Just Love.

I get married in 47 days. The reality of that hasn't hit yet....even with all this money we are spending. :/  I'm excited and nervous and anxious all in one! Big bottle of mixed emotions! I'm just ready for it to be here already.  I feel I have waited a long time for the guy God has for me.  Most of my friends got married right out of college and I was left here in the working field to fend for myself.  But was I really?  I mean, God was with me the whole time. He guided my paths and never left my side. 

Now the time comes to marry this guy. The guy God has picked out just for me.  God loves me so much that He had this one guy selected for me before I was even born.  He molded me and Shaun both for our marriage and our relationship to ultimately bring more glory to Himself.  I pray every day for Shaun and I pray our marriage will be one that is God honoring and glorifying.  I'm excited to start this new adventure!....if it will ever get here for Pete's sake! :)

Also, this guy God appointed for me is such a great man of God.  I don't think I acknowledge this enough.  Yesterday, he was given the opportunity to preach at our church and both sermons were so great. God used him and spoke through him yesterday.  First, he preached on Daniel 3....Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego. I'm a HUGE Shane & Shane fan, so here is a song of theirs about this story that I just love. Great story and great lessons and parallels to bring out of that event in history.  Sometimes it's hard for me to remember that it IS history, not just a story I heard growing up in Sunday School.  One of the amazing things you can take from this story is the obvious....just like God saved them from the fiery furnace, Jesus saves us from the fiery pits of Hell. Love love that.  It's like we almost get a visual of what Jesus saves us from by looking at that story.  Not to mention the three guy's dedication to God and how they were so willing to go in the fire not knowing for sure if God would save them from it or not.  One simple question to you.....are you will to go into the fire for God?  You can contemplate that to mean whatever you like....just as long as you take time to contemplate it.

Last night's sermon was really really hard for me.  It might have been difficult for everyone listening since I know, as humans, it's hard to love the unlovable.  And that's just what the sermon was about.  The people who have hurt you the most. The ones who have said hateful things about you, either to your face or behind your back (yet you always find out about it somehow).  The ones who are mean to your children, your siblings, your spouse or your closest friends.  We ALL know of people who are hard to love.  Yet, somehow we have to do it, we are called to love. Jesus, in the New Testament, never put conditions on it.....love only if, or don't love the mean ones or so on.  He called us to love.  That's it. Nothing fancy or hard to understand. Just love.

If only it were that easy, huh?

I want to challenge you as I was challenged....who are your "unloveables" and consciously chose to love them, no matter how hard it is.

Just love.

Being a Follower takes Confidence

Last night I finished teaching a summer bible study to my youth girls.  I will miss that closeness that we shared and being able to meet each week and be open with each other and learn about where our confidence should come from.  The name of the study was just that...."Confident."  We had a great time growing and learning.

It's kinda funny how sometimes God will have you read books that go along with a bible study you are doing and that is what happened the past few weeks of this study.  As I mentioned before I have started to read the book "Not a Fan" by Kyle something or another.  Wow.  Can I recommend that book to you?

In the book as well as the last chapter of this bible study we read and talk about the woman that came in a poured her expensive perfume on Jesus' feet and wiped it with her hair.  This woman had a reputation.  I can only assume based on what I read that she was a woman of the night, if you catch my drift. It took SO much confidence to walk in to where Jesus was....with all these men who would probably talk so horrible about her and not do it secretly.  They would mock and ridicule her and ask why in the world is she intruding on their time with Jesus.

First of all, as the book mentions, she had to of heard Jesus speak previously and had a change of heart.  Why else would she come in and pour her earnings of a whole year on his feet just to clean the dirt off of them?  She had to of gone from being a sinful sinful woman, going straight past being just a fan of Jesus and plunging into being a sold out follower of Christ!  That was her livelihood here and she just used it to clean Jesus' feet!!

It took confidence to walk in with all these people who would talk down to her and it took confidence in her faith to use all her earnings in this manner for Jesus.  And as Jesus said, the men did nothing for Him....SHE will be the one that will be remembered for what she did.  

