Beautiful Baubles

 

I finally packed my Christmas Tree away yesterday! Every year I find myself almost reluctant to do it as it makes the end of my holidays more of a reality, more final – time seems to speed up once the tree has gone and before I know it I’m back at work!

This year as I looked down at the tub with the baubles and other decorations in it I thought how pretty they looked but how that was nowhere near as beautiful as they had looked on full display, out of the tub on the tree! And that’s when I felt a blog coming on ….

It got me thinking of the “pretty baubles” in my personality, the talents and other “beautiful places” in my life and heart, those things that make me uniquely me! Those qualities that God Himself has placed in me!

How often do I (and how willing am I to) bring these out of ‘the tub’ and put them on full display, put them to work for the benefit of others? This sentence from Graham Cooke really struck me when I read it; consider it in light of what I’ve just said in terms of stepping up, bringing out your God given gifts and talents for the purpose of  getting alongside others to help them to stand and to grow:

“We learn that we are a general gift to many and a specific gift to some. “

God designed you and I On Purpose for a very Specific Purpose! I know that I far too often have plenty of excuses for keeping my “beautiful baubles” inside myself, in “the tub” so to speak! I am a mastermind at justifying to myself (and to God) why I cannot step up and step out! (Now if  He’d only just realise and start listening to all my ‘excellent, logical’ reasons as to why I can’t or as to why I’m just not ready, not capable blah, blah, blah.)

Without meaning to sound arrogant, it’s not just others that I rob by not stepping out to be and do what I’ve been called to do, both alongside them and at times for them, but it’s myself as well. Did you notice the butterfly in the tub? How liberated and free would I feel if I was stretching my wings fully and flying instead of living cramped in a ‘tub’ (usually by my own choice)! 

As I was thinking about this I recalled a quote from “Captivating” that really struck me a few years back when I first read it:

“Then the time came when the risk it took

  To remain tight in a bud was more painful

  Than the risk it took to blossom. “(Anais Nin)

Earlier this week whilst reading  “Lioness Arising” another sentence jumped out at me:

“But the lionesses did not move outside their enclosure until their hunger exceeded their desire to be safe.”

Both of these quotes, far more eloquently than I could, put into words the thoughts and impressions I had when I looked at the beautiful contents of my ‘tree tub”.

So really, I am left stripped of excuses and justifications for why I cannot fully display what God has put inside of me, both (and most importantly)to bring Him glory and to point to Jesus as well as for the benefit of whomever He puts in my life. 

David and I (okay mainly David!) were cleaning the other day. I pulled out a little “strongbox” that we store important papers etc. in and I found a beautiful wooden pen that we got whilst living in the UK. I had put it in that box before we left to come to Australia and there it had sat for the eight and a half years that we’ve been here! I tried to write with it but found that it no longer worked. Needless to say it was relegated to the “rubbish” pile.  That got me thinking ……

But you can work that one out for yourselves so I’ll stop here.

PS Apologies to Stacey whom I later found out was given the pen by David who did not realise that “that was the rubbish pile”!!

Carolyn xxx

Our Christmas Service

What an amazing way to end our year!!!

I loved every minute of our service this morning.  I loved having the kids up on stage (even if I had to go up as well to coax my 4 year old up).
I loved the awesome testimonies from some of our new comers.
I loved the amazing worship.
Then we followed it all up with yummy morning tea and great chats!

There was one point that I personally had my breath taken away as I felt the real presence of God.  That point for me was listening to "O Holy Night".  Whilst Anna, Sam and Tish sang I felt like I could possibly be listening to the angels in heaven. I felt so blessed at that moment, to not only know that I was in the presence of God, but that I was amongst His family of blessed children.

Next year for Life House will be full on and busy and we are all excited to enter it.  However, now is the time to rest and sit with our Lord and recharge with Him until January 22nd when we all meet together again.

Have a wonderful Christmas with your family and/or loved ones, and may God bless your restful time with Him.

Debbie

Some thoughts God gave me...

Isaiah 12

In that day you will say: "I will praise you, Lord.  Although you were 

angry with me, your anger has turned away and you have comforted me.

Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid.  The Lord, the Lord 

himself, is my strength and my defence; he has become my salvation."

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

In that day you will say; "Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name; make 

known among the nations what he has done, and proclaim that his name is exalted.

Sing to the Lord, for he has done glorious things;

let this be known to all the world.

Shout aloud and sing for joy, people of Zion, for great is the 

Holy One of Israel among you."

I read this yesterday morning and these are the unedited thoughts I wrote after reading this...

I was immediately drawn to "The Lord, the Lord, is my strength and my song." Chris talked on Sunday of "Emmanuel - God with us". When I think of the Lord being my strength and my song I think of the strength physically and mentally that I need to get through the day, each day.  We need Emmanuel to be able to have this.  

"And my song", Christ spoke of how we can get certain songs in our head and heart some days and this is just a reminder of how our Lord is that song.  We need to sing Him in all we do - in our hearts and out loud, proclaiming that He is our strength and our song.  Why? Well, the rest of the verse says "for He has become my Salvation!"  Without Him we would still be lost and without hope.

