Trusting and Receiving (and don't forget to read the last paragraph, ladies)
This post really is a part two from yesterday's post. One was written before I went to sleep, and the other after I woke up (not that you have time or inclination for all this mild outburst of drama in your lives - but just to let you know).
"Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all of your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your path.” Prov 3.
Yesterday started out good enough, in fact it did start out good, because I was feeling good about the six hours of dictation work done that I wanted to get done the day before. As the day wore on, I kept looking at the pile of work that I felt needed to get done and began feeling more and more unable to accomplish it.
I began taking everything upon myself, like I was holding my world together.
God has given us so much – me and my family and I fall into a habit of thinking that I need to hold it all together, or the kind of thinking that says, “What are you going to do when this all falls apart?”
I hear verses like not worrying because what is that going to do? You know, about the birds of the field and the lilies of the valley. Last night I read in James, “Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.”
“Lord, My Lord Jesus Christ,
Thank you for showing me what happens when I take things upon myself. Oh Lord, You see that I cannot handle my life. I know that You have held my world together and I need to continue to leave things in Your mighty and precious and capable hands. Lord, it is You that I do not trust. People aren’t really the problem because You hold the world together, not people. There is no perfect person. You took care of Sarah when Abraham didn’t. You took care of David’s kingdom while he slept with someone else’s wife. You know the end from the beginning. You created me in secret in my mother’s womb and have made me who I am.
Lord, Please enable my husband to be able to take care of all of the responsibilities that You put at his feet. Better yet Lord, You take care of them. Lord, I have been hurt and disappointed so many times in my life by people who made foolish choices and I felt that did not come through for me. Lord, I am so afraid that everything regarding our house and finances are going to fall apart. I remember my rich aunt and uncle who nearly lost all of their wealth and ended up leaving the country when they were a little older than us. I remember my parents whose home fell apart and left each other and their home in ruins and got a divorce when they were just a little older than us. I look at my in-laws, whom I first met when they were a little older than us, and they were and are like cavities – shells – remnants of people. Who are they? They are not happy and they are so lazy and they sit all day for the past 25 years and watch TV. Lord, we don’t have role models.
Lord, I remember when I was studying to be a doctor and how hard it was in that I felt like I had no role models. Perhaps I am going through a change in this time of my life, now that I will be 44 and my husband will be 50, and again there is uncertainty. I’d like to look at the role models, but there really isn’t anyone. There is my other uncle and aunt. The one who gave his life to you and brought me to Calvary Chapel for the first time, but who now does not have evidence of following you. He curses your name, but I think that he will be saved by the skin of his teeth. You blessed he and his wife. They were nearly broke, but you restored his money and have given them wealth. Also, I think that their children are looking for You. You are calling them and I pray for them, my cousins, because You are faithful even when we are not. Your mercies are beyond imagination.
Lord, this is my prayer request. Lord, I really like how You have allowed me to act more like a woman and less like a Charge Commander. I like how my husband is doing the finances. I liked it when I decided to cut back my hours working several months ago and not worry about it but to not work like a crazy fool, because that was just stupid. And the months have gone by and nothing bad has happened from my cutting back the work hours. But I am afraid that my husband isn’t really able to handle the finances properly. Yet, I don’t feel like I can handle them either. So, Lord, please take care of our money situation. It is so complicated. Please give my husband wisdom and blessing like that of Bill Gates! Not that I want to have that kind of money or responsibility, but I do want to be good stewards of what You have given us. I pray that my husband would have everything put together financially to be a blessing. I pray that You would help us with our tax preparation and tax payments. I pray that You would help my husband with his business and me with my business. I pray that You would help him with his financial advisors and tax people and business workers, so much.
I pray that You would sustain us in our house. Lord, the home is so beautiful that it is so overwhelming to me. I am so undeserving. You know that I feel that way, so please do not let me undermine what You have given me, but to accept it graciously. So I say, “thank you Lord” for the beautiful home. Not only it’s physical beauty, which is immense but also the emotional atmosphere in that home. Sustain that house and protect it in every way.
