Emily reminds us again today that "One thing we all collectively realize is that what seems everyday today will not be so tomorrow."Today I celebrate the way my beloved cares for all growing things, realizing each will shift and change through seasons of rest or blooming. His tenderness is always evident and I am blessed.
What are you unwrapping today? Come visit Emily at Chatting at the Sky and share your gifts.
I've been away
from life
as I know it.
Ten days
with family
pain, loss
mourning
A few days
to gather our thoughts
at home
reset our focus
and we were off again
running
into the new plans
our God is designing.
He promised this would be a year
of acceleration
and I need to learn
to trust
that He will teach me
how to breathe.
We are almost
home
again
to a life
that I am not convinced
will fit any longer.
But I surrender to
His hands
to mold, carve
and create for His glory.
As the Get Ready Conference comes to a close, I am thankful for a God who Is teaching us to dream big. Any of the things we used to think were impossible now seem attainable through Him.
We return home with spirits filled and much to pray about.
Indeed He Is good!
Jesus replied "What is impossible with men is possible with God." Luke 18:27 NIV
Here at the Operation Mobilization Get Ready Conference in Port Colborne, Ontario we have fellowshipped, prayed, worshipped, prayed, listened, prayed, asked, prayed, shared the Word and prayed. In our quiet time alone as a couple, we have prayed even more.The days and perhaps even weeks after our return home will be used to unpack all of the information that has been stuffed into our minds, hearts and spirits.
We KNOW that our God has called and anticipate the ways He will begin to unfold His vision.
And then God answered: "Write this. Write what you see. Write it out in big block letters so that it can be read on the run. The vision-message is a witness pointing to what's coming. It aches for the coming - it can hardly wait! And it doesn't lie. If it seems slow in coming, wait. It's on its way. It will come right on time. Habakkuk 2:2-3 The Message
Day 1 in Port Colborne, Ontario -- for Operation Mobilization Get Ready Conference, excited for what God is about to do!
It feels as if I've barely caught my breath from the last trip, and here we are leaving again today.This is a planned trip, one we have prayed about and anticipated and we are both expecting God to work in mighty and profound ways in our lives.
We shall be attending the Get Ready Conference with Operation Mobilization, to learn about, pray about, and plan for long term missions work.
This week I am unwrapping a Word from the Lord spoken into my spirit. The other night, before falling asleep, I saw a picture of salad servers.
"Silly" I thought at first. But I have learned to ask the Lord if He wants to share before I disregard these odd images as meaningless.
"What is this about Lord?" I giggled.
"You will be tossed" came the reply.
Indeed. Changes are upon us, perhaps more quickly than we imagine. Things in our hearts and minds will be shaken, sifted, shifted.
"Yes, Lord." I said. "But please toss me gently."
What gift are you unwrapping this week? Join Emily at Chatting At The Sky and share.
As promised - here are clips from what I spoke Sunday morning in church.
This was the third time I’ve been blessed to be able to speak on a Sunday morning. Previous times I’ve talked about being sold out for Jesus and about what it means to me to be set apart by and for God.
Some of the words I spoke came back to sustain me these past weeks as my family gathered to mourn the passing of my father.
I felt different, set apart indeed, almost an alien in a foreign land.
There were many tears shed all around. I am the youngest of three, and the only girl. For all of my 53+ years, my father called me “the baby”. I would have expected his death to hit me harder than my brothers, yet they struggled in ways I did not.
So I questioned myself.
Was I hard hearted? That didn’t seem possible. Those of you who know me can testify to how easily I am moved by emotion. Surely I loved my father, didn’t I?
Was it because I had already been grieving the loss of the father I loved for years as dementia took bite after bite of the man I knew away from me? I’m sure that played a part as well.
But there was something more. Something I couldn’t put my finger on. Something that set me apart and left me experiencing things in a far different way than any of my family members and their friends.
“What is it?” I asked the Lord in prayer.
“ME” came the response that should have been obvious to me all along.
Jesus. Faith. Hope. I have a hope that is unique in my family.
But what is hope?
The modern conception of hope is “to wish for, to expect, but without certainty of fulfillment; to desire very much, but with no real assurance of getting that desire.”
I looked up Hebrew and Greek words translated by the word “hope”
Greek – elpis el-pece' From elpō which is a primary word (to anticipate, usually with pleasure); expectation (abstract or concrete) or confidence: - faith, hope.
Hebrew - yâchal yaw-chal'
A primitive root; to wait; by implication to be patient, hope: - (cause to, have, make to) hope, be pained, stay, tarry, trust, wait.
Hebrew - tiqvâh tik-vaw'
From H6960; literally a cord (as an attachment (compare H6961)); figuratively expectancy: - expectation ([-ted]), hope, live, thing that I long for.
So - according to the biblical usage, hope is an indication of certainty. “Hope” in Scripture means “a strong and confident expectation.” Though it may be archaic today in modern terms, hope is akin to trust and a confident expectation.
Hope may refer to the activity of hoping, or to the object hoped for—the content of one’s hope. I don’t only hope in Christ, Christ Himself IS my hope.
By its very nature, hope stresses two things: the future, and invisibility. It deals with things we can’t see or haven’t received or both .
In the New Living Translation we read in Romans 8:24-25:
We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it. But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.)
Biblically, from the standpoint of the object hoped for, hope is synonymous with salvation and its many blessings, in the past, the present, and the future, as promised in the Word.
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 1 Peter 1:3-5
This is true even with what we have already received as believers because these blessings come under the category of what we cannot see. We may see some of the results, but it still requires faith and hope.
So let’s agree that what we mean when we talk about hope is a confident expectation, the certainty that what God has promised in His Word is true, and has or will occur.