Let's look to this sinful woman of the night and think about if we are truly just a fan of God or a true follower.  

Did I mention great book?  Buy it. Read it.  Grow from it.

by the way, i get married in 100 days to my best friend! ah! yay!

Old News

I'm engaged....as if you didn't know! ;)  I think I told everyone and their mama, I was so excited!

So, plans are under way. The date is November 3 of this year!!  Our 5 year dating anniversary is Sept. 3, so that's exciting!  I hope all of you, my lovely friends can make it to our special day!

You can then call me Mrs. Beth Powers! Ah!!! LOL, So excited!!!!

That's all for now! I just started to read the book Not a Fan, so I may blog about that soon.....it's a refreshing book to say the least!

Loves!

What have we been up to lately??

Good question! Thank you for asking!!  

Well, we went to the Memphis zoo with another couple and here is Shaun petting a really really big snake......no....I didn't touch it. SCARY!!

Here was a bear at the zoo trying to climb on a plastic board thing...it was comical!

We went fishing a couple of weekends.....here Shaun is acting like Forest Gump (his favorite) and saying, I caught me a fish (in his Forest voice)

I even caught a few!!  This one was jumping around a lot! Hard to hand on to 'em!

We went to a couple Jackson Generals games during opening weekend!  Weather was great!

We are laughing here at the game because Shaun kept snapping photos on my phone and me, being old school as I am, said, stop! You are wasting all my film!

                                        

For Easter lunch we went with his family to Chickasaw State Park for good food and fishin!

This was a cabin at the park that was unlocked....really pretty in there!

So, That's us lately!  What have you guys been up to?

No Matter What

You know, after church last night I wanted to write a post about the verse that was shared.  Then I realized I have more to talk about around that verse than I thought.

Without much ado, the verse is Psalm 34:1, I will praise the Lord at all times; His praise will always be on my lips.  I even put this one Facebook because I was personally very convicted by this verse.  No matter what, I will praise the Lord at all times.  No matter what, His praise will always be on my lips.  

If you know me well, you know that I can have tendencies to complain.  If you have ever read any of my past posts you also know I am the baby of the family so I'm used to getting my way, hence the complaining when I don't get my way.  Don't worry, I'm convicted about that and attempt at not doing it as much.  Nobody wants to hang out with someone who complains a lot, so, I am working on it!

So, with that being said, this verse just hit home with me a little.  No matter what, His praise will always be on my lips.

Okay, yes, I probably watch more tv than I should, but one of the shows I watch is 19 Kids and Counting.  This week's episode was the season finally.  I'm sure you can watch it at tlc.com or something.  Be warned. It's a tear-jerker.  Spoiler alert, they were pregnant with baby #20, and when they went in to find out the gender of the baby, there was no heartbeat.  The baby had died.  Wow, I was crying!!  What I found inspiring was the mom and dad's initial response.  Well, besides the tears.  Unless they did some editing, the first words out of the mom's mouth was "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord."  That is a reference to Job 1:21.  

Personally? I can't say I would have been that positive...at least not at first.  I think after a day or two I would have had that mindset, but I'm not sure I could have had it immediately.  Those parents are ones to look up to with respect and be inspired.  She was a living breathing example of "His praise will always be on my lips."

Another thing to think about when discussing this verse is how we talk about others.  In my older age, I find I am more cynical about things.  Usually when I talk about others, it's to Shaun, or a super close friend.  I try not to make a habit of it.  But you know what?  Even doing it the little I do, is wrong, because when I'm talking negatively about others, how is His praise always on my lips?  Ouch.  Something ELSE to work on.  (You know, it's weird, I always look at older people than myself and think....really....what sin could you possibly deal with?  But as I get older, I'm realizing how much we all do keep on sinning, it's just different sin from when you were in college than when you were in high school than when you were in middle school and so on.  Maybe it just means I'm growing spiritually when I find more things to work on.)