I pray that You would bring my husband into Your own ministry with You. Lord, it is so frustrating, because he and I are like opposite personalities. He is as slow as molasses and so timid in some ways, although on the surface he doesn’t look that way. Part of him is paralyzed, while part of me jumps in both feet before I’ve had time to consider what I have gotten into. Lord, as my husband goes back to the basketball ministry thing that You have blessed him in the last few years, I pray that you would so do something in and through him that in June when the season is over, the season wouldn’t be over but he would continue in a ministry with You. Lord, he so much needs male Christian friends and he so much needs to participate in the things that You are doing in a greater way.
Lord, with our home becoming so beautiful, I pray first of all that you would enable it to stay clean and orderly, so I wouldn’t undo all that you have done for it and for me. I thank you for Gloria and the other cleaners who said that they could come over on those times. I pray that the finances would be in order to take care of that. I pray that I would have the courage to dwell in that beautiful clean home. Oh Lord! It is like my dream that is on this profile! Lord, I am so overwhelmed and undeserving and I guess that I just don’t trust it to stay or I think that I am doing something wrong or I just don’t trust or believe You. Lord, enable me to just say, “Thank you, Lord.” So, thank you Lord.
Lord, I pray that our home, that this home may become a place of ministry for You. Lord, I don’t want Satan to be magnified in our home. I want You to dwell and be magnified in our home. Please bring Christian ministry to our home. Please limit any bad people or negative influences to come into our home. Lord, please don’t let me fall into the mindset that if ministry is in our home, then it is okay to be a beautiful home so then I don’t really have to just receive Your gift. Then I don’t really have to just say, “thank You Lord, for all that You have done.”
Lord, I pray about each of my four beautiful children that You have bestowed upon me. Lord, they are each so precious and perfect and lovely. I am so glad that you let us have four children. How now I wish that I had more, because I love them each so much and they are each so amazing and I love every second that I had to pour into their little lives. Lord, it is so hard to have them grow up.
Lord it is like, from the first time that I was allowed to stare and gaze into the first set of little eyes, that I found a life in me that had never been there before. The magic, the grandeur, the fabulous world within a world of looking into a toddlers eyes, of hearing their giggles, of seeing the first steps, of wiping the burps, of changing the diapers, of running here and there and trying to hold it all together. Of waiting in the emergency room, of warming another bottle, of teaching them to read, of leading them to the Lord.
Then the day comes when they don’t want my advice. They are making their own way. They are leaving and never going back to the little babies that needed me, of the little set of eyes that smiled when they saw me come. They are now wonderfully, talented and well-developed youths who are each very, very successful and blessed, who say or don’t say their own prayers, who think their own thoughts and who will forever be apart from me, in the sense that they will never be my babies again. And the world that I knew of that little micro-world of perfect contentment of looking into their eyes and their looking into mine will never again reoccur because they are growing up and that they should do but I am sad because that phase, that magical phase of my life is over, nearly over, almost over.
So Lord, I pray that you would continue to bless my children, and help me to help us all go one to this next phase of our lives. Help me to not try to do things myself, for what You have given and done is Your creation, not mine. Help me to trust in You and dwell in You, wanting nothing. Amen.”
Addendum: I was eating breakfast after writing this and read about Peter, and how he sunk in the water after taking his eyes off of the Lord. I can walk in faith so long as I keep my eyes on the Lord. The Lord has carried me especially these past 20 years, and great things he has done. I need to keep looking into His eyes, not elsewhere.
Ladies! My other site has become enhanced, and I've taken off the comment moderation. It has an upgraded title. What do you think? Oh, and its pink! It is a bit of a lively site today, perhaps controversial. Please don't be offended. I am hoping that it will develop into a place where I can detail a bit about how I am learning how to live life out as uniquely a woman of God, not a human person, not a man, but a woman of God, and how I can enjoy that, and tolerate this growing old thing that is happening to me, and capture a bit of womanness before the whole game is over (which will be a nice body enhancement I am definatly looking forward to). I will continue "My Food and My Body - an occasional series" on the site of the "Adventures of the Ordinary Christian." In that way, I can take the opportunity to develop the background of how I got to where I am today. The other site, "For Ladies Only: An Ordinary Woman's Diet, Fitness, Weight and Beauty Log and Diary" will take place from the present on, for the most part. So, have some fun with me and join me from time to time, but keep on this site too! Love ya.
"Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all of your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your path.” Prov 3.
