School, Softball and Service

Wow.  Off with a bang!

The girls are doing great in school and I can't believe that they are half way through the first nine weeks.  Faith is LOVING her teachers and I know the Lord hand picked them for her so that she can be challenged and feel secure at the same time.  Thank you God!!  Alex has great teachers as well.  She is loving the slightly slower pace of her new math class.  She is taking two high school courses this year...Spanish and Physical Science.  The Science class has been her toughest so far this year.  She also has asked her principal permission to start a girls Bible study this year and we are patiently awaiting the decision from the school board.  Her heart is to have a study that leads girls in mentoring and discipleship and something that will outlive her last year in middle school.  I am so happy to see both girls growing in the Lord this year. 

We are beginning a new softball season as well.  Their Daddy is having the time of his life with this.  It helps that they both have talent with it too.  :)  Alex loves her left center position and is an incredible batter.  Faith is starting her year being the real deal catcher.  I still laugh when I think about the first season she played and after she practiced that position she said it was so much fun being the UMPIRE.  I'll never forget that.  I almost didn't correct her!

I have been praying for God to open a door that we would be able to serve Him as a family.  I have for many years been in women's ministry and my job at the church is definitely ministry but I felt like I was always going in another direction from my family to do ministry.  The Lord has opened a door for us to join our Sunday School class in serving a local mobile home park on Wednesday nights.  We have church in their park and are loving it!  The girls have taken on leadership roles in helping with the kids and I hang out with the grown folks and do Bible study.  Alex has been assisting my friend Kristy in leading the kids.  She shared her testimony for the first time a couple of weeks ago and this week she will teach the lesson to the kids, Lord willing, on David and Goliath.  Faith's role is to be a friend to all and reach out to at least one kid each week.  Its just being Jesus with skin on when we are there.  Just being instead of worrying about the doing, like our Pastor has been preaching lately.  I so love it when the Holy Spirit matches up what He is doing in my heart to what is being taught on Sundays.  Total evidence that His Word is alive and powerful.  I have been praying for a hedge of protection be strong around our family as I know that we are in the enemy's territory with this ministry as well as the girls focusing on impacting their schools.  I know my God is completely faithful and will fight any battle for us.  *this is a reminder to me while I am typing this!!*

Looking forward to some cooler weather and my most favorite time of year coming up soon!  Still happy though to be in Georgia in the 90's instead of the 100+ temps that my poor Okie family has been struggling through all summer.  One week out there about did me in!!


One last thing...BOOMER.SOONER.

My Lord

My blog has been a lot about the greatest gifts in my life, my family.  I feel compelled today to share my heart with you about the One who is above them all...My Lord.

When I think about how to describe the difference He has made in my life the past 7 years, I am truly speechless.  I lived a life growing up being taught about the Lord...one side Methodist and one side Assemblies of God...can you get any more diverse?  The one aspect that I was taught that tied me up in knots was that you can never TRULY know if you will go to heaven.  If you die with unconfessed sin, that wiped away everything else and you would instantly go to an eternity in hell.  That always bothered me.  While I accepted Christ in the car with my mom sitting outside of my dad's house one night on the way home from church, I had a distorted view of God.  I knew that there was a clear difference in my life after I received Him, but I felt disconnected from Him in the way of chains of bondage that never allowed me to experience Him fully.  Those chains were placed around me by the enemy.  Due to those specific chains, it created many more links that were added on over the years that I carried dragged with me for a long time.  I loved Him and feared Him but it was an unhealthy fear.  I was fearful every day that I would not make the cut...He would catch me off guard and I would die with unconfessed sin.  There is NO freedom in that!
In September of 1999 we moved to Georgia.  We attended an Assemblies of God church since that is what we were used to...Tommy coming from a full Pentecostal church...that's another story...
Anyhow, we did not feel like that is the church we were to be a part of.  I will tell you one more aspect of the Assemblies of God church that did not sit well with me.  That was that you had to be baptized in the Holy Spirit.  Like I missed something the first time I was born again... If there ever was a girl who wanted that "evidence" of the Holy Spirit which to them was speaking in tongues, it was me.  I prayed with EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING because that meant that I did not have all of Him fully and therefore felt like something was wrong with me.  So, to pray with all you've got and not receive, I felt even more that something was wrong with this picture.
So, we started attending a large Baptist church here in Georgia and wasn't crazy about the idea of it being Baptist...one denomination that I had heard things about from my other church.  Then it happened...our Pastor preached a sermon on eternal security in Christ.  Holy Cow.  I thought...man I really like this church, but I can't go here!!  This is against everything that both Tommy and I had been taught!!  I instantly wanted to call others I knew and wanted to ask their opinion.  Then for the first time ever, I heard the Lord speak to my heart clearly saying...Why don't you ask me what I think??  Wow.  When you hear the voice of the Lord, there is NO mistaking.  (right Tommy??)  So, I began to do just that for the first time in my life.  I didn't go off of what someone had taught me...I took it straight to His Word.  This is the verse that did it for me and has become a very favorite of mine:

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.   Romans 8:38-39

Ok, so that with many other verses sealed it in my heart FROM GOD ALONE.  Not from the message that Pastor gave, but from the Holy Spirit quenching my heart to listen to Him and seek for answers on my own.  From that point on, it has opened the floodgates on my heart and created a yearning and desire to seek Him, know Him and serve Him with all I've got.  Do I still fail...uh, yes.  Do I still question...uh, yes.  But, I have total and complete confidence in MY LORD that He will never leave me nor forsake me and I take His Word seriously.  It has allowed Him to shine His light in areas of my life where there was bitterness, unforgiveness and emptiness that He wanted to deal with and allow complete healing.  I could stop right there.  His healing.  Nothing can do what He does for me.  No one can do what He does for me.  It allows me to be the woman He has called me to be.  I could never do it on my own.  The real girl in me is insecure, fearful, negative, withdrawn...on and on.  He has taken (and continues to) my mess and make something refreshing and new out of it all.  The story of my life is for a purpose and I want the good, bad and ugly to be used for HIS GLORY ALONE. 
So, that's what He did for me years ago and the journey has been rich since then.  He allows me and my family to go through twists and turns but there is always a purpose and He promises to walk us straight through the fire instead of laying down and becoming a crispy critter.  During those trying times, He is so evident and personal and it makes me emotional when I think about how incredibly intimate He is with each of us in our own way.
I am such a different girl than the one who moved here from Oklahoma.  Actually, visiting Oklahoma reminds me way too much of that old girl.  I almost feel like she should have another name. 
I wanted to share what He is to me RIGHT NOW, but I guess He had other thoughts when I began typing.  I guess I needed to start at the beginning.  When the time is right, I want to document what He is to me now.  This is not about a difference of theology or denominations.  I don't associate myself with being a Baptist.  I associate myself with the One and Only who knows MY name and who I look to and answer to completely.

I love you Lord.  I know that when I say that, you have said it to me first.  Help me to remember that always. Thank you for loving this broken and messed up girl for who I am.  Thank you for giving me Your all so that I can be called Your daughter.  I pray that somehow these words will impact even one life for Your Glory.  You are so worthy and I praise You for who You are.  Amen.