May we need to be like this Duggar mom and even like Job with the mindset of NO MATTER WHAT COMES, His praise will always be on my lips.  I know that's something I want to work toward.

Time and Faith

I guess this should better be titled Faith and time, as faith is the more important of the two.


But let's start with time. Time is a very precious thing, especially when you get older and seemingly don't have any. We are a society that is used to getting things NOW. I can imagine in my parents time and grandparents time and so on, that things weren't quite like this. People had to wait for their dinner to be cooked, there was no fast food. People had to make their own butter instead of getting some from the fridge. People wrote snail mail letters than emails.....than text messages. People had to walk or ride bikes to get places instead of driving/flying. People had to warm the baby bottle over the stove instead of in the microwave. Do you get my point? Times have changed and time is little. Odd isn't it, that now we have things to do things quicker for us, yet we have less time. hmmmm.

Beauty? God has His own timing in things. Guess what? Since God is perfect......I guess that means His timing is perfect....in.....everything. Huh. Go figure. So, when asking God for things and it seems He isn't answering....know that maybe His answer is "Not Yet." Patience. The more you ask for patience, the more you'll be tested with it yes, but the more you will get it. If you never ask for it, you will never get it. Chew on that one! ha!

Faith is something that is seemingly easy to have. I can sit at my desk and have faith my chair will hold me when I go to sit down. I can turn on the light switch and have faith the darkness will go away because of the light. I can drive my car and have faith it won't break down on me (usually). ha! I can begin to write with a pen and have faith ink will come out as it should. Again....do you get my point? How can we have so much faith in man-made things, yet have so little faith when it comes to God. Ouch. I just slapped myself. Not cool. Let's try this again. I can have faith in God as long as He does things in my timing and in the way I want things to be done. Ouch again!! Come on, now! Slapping yourself in SO last week. One more again, I only ask God for the things I know He'll work out the way I want them to and not ask for the big things that I'm unsure of how He'll answer. OUCH!!!! Please stop now!!!

We were in devotion at work this morning and I said that statement without thinking and it really made me uncomfortable saying. As it should! But, if I am going to be honest.....it's true. When I look back on things, I can tell I'm only asking God for the things that I know He'll give me anyway....and the things that turn out in my favor. I'm too nervous to ask for the big things. Or should I say, I don't have enough faith to ask the things that are too big. God has so much to give us and to bless us with. Why the heck are we not asking for those blessings??? Sheesh!!! Sounds so easy!!

Reader, I challenge you to make a conscious effort to ask God every day for a week for more blessings....be specific....be big in your asking and see how God blesses you! You may be surprised.

I leave you with something I read recently, What if all you had today were the things you thanked God for yesterday. Ask big. Thank big. Love Big.

out. -B

A Long Obedience

I recently started studying Kelly Minter's Ruth bible study. I really like the book of Ruth, studied it through the commentary at the bottom of the pages in my bible but I wanted to go deeper with it, and I had done a study of Kelly's a while back and really enjoyed it so I thought I'd try this one as well!

I'm only on the first week of the study but I am really enjoying it. Yesterday's lesson was entitled Long Obedience and I found it to be an enlightening one!

It focused largely on the passage in Ruth where Naomi encourages Orpah and Ruth to return to their people and their gods. Something I didn't notice is that Kelly brought to light was how many times Naomi encouraged them. She did it three times. She was a persistent stinker wasn't she? Finally after that third time did Orpah agree to return to her people, but Ruth stuck to her guns.

She also referred back to Genesis when Joseph's master's wife want to [do the horizontal polka :)] with him. He said no, but she kept persisting......and....he...finally......said no again and stopped even being around her so he wouldn't even have to deal with the temptation. (If you want a refresher read Genesis 39:6b-10)

So, this is a short post, but ponder this for me will you? Are you like Orpah, who says no the first time or two? Or are you like Ruth and Joseph who, because of their love for God, resist the sin that Satan so taunts us with! Stand firm my friends, God has already won this war!!