This whole chapter in my bible is titled, "Songs of Praise".  I found verse one to be a little unnerving as it says, "I will praise you, Lord. Although you were angry with me, your anger has turned away and you have comforted me." I often read verses about God's anger and ones of how he was angry but now is not.  I also wonder what I have done to anger God.  We know God's anger is not something you want on you as it is fierce, and we also know He is not slow to anger.  So, it should come as no surprise when we discover that God is angry at us for things we think may be permissible.  I mean, we all know that sin in general is not good and that can make him angry.  Also, not spending time with Him or reading His word or even talking to Him are definately things He could get angry about.

Think about it like this... You have this BEST FRIEND, I mean the best type, not just any old friend but your nearest and dearest.  So, your BF wants to spend time with you (of course), and you know this as they are your BF and they have told you!

A day passes and you've gotten so busy you haven't even thought of them.

A week passes, no contact from you has been made.  Although on Sunday you heard something that made you so proud to be their BF, Monday they sent you flowers, Tuesday they wrote you a note, Wednesday, they left you a magnificent painting, Thursday some of your other friends got together with you BF but you were too tired to join them, Friday you were to exhausted to even text them to say thanks for anything let alone being their friend.  Saturday rocks around and you go to speak to your BF and you wonder why they are annoyed at you?  Because after all they are your BF and they'll understand and forgive you for ignoring them, not reading their notes or looking at their handiwork or enjoying their gifts and not being bothered to spend time with them.

Sounds extreme, or does it? Our God is a jealous God!

Thankfully, as verse one eluded, He can turn away His anger to comfort us.  This is a great reminder to not be selfish and take God for granted.

As an extra note here, can I tell you that I got all this before 5am in the morning, I had an extra ordinary day and did not tire all day!!! However, this morning when I had the same opportunity and shamefully chose sleep over spending more time with God was totally to my detriment and my day turned out VERY different!!! Guess what I plan to do tomorrow morning?? (Check with me to see how I went!)

Debbs

UPDATE:  (Thanks to Ben for asking!) I was hammered!!! The enemy soooo was not happy with my commitment.  I had gotten up to feed the baby and went back to bed at 1:30am and somehow managed to wake up at 4am to get up. I almost fell asleep when praying, so prayed with my eyes open.  That was one difficult morning with many things contributing and all day I knew I had to keep my guard up.  But by the end of the day, even though I was exhausted physically and mentally, spiritually I felt pretty good.  Our God is awesome and He was my strength in many ways that day.

Thursday I got up early again and it was a very productive and joyful day again (almost on par with Monday), then today I didn't wake up early enough but I have sung praises all morning until I was able to sit quietly with God. (Thankful for a boy at kindy and a sleeping baby to make that happen.)  I am looking forward to continuing this early morning catch up with my Best Friend!

Christmas is well on its way..

Its been sooo long since I've even been on Blogger, and the first thing I want to do is apologise!  So I'm sorry to you all for being to lazy to get on here and blog about things.

Secondly, I wanted to let you know about some fun things my family and I have been up to.

Watching everyone (well OK, not everyone, but a lot of people I know) put up their Christmas tree early, I became very eager to put ours up too.  I saw them big and small, and the excitement of Christmas with 2 kids who are able to understand so much better what is going on this year than last, was almost unbearable.  But true to form, the days flew passed and the first of Dec flicked passed.

Last year I made an adventure advent calendar, where instead of small chocolates or a toy, I wrote things for us to make or do on pieces of paper, made them into scrolls and read one aloud each morning.  This year, things are a bit different with my older child at school, so I remade the adventures into cards, and when the 30th of Nov rolled into the 1st of Dec we pounced on what was in number 25.

Our activities so far have been 25-set up and decorate the tree (a tradition we want to do as a family every year), 24-Write and deliver Christmas cards (for miss P this one was a complete winner.  We also added strawberry candy canes), 23- shop for a gift for your teacher, and today's 22-make a treat for your school friends (we made cookies, altogether, the four of us, as a family).

Why do I want you to know this?  Because I believe the real meaning of Christmas is more than Santa, in fact the only reason we let our kids believe in Santa is so that there is no bullying from school friends, and even then he only fills the stockings.  *Side note:  why should he get the credit for our awesome picks for presents??  The real meaning of Christmas is more than the decorations, the cards and even the presents.  The real meaning of Christmas to me is giving, Jesus was born to GIVE himself over to be crucified.  God GAVE his son to the world to pay OUR price.  So when we celebrate Christmas we want to celebrate by sacrificing our time, our gifts, our love to others, and make memories for our children to remember WHY we celebrate the way we do.

I've made sure that if a gift is to be bought, it is not to be kept by us, but given.  If a treat is to be made, it is to be given to someone else.  If time is to be spent, it is to be spent helping, encouraging or loving someone else, and my kids will grow up knowing that Christmas is more than the commercial buying, or decorating (fun as it may be).

I will keep you posted on how things go, but so far they have had fun doing a new thing each day, and I hope you aspire to give of yourself this Christmas, in one way or another!

