For We Walk By Faith, Not By Sight

These words don’t technically meet the definition of rhema, they are more logos, words but God has laid them on my heart for 2009.

Serve:

The Greek word for “serve” for 32 of the references which occur in the New Testament is diakonevw or diakoneo — pronounced dee-ak-on-eh’-o — which, at its essence, means “to minister”. There are 37 references to this use of the word “serve” in the KJV including 5 in Matthew, 4 in Mark, 7 in Luke, 2 in John, 2 in Acts, 1 in Romans, 3 in 3 Corinthians, 2 in 1 Timothy, 1 in 2 Timothy, 1 in Philemon, 1 in Hebres and 3 in 1 Peter.

The word usage breaks down to 15 references meaning “minister unto,” 10 references to “serve,” 7 references to “minister,” and 5 other.

Pray:

The Greek that is frequently referenced for pray is ejrwtavw or erotao — pronounced er-o-tah’-o — and one of the meanings is “to entreat, beg, request, beseech.” This form of the word pray is referenced 58 times in the KJV, including 3 times in Matthew, 2 in Mark, 14 in Luke, 26 (!) in John, 6 in Acts, once in Philippians, 2 in 1 Thessalonians and once each in 2 Thess, 1 and 2 John.

The word usage breakdown is “ask” 23, “beseech” 14, “pray” 14, “desire” 6, “entreat” 1.

As I enter the new year, I take quite seriously these words that God has laid on my heart and will study intensively the corresponding verses. When I am done with these initial verses, I will move on to the other uses of the words. And, of course, I will serve and I will pray.

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I lay this at the feet of all my tweety friends who are miniblogging about how they’re getting all organized for 2009.  So…  I am working on it as well.  Plotting everything into my Google calendar so I can have some sort of idea of where I’ll be when and who needs to be where…  You know, mom stuff.

My Google calendar looks like a rainbow.  We have purple for my stuff, green for NSBK’s, red for BK’s, orange for bills due to be paid, tan for Studly’s stuff, turquoise for blog stuff, and last but not least (okay, maybe least for now)  gold for my online business/webpreneur stuff.

It’s very interesting to see all the places in which they intersect and will be more interesting yet to see how I am going to accomplish all the intersections.  I mean, I’m a big girl (for now anyway!) but I can still be only one place at a time!

I’m gonna be seeing rainbows in my sleep.  Thank you, twitterverse…

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Wow, what a great few days!! My Christmas post is up so you know how great that was. Christmas was followed by three blissful days of doing as close to nothing as I could get away with. Delightful! I think the most energetic thing I did over the weekend was to bake Studly some of the braided cinnamon bread he likes so much. There’s not a lot of sugar to mess up his diabetes and he really enjoys it! Did I eat any? Nope, not a bite!

We started off at the mall where my children — my TEENAGE MALE children — spent about two hours shopping. They had Books-A-Million gift cards (how cool it is to have kids who love reading!) and some Christmas money and saved-up allowances to spend. They’re really cute when they shop because they comparison shop like nobody’s business. There are 2 GameStops in our mall, one at either end, and they practically run from store to store comparison shopping for prices and availability. While they shopped, I decided to do the mall walking thing. I did about a half mile altogether, which isn’t much but it’s a start, and I’ve still been really busy the rest of the day. I resisted the YUMMY, GREAT-SMELLING, fattening, artery-clogging seductive siren song of Cinnabon (yay, me!) and resisted Starbucks too! My body has no idea how serious I am about losing weight. I bought Studly 3 Mac mags and a couple of b’day things for my ChemoAngel buddy. Nothing for me this time. Isn’t that nice, when your life is satisfying enough that you can’t think of anything you want or need to have right at that moment?

After a quick run to Wal-Mart (that’s where we did the clothes and back-to-school stuff) and Publix (where my greatest temptation was to bean the very slow bagger) we headed home where I face a lot of mountainous stack of laundry — both from taking so much time enjoying the fam last week and the fact that I won’t let anybody wear new stuff that hasn’t been washed first. And I say this in all sincerity, thank You, God, for my washer and dryer!

Oh, and for all of my friends on Twitter, who are talking about how you’re already organized for 2009 and stuff? I hate envy am jealous of wish I could be you! I did manage to buy my binder for 2009 and have updated most of the kids’ stuff and my church things into Google Calendar — except I just remembered I’ve got to add in the Beth Moore Stepping Up Bible study that starts in February! Ack! The hurrieder I go, the behinder I get!

Last, but not least, we’re having my in-laws over on New Year’s Day. This is such an appropriate way to round out this year, I can’t even tell you. Last year, on NYD, when everything was really bad, we went to visit the in-laws and a good deal of fakery was involved. THIS YEAR, I am looking forward to seeing them! No fakery, just enjoyment. Woot!

