Wake up my Heart!

Scripture of the Day: Matthew 6:9-13 9  “This, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father  in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10  your kingdom  come, your will be done,      on earth as it is in heaven. 11  Give us today our daily bread. 12  And forgive us our debts,      as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13  And lead us not into temptation,      but deliver us from the evil one. Sometimes I lay awake at night, unable to sleep and I usually feel like I should be praying about something. I run through the people I know who are on my list, run through my own petitions and then I continue to lay there, feeling like I am missing something. Last night at bible study, we read the Lord's Prayer (see above), and although our focus was on forgiveness, what has stuck out to me is the guidelines at the beginning, "This, then, is how you should pray." Sometimes when you don't know wha...

Note: this post is not really a devotional, so much as it is some personal history of my walk with the Lord. Scripture of the Day: Isaiah 1:18 “Come now, let us settle the matter,”      says the   Lord . “Though your sins are like scarlet,      they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson,      they shall be like wool. ” Through a conversation this weekend, it dawned on me that I have not shared part of what I call my “God story” with many people at all! So here it is in a very tiny nutshell… I am a confirmed Catholic, so I grew up in the church and I have believed in the Holy Trinity (Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit) my whole life. But for some reason, I was missing the big picture. I believed in Jesus, but didn’t grasp that he had actually died for ME, personally. I had a big-picture relationship with God, but not an intimate one. The amazing thing is that although I lacked that ...

Scripture of the Day: 1 Thessalonians 5:18 18  give thanks in all circumstances;  for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. The other day I was talking to a woman who worked at Kroger. She spent time talking to my son, then mentioned that she had a two year old boy as well - just - as that day was his birthday. She then told me that the day her son was born, his father died. Then she follows by telling me she is just beginning to see a blessing in that. I was stunned. Blessing? Raising a child with no father - a blessing? (Please note I know no other details than I just told you) After spending much time thinking about her words (and appreciating my husband more than usual), I realized she is living out the verse above. She is giving thanks in all circumstances.  Reader, it is hard to be thankful in all circumstances. Life is hard and we do not (and cannot) comprehend all that happens to us. But I believe when we turn it over to God, thankfulness, in some c...

Scripture of the Day: Psalm 36:5-6 Your love, oh Lord Reaches to the heavens Your faithfulness stretches to the sky Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains Your justice flows like the ocean's tide Yesterday as my family was listening to the radio, the above words from Psalm 36 came on the radio in one of my favorite Third Day songs (check out  http://thirdday.com/songs/your-love-oh-lord#lyricdesc  if you want to see more of the lyrics or listen!) and I realized that it had been a while since I wrote a devotion just praising God for His love for us. My second nudge this might be a good topic came when we were at church and they played a song I hadn't heard in years, but one that I used to listen to over and over again when I first became a Christian. The song is called "Came to my Rescue" and those lyrics that I used to sing with my windows down, praising the Lord are: "In my life, be lifted high. In our world, be lifted high. In our love, be lift...

Scripture of the Day: Philippians 4:8 (NLT) And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Reader, do you ever find yourself unable to turn off your brain? Or even worse, find yourself unable to prevent that brain from going down a path of negative thoughts? This tends to happen to me, usually at night. In one of the Beth Moore bible studies I have done, I remember her saying she used to sleep with her head (or hand -  I can't remember!) on a bible because when it is dark we are at our weakest and the enemy likes to attack.  When these negative thoughts hit me I fear the worst about everything. If my husband is not home, I think he could be dead in a ditch somewhere; if my kiddo has a low-grade fever I jump ahead to him having cancer of some kind; I imagine some friend, somewhere, is mad at me and I don't know ...

Scripture of the Day: Jeremiah 17:7-8 7  “But blessed  is the one who trusts  in the  Lord ,      whose confidence is in him. 8  They will be like a tree planted by the water      that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes;      its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought      and never fails to bear fruit.” Part of me is leery to tell you where today's verses come from, because with the answer comes a glimpse into one of the true loves of my life. Ready? Football! I love football...and I love Tim Tebow! (Please note I do bleed green and gold and will support my Green Bay Packers through thick and thin.) Tim I follow, regardless of the team he plays for, because his main team is the Body of Christ! His posts are usually simple - no words, just a Scripture passage to look up. Yesterday, for the first football Sunday of the sea...

Scripture of the Day: 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 16  Rejoice always,   17  pray continually,   18  give thanks in all circumstances;  for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. I set out to write on prayer, found the verses above and now feel like I could write separately on each one! But that is for another day...we will focus on the idea of praying continuously today. I feel like I bad pray-er. I have good intentions and when I tell someone I will pray for them, I do. But it may only be once and then it disappears from my mind...or it may only be when I happen to see a Facebook status of someone in need and that sparks my memory. I pray throughout the day, but that is typically related to circumstances as they occur, or focus on my immediate family (most often husband and child). The bottom line is that I do not pray as often as I should, or about the things that I should. My contemplation on prayer today came about because a mom's group I am p...

Scripture of the Day: Joshua 4:21-24 21  Then Joshua said to the Israelites, “In the future your children will ask, ‘What do these stones mean?’   22  Then you can tell them, ‘This is where the Israelites crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’ 23  For the   Lord   your God dried up the river right before your eyes, and he kept it dry until you were all across, just as he did at the Red Sea   when he dried it up until we had all crossed over.   24  He did this so all the nations of the earth might know that the   Lord ’s hand is powerful, and so you might fear the   Lord   your God forever.” When reading through scripture, I am often trying to pull out quibbles of information I can apply to my life today. Joshua, Chapter 4 provides an excellent example of just such a quibble:  Our children will ask questions…always wanting to know the meaning of things – and we need to have a “why” or a “what” prepared. And how much b...