Yesterday started out good enough, in fact it did start out good, because I was feeling good about the six hours of dictation work done that I wanted to get done the day before. As the day wore on, I kept looking at the pile of work that I felt needed to get done and began feeling more and more unable to accomplish it.
I began taking everything upon myself, like I was holding my world together.
God has given us so much – me and my family and I fall into a habit of thinking that I need to hold it all together, or the kind of thinking that says, “What are you going to do when this all falls apart?”
I hear verses like not worrying because what is that going to do? You know, about the birds of the field and the lilies of the valley. Last night I read in James, “Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.”
“Lord, My Lord Jesus Christ,
Thank you for showing me what happens when I take things upon myself. Oh Lord, You see that I cannot handle my life. I know that You have held my world together and I need to continue to leave things in Your mighty and precious and capable hands. Lord, it is You that I do not trust. People aren’t really the problem because You hold the world together, not people. There is no perfect person. You took care of Sarah when Abraham didn’t. You took care of David’s kingdom while he slept with someone else’s wife. You know the end from the beginning. You created me in secret in my mother’s womb and have made me who I am.
Lord, Please enable my husband to be able to take care of all of the responsibilities that You put at his feet. Better yet Lord, You take care of them. Lord, I have been hurt and disappointed so many times in my life by people who made foolish choices and I felt that did not come through for me. Lord, I am so afraid that everything regarding our house and finances are going to fall apart. I remember my rich aunt and uncle who nearly lost all of their wealth and ended up leaving the country when they were a little older than us. I remember my parents whose home fell apart and left each other and their home in ruins and got a divorce when they were just a little older than us. I look at my in-laws, whom I first met when they were a little older than us, and they were and are like cavities – shells – remnants of people. Who are they? They are not happy and they are so lazy and they sit all day for the past 25 years and watch TV. Lord, we don’t have role models.
Lord, I remember when I was studying to be a doctor and how hard it was in that I felt like I had no role models. Perhaps I am going through a change in this time of my life, now that I will be 44 and my husband will be 50, and again there is uncertainty. I’d like to look at the role models, but there really isn’t anyone. There is my other uncle and aunt. The one who gave his life to you and brought me to Calvary Chapel for the first time, but who now does not have evidence of following you. He curses your name, but I think that he will be saved by the skin of his teeth. You blessed he and his wife. They were nearly broke, but you restored his money and have given them wealth. Also, I think that their children are looking for You. You are calling them and I pray for them, my cousins, because You are faithful even when we are not. Your mercies are beyond imagination.
Lord, this is my prayer request. Lord, I really like how You have allowed me to act more like a woman and less like a Charge Commander. I like how my husband is doing the finances. I liked it when I decided to cut back my hours working several months ago and not worry about it but to not work like a crazy fool, because that was just stupid. And the months have gone by and nothing bad has happened from my cutting back the work hours. But I am afraid that my husband isn’t really able to handle the finances properly. Yet, I don’t feel like I can handle them either. So, Lord, please take care of our money situation. It is so complicated. Please give my husband wisdom and blessing like that of Bill Gates! Not that I want to have that kind of money or responsibility, but I do want to be good stewards of what You have given us. I pray that my husband would have everything put together financially to be a blessing. I pray that You would help us with our tax preparation and tax payments. I pray that You would help my husband with his business and me with my business. I pray that You would help him with his financial advisors and tax people and business workers, so much.
I pray that You would sustain us in our house. Lord, the home is so beautiful that it is so overwhelming to me. I am so undeserving. You know that I feel that way, so please do not let me undermine what You have given me, but to accept it graciously. So I say, “thank you Lord” for the beautiful home. Not only it’s physical beauty, which is immense but also the emotional atmosphere in that home. Sustain that house and protect it in every way.
I pray that You would bring my husband into Your own ministry with You. Lord, it is so frustrating, because he and I are like opposite personalities. He is as slow as molasses and so timid in some ways, although on the surface he doesn’t look that way. Part of him is paralyzed, while part of me jumps in both feet before I’ve had time to consider what I have gotten into. Lord, as my husband goes back to the basketball ministry thing that You have blessed him in the last few years, I pray that you would so do something in and through him that in June when the season is over, the season wouldn’t be over but he would continue in a ministry with You. Lord, he so much needs male Christian friends and he so much needs to participate in the things that You are doing in a greater way.