PS If you have a few minutes to spare each week to write a letter or a card, and you want to connect with somebody who’s going through a bad time and offer encouragement and support, check out ChemoAngels. My friend, Denise, turned me on to them and it is proving to be one of the most rewarding things I could be doing!

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I hadn’t said anything about it but I’m back on the track to getting healthy. If you’d like to follow along on the journey, leave comments, etc., please click on the Weighty Matters page up top.

If I get REAL brave, I might include a pic of what I look like right now as a “before”… but I’m not that brave just yet!

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Wow, making it to church on time this morning was close!  I like doing the 8:30 service followed by Sunday School but today, whew!   Had I hit one more red light, I wouldn’t have made it.  I am so glad I made it for 8:30, though, because Tim (our music minister who always starts off the service) asked a question typical of this time of year:  Who among you will be happen to see the end of 2008?  Well, I definitely raised my hand!  Then he said something unusual.  Why?  Was the year hard?  Did you have trials or trouble, illness or loss?  Did God bless you and bring you through it?  When you look back at 2008, don’t focus your mind on the bad things.  Focus your heart on the way the Holy Father carried you through. Is that not a powerful and life-changing way to view one’s life?

And, boy, is he right!  I have been criticized a lot for being so open about my life on my blog, with the bipolar and the ongoing difficulties with getting a good drug regime, Studly’s disabilities, the circumstances that rocked my marriage , etc.  but you know what?  Those things, and that God worked in me through them, are my testimony! God did carry me through, stronger and closer to Him than I have ever been in my life.  God can take the worst circumstances of a woman’s life and work them together for good. I can’t testify to that, in a way that women can relate to, without sharing some of the difficulties. Who among us, as women, hasn’t been touched by some degree of marital discord or emotional/mental distress or illness or death? Certainly I can only speak for myself but in the area of last December-April, if a woman, a good woman, sincere, Christian, striving to minister and do God’s work — but who had never been touched by the kinds of things that were going on in my life — had tried to testify to me about how great God is, I couldn’t have truly heard her. I want so much to touch women who are hurting, who feel lost and hopeless, to let them know how GOOD and FAITHFUL God is, when there isn’t a soul in this world that we can count on, HE is true.

All of my blessings, and praise Jesus there are so many!, mean more to someone who is hurting with the backdrop of where I have been. How else can a woman in pain see how far faith in God, belief that Jesus is our Savior, can bring us? (can you tell that I’m being pulled — really pulled – to minister to women who ache?)

What is your view of the past year?  What things in your life can you use to testify for the Lord in the coming year?  How will you minister or serve?

Have you heard the phrase “Each one reach one”?  If each of us who believes brings only ONE person to Christ over the course of the whole next year, we — no, HE — can change the world!

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How was your Christmas? I can’t wait until everybody updates their blogs so I can read about your holiday.

Mine was profound. Fair warning, this post will run long… Go grab some coffee or something.

December 23 was an anniversary and not of the good kind. I won’t go into it in detail except to say how blessed I was by the support I received. I was truly humbled. My kids and I baked (and baked and baked!) and had a really good time doing it. Of course, there was the obligatory watching of Mickey’s Christmas Carol!

December 24 I awoke with a peace in my heart that I haven’t had in over a year — probably since Mama’s lung cancer diagnosis 09/01/07. It was a certain realization that something in me has changed. A humility that it has changed because it was not through my own efforts but His.

The kids lasted until about 10:30 in the morning before they ripped open their gifts to one another! And they’re 15 and 18!

My thoughts through Christmas Eve were overwhelmingly Christ-centered. I doubt there was an hour in the day, maybe even smaller increments than that, that I didn’t reflect on Christ and the gift He gave to us. I searched my heart through the day and confessed and repented of sins as I found them. As I drove to church for the candlelight service, I talked to God. I found 3 specific unconfessed sins of the heart and confessed them. It probably sounds weird to say but as the day went on, I felt lighter and lighter and yet heavier and heavier all at the same time. Lighter in my own heart, over my own sins because I believe that He washed me of them, but, oh, so heavy in heart at how unworthy I am of the sacrifice made for me. Keenly aware that I can never, ever be worthy and that it is only through that sacrifice that He made that I could feel the lightness of heart that goes with being washed of sin.

I arrived at church early (I’m neurotic that way) and the church was dimly but beautifully lit. I took some time to kneel at the altar and pray. I sat with one of my older friends, Helen, during the service and I think I cried the whole time. I don’t know how to explain the feelings in my heart except to say that I was aware that I could never do enough service, could never pray enough or worship enough or anything enough to be worthy of Him. How deep His love and His grace run! Communion (The Lord’s Supper to those Baptists among us) was one of the most powerful and profound experiences of my life. I couldn’t praise Him enough for how far He has brought me this year. I am awed at how completely blessed and loved I am by He who made me and knows me best of all.