Quiet on the blog front!

It has been a bit quiet on here hey... sorry about that.

However, I do have a good excuse... I have been doing my part to grow our Lifehouse church family. 

Wanna see?

This is Zion! He is our newest addition to our family!

(Photo by Sweet Hope Photography)

Faith like a child...

Yesterday, something amazing happened when I was in McDonald's buying drinks for my family.
I went in to buy Brad, Asher and I a drink at lunch time, leaving my darling man and son in the car to play a game of "Rock, Scissors, Paper".  Or so I thought.
By the time I came out something AWESOME had happened!
My husband greeted me saying, "Guess what Mummy, Asher just asked Jesus into his heart!"
Well... I nearly fell over! WOW!!!! All whilst I was buying milkshakes!

Apparently they had started playing the game and Asher said he was hot so Brad opened the doors to let the wind in.  He then began to talk about the wind and how we couldn't see it but we could feel it, just like God. 
Asher went on to ask how we feel God and Brad explained that we could feel Him in our hearts.  Asher then wanted to know how God gets in our heart and was told that you have to ask Him to come in.  So, then he did ask!  Awesome, awesome, awesome!!!

When I was told about it when I got back to the car, I added, "Asher, do you know that this means that you have the best friend in the whole wide world now that Jesus is your best friend!!!"  He smiled really big at me and told me that he still loved his other friends though.  I told him that was totally ok.


We have been praying for this day since before he was born.  We have prayed that he would come to know Christ at an early age.  When he turned 4 a couple of months ago, I had really hoped that he would recieve Christ into his life like I had at the same age for the first time.  What was so amazing, was that we have chatted alot to him about being friends with Jesus and even talked about all this kind of thing before.  But we could never have guessed that a completely unorchestrated conversation in a McDonald's carpark would ever be the place that he finally made that decision. 

It is easy to doubt and second guess if his decision is real or not, but to a 4 year old mind and heart, I believe it is.  This afternoon I asked him to explain to my brother, his Uncle Steve, what happened to his heart yesterday. He gave a massive smile and said proudly, "I let God in my heart!"

I want to say that I am so proud, but pride is not what I am feeling, it is true and absolute joy at the thought of a little soul that is saved!  If this is how I am feeling I just know that there is THE biggest party going off in heaven right now!!!

Debbs

Don't worry, be happy!

I know, I know, you have the song stuck in your head now don't you!  Well you can thank Ben for that!  This morning as he started his sermon he played that song, and then asked who hated it... no one said they hated it... poor Ben.  Although, on reflection Ben, I am not the hugest fan of it. But I definately don't hate it. :)

As you can probably guess, he spoke about WORRY!  Yep, something that, if we are all honest, we all struggle with.  I don't think there is a single person in the world who hasn't at some point worried about something. I know people who sadly thrive on it!  I used to be one of them.

Ben got up and this morning and publicly admitted that he was a "Worryholic" (maybe that should be ex-worryholic!)  I would have to agree that I too, used to be a complete worryholic!  Being a worryholic is completely exhausting and draining.  It does crazy things to your head, your heart and well, pretty much your whole life.  You second guess everything you say, do and at the end of the day when you need to sleep, it turns you into an insomniac!  Yes, Ben, I can totally relate to the "rollercoasters" in your head at night.

The year I turned 21 was the year that worry and I finally came to massive blows.  This was a year that should have been great for me.  However, when I refer to the year I turned 21, you will hear limited things from that year. This was the year I did a Youth Ministry Internship, the year I had THE worst boyfriend ever, the year I first found myself in couselling and the year I got a tattoo.  In short, the WORST YEAR OF MY LIFE!  However, there is one story that I do tell often and that is the story of the one bible verse that is totally ingrained in my head and heart!

Phillippians 4:6 -Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

I would worry myself to sleep at night, to the point where I got insomnia at times.  I was anxious about everything, from thinking "Would my placement supervisor belittle me in front of other teachers or students tomorrow?", to replaying the conversation with my boyfriend over and over and trying to work out the part that I said something wrong to make him yell at me, to wondering if the sermon I had to do in front of the others in my course was going to be any good.  The further I got into the year the more I had to give things over to God in EVERY situation that I worried about or was anxious about.  The end result, I managed to finish my course, passing everything, and get a job far away from previously mentioned boyfriend and placement supervisor!  Oh, and I managed to never ever worry again... AS IF!!!

I really wish that was the end of the story with me and worry.  However, like any thing of our flesh it comes back and you need to fight it all the time.  I realised just this past week that I don't deal well with anxiety/worry anymore, where once I used to embrace it and wallow in it now it does things to me like make me panic and get really emotional and I HATE it!!!  This past week I found myself in a position where I realised I had stored up a heap of things to worry about and they hit me all at once.  Guess what I did?

I literally said out loud, "I can't handle this anymore!" and went to my room and journalled and let it all out to God.  This isn't always my natural reaction but it is becoming more normal for me thankfully.  

Here is a song I learnt years ago, sung here by the Watoto Children's Choir, that I still like to sing in worrying times...