Lord, with our home becoming so beautiful, I pray first of all that you would enable it to stay clean and orderly, so I wouldn’t undo all that you have done for it and for me. I thank you for Gloria and the other cleaners who said that they could come over on those times. I pray that the finances would be in order to take care of that. I pray that I would have the courage to dwell in that beautiful clean home. Oh Lord! It is like my dream that is on this profile! Lord, I am so overwhelmed and undeserving and I guess that I just don’t trust it to stay or I think that I am doing something wrong or I just don’t trust or believe You. Lord, enable me to just say, “Thank you, Lord.” So, thank you Lord.
Lord, I pray that our home, that this home may become a place of ministry for You. Lord, I don’t want Satan to be magnified in our home. I want You to dwell and be magnified in our home. Please bring Christian ministry to our home. Please limit any bad people or negative influences to come into our home. Lord, please don’t let me fall into the mindset that if ministry is in our home, then it is okay to be a beautiful home so then I don’t really have to just receive Your gift. Then I don’t really have to just say, “thank You Lord, for all that You have done.”
Lord, I pray about each of my four beautiful children that You have bestowed upon me. Lord, they are each so precious and perfect and lovely. I am so glad that you let us have four children. How now I wish that I had more, because I love them each so much and they are each so amazing and I love every second that I had to pour into their little lives. Lord, it is so hard to have them grow up.
Lord it is like, from the first time that I was allowed to stare and gaze into the first set of little eyes, that I found a life in me that had never been there before. The magic, the grandeur, the fabulous world within a world of looking into a toddlers eyes, of hearing their giggles, of seeing the first steps, of wiping the burps, of changing the diapers, of running here and there and trying to hold it all together. Of waiting in the emergency room, of warming another bottle, of teaching them to read, of leading them to the Lord.
Then the day comes when they don’t want my advice. They are making their own way. They are leaving and never going back to the little babies that needed me, of the little set of eyes that smiled when they saw me come. They are now wonderfully, talented and well-developed youths who are each very, very successful and blessed, who say or don’t say their own prayers, who think their own thoughts and who will forever be apart from me, in the sense that they will never be my babies again. And the world that I knew of that little micro-world of perfect contentment of looking into their eyes and their looking into mine will never again reoccur because they are growing up and that they should do but I am sad because that phase, that magical phase of my life is over, nearly over, almost over.
So Lord, I pray that you would continue to bless my children, and help me to help us all go one to this next phase of our lives. Help me to not try to do things myself, for what You have given and done is Your creation, not mine. Help me to trust in You and dwell in You, wanting nothing. Amen.”
Addendum: I was eating breakfast after writing this and read about Peter, and how he sunk in the water after taking his eyes off of the Lord. I can walk in faith so long as I keep my eyes on the Lord. The Lord has carried me especially these past 20 years, and great things he has done. I need to keep looking into His eyes, not elsewhere.
Ladies! My other site has become enhanced, and I've taken off the comment moderation. It has an upgraded title. What do you think? Oh, and its pink! It is a bit of a lively site today, perhaps controversial. Please don't be offended. I am hoping that it will develop into a place where I can detail a bit about how I am learning how to live life out as uniquely a woman of God, not a human person, not a man, but a woman of God, and how I can enjoy that, and tolerate this growing old thing that is happening to me, and capture a bit of womanness before the whole game is over (which will be a nice body enhancement I am definatly looking forward to). I will continue "My Food and My Body - an occasional series" on the site of the "Adventures of the Ordinary Christian." In that way, I can take the opportunity to develop the background of how I got to where I am today. The other site, "For Ladies Only: An Ordinary Woman's Diet, Fitness, Weight and Beauty Log and Diary" will take place from the present on, for the most part. So, have some fun with me and join me from time to time, but keep on this site too! Love ya.
posted by An Ordinary Christian | 6:52 AM
3 Comments:
Andrea, you're a very responsible Mummy. You're covering your children with prayers. This is the best gift which you can give to them.
Well done!
Love the new look of your site, and some of the prayers you have on this post could've been written for me and what I'm going through. I pray WITH you! And I will pop into your other site soon!
I fell upon your blog and I wondered what your other blog sites were please? I enjoy receiving encouragement from other women running and fighting this battle for the Lord.
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