Afterwards, Studly and I watched The Naked Archaeologist and some other stuff. I stuffed stockings and did other such little tasks. All with such a sense of joy and peace.

Christmas morning was early! My kids really enjoyed their gifts. There were fewer than normal by quite a margin, largely by design and also economics, but I chose wisely and well and they were very happy. Studly really liked the gift we gave him (and can you believe, I almost forgot to give him his stocking!!) and I had asked for no gifts but I did have something from my Sunday School teacher, a beautiful glass angel ornament for the tree.

And then Studly and I watched The Passion Of The Christ. I had never watched it. Didn’t want to see the brutality. I’ve gotta say, I know in my head what happened. I know biblically what happened. But to see what Christ went through so graphically depicted… Whether there was some dramatic license taken or not, you know that it is largely representative of how things happened… I just had to keep getting down on my knees. It seemed the only appropriate position, other than prostrate on the ground, to watch that.

The other thing I did was spend Christmas Day lending support on an infidelity forum that has given me so much wisdom, encouragement and support over the last year. Last year on Christmas Day I was 1-1/2 days from having found out and I was beyond devastated. So I know how shattering it can be. There is a particular board for those people who have just discovered infidelity in their relationship and I posted and messaged there a lot during the day. It was a form of giving back, sure, but it also helped me realize how very far God has brought me this year.

A year ago, I was drowning in pain, hadn’t had a relationship with God in most of my adult life, grieving my mom… just so much pain, so hopeless. And then, as time went on, the quiet “I am here” that I began to hear. And to realize that He was there all along. He didn’t make my mother smoke all those years and get lung cancer. He didn’t turn my husband’s attentions elsewhere. He didn’t make me have a ministroke the day after Christmas. He didn’t make me mentally and emotionally incapable of handling it all. What He did do was to work good through it. He let me break, then He gathered up the shattered shards of what had been my life and made something far greater than I could have ever dreamed.

THAT is how holy, how magnificent, how FAITHFUL He is!

So that was my Christmas… the solidification in my mind of things I already knew in my heart. A new openness to the sacrifices He made for me. A larger sense of how, but through His blood and grace, I am evil and should burn in the lake of fire. And praise and worship for Him and a greater desire to serve so that even a tiny little bit of His glory might be through my actions and draw others to him.

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Nonbloggy: I might have forgotten to mention, for those of you who have been following along with Studly and the situation with his license to drive, that he is no longer licensed to drive in the state of Florida.  He made the decision to relinquish his right to drive based on a lot of factors, not the least of which was what the state was putting him through.  Even though it was his decision, he still struggles with it a bit.  That little bit of independence, not that you ever necessarily would drive but that you legally could.  He also worries about the burden it places on me because I so hate driving.  I worry that if anything happened to me (another TIA or stroke, legal issues, etc.) that my family would be left without a doer and goer.  We have both decided to just leave it up to God and trust that He will handle whatever comes along.

Bloggy changes: Playing with the theme again (what else is new, huh?).  I’m working on a new header/logo but haven’t yet come up with anything that speaks to me so just bear with the plainness for a while please.  I’ve moved the prayer warrior site over to this site from Blogger. This necessitates me opening up comments, including anonymous, because I don’t want anyone to be discouraged from leaving an anonymous request. So everybody play just as nice as you usually do, k?

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I had not planned any post for this weekend but, as I was doing some reading, this at Internet Cafe caught my eye.

What is one thing you will commit to do in 2009 that will draw you closer to Jesus? (This is not a New Year’s Resolution)

This is a question to which I have already been giving a lot of thought.  There is actually more than one thing to include, among some private-inside-myself things, more prayer, more Bible study and service.  I commit to pray more often, pray more boldly, worship more joyfully.  I commit to lose myself in the Bible, reading for the joy of seeing His words, for love of what they mean.  You’ve heard of sacrificial giving (financial), I’m sure, which is giving until it hurts.  I commit to serve like that.  I want to serve in His name until I’m exhausted.  The widows and orphans, the poor and infirm,  the heartbroken and the hopeless, friends, family, strangers…

What about you?

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Things are picking up around ye olde homestead.  Nic is on break now and I am wanting to spend time with the fam,  doing the baking/cooking thing, prepping spiritually for my first communion since I was very young, all sorts of goodness going on here.  So, unless something particularly noteworthy happens, I’ll likely not be posting or even reading much until after Christmas.  I have my handy-dandy Google Reader, though, so I’ll catch up with everybody more toward 2009.

I hope you have a very blessed, happy and healthy Christmas.  I love you all.

From my home to yours,

Willow

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