight of God. Sometimes, I think I really don't understand it myself. But to think that Jesus would not just cover my sins but make the handkerchief of my heart pure white before the Father. There would come a day when it would be undeserved.There would come a day when there would be no need for any other sacrifice, for His sacrifice would redeem (purchase) all who take hold of it. This is where I think of Peter crying out "Lord, save me!" as he starts sinking in the water.

Luke 4:18-20a
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down.

This is one of my favorite verses. It reminds me of where I came from and what He has done for me. I could have come from very wealthy parents(which I didn't)and still been poor. I was poor in my heart. There was no heavenly treasure stored within. It was empty and longing to be filled. But I didn't have a clue what to fill it with. He came to heal the broken hearted. I was brokenhearted. I was disappointed with the truth of life. I was captive to Satan and didn't even know it because I was so blind. The handkerchief of my heart was stained and the original color was not pure white. But I couldn't see that.
Then.. there came a day....when Jesus healed my broken heart, He redeemed me from my sins, and recovered my sight.
My Lord did all that!
Tomorrow is Good Friday. The day we remember His sacrifice.

Our Cemetery Walks

There is a cemetery near by that we like to go to and take a walk. It's actually one of our favorite places to go walking. My hubby and I like looking at the headstones, the dates of when people were born and when they died. We've looked at married couples and noticed some were not buried with the spouse. We've looked at the baby gravesites and noticed the dates. Those seem to tug at my heart. They pull my emotions because it makes me realize that the children I have are not really mine, but on loan from God. It causes me to face the fact that there will come a date after the dash for those I love.. and for me.
I would like the children, as sobering as it may seem, to also notice how precious life is by walking through the cemetery.

There is a song that goes like this..

"Only one life, so soon will pass. And only what's done for Christ will last."


"Mommy... the graves, are there really dead people under ground?"
"Yes, there are."
"What does it mean to die?" And I answer-
"It means you no longer will breathe the breath of life, or walk on the dusty road.
God has good plans for you. He has a wonderful home for those who love him but there is also a place for those who don't. Jesus said He's prepared for us a place. Heaven will be a beautiful place. Do you want to go there?"

We took one of our walks yesterday.