Monday, September 10, 2012

Freed of Fear - the battle continues

Fear is a debilitating enemy! Even when you think you have it conquered in one area of your life, it can still aim to pop up in yet another area. It can weaken us and cause us to act impulsively, contrary to Holy Spirit's guidance.

Just this week I was faced with a big ol' fear that left me feeling slightly sick. I experienced an overwhelming temptation to act entirely rash. The situation that instigated the fear was not nearly as important as the root issue which manifested as fear itself. Thankfully, a sweet friend, whom I was speaking with on the phone, heard it and said, "You know, it sounds like there is a lot of fear attached to this subject." In an instant I knew she was right. She offered to pray for me, and I said "Yes please."

As soon as she prayed, I literally felt the spirit of fear lifting off of me. I am not into wackiness, so when I say I felt the spirit of fear lifting off, I will try to further explain it as a heaviness that lifted. Fear can sometimes feel like a weight on our shoulders. For the first time in a few days I felt as if I could breath easier. Once it was gone I again felt at peace; light, energetic, and full of joy!

I thanked my friend profusely! It was only a simple prayer she prayed, but it was filled with a Truth that reminded my heart of the Lord's plans for my family and I. Truth always stomps out fear when we choose to believe it.

So I bring this to you. Is there an area of fear in your life? Are you acting irrationally about something and don't know why? Loot to the root. Chances are, it could be fear, and can therefore be dealt with by enforcing Truth over top of it.

Depending on the size of the root, repeated applications of Truth may be necessary. Speak the Truth out loud and repeatedly until the peace comes. Take as many times a day as needed. You can not overdose on too much of God. Remember, you are all children of the Most High God!

Who ever believes will be saved.......even from fear! For perfect Love (Jesus) casts out fear!
Be encouraged.

For some reason, this post made me think of this song.....enjoy! Live Free by Lecrae


Thursday, September 6, 2012

Burning Heart

I think I mentioned last week that I had started to go to a Women's Intercession meeting once a week. Well I went again this week, and I am telling you what! I come home every time with my heart filled to overflowing with the Spirit, so much so that my heart burns. I walk around my house like I'm hyped up on some drug, and I just gotta say, Holy Spirit is better than any drug ever! I am sure of it!

After this weeks meeting I even had to call my mother and process through some of what had gone on, just so that I could calm down enough to carry on with the rest of my day.

Not only is the Lord speaking to me during the meetings, showing me and exciting me to pray for the specific things that are on His heart for that day, but He has been using me to speak some things out in the meetings. I do not usually like to speak out in meetings, especially when I am so new to the group, but after having completed the Song of Solomon study in June, I have begun to believe the things the Lord spoke over me out of that study.

One of the things the Lord has spoken to me through the Songs study and also through people who have spoken into my life, is that the Lord has given me the Word of the Lord in my mouth. Once, the Lord even showed me a vision of it.  In a time of contemplative prayer I asked the Lord how He sees me. He showed me a warrior, and I prayed for Him to make me a warrior for Him, and I prayed for the Lord to put the Sword in my hand. In the vision, He showed me as the warrior again, but the Sword was coming out of my mouth.

Well, it would seem to me now that the Lord is really starting to let some of that be manifested in the physical. I've known for some time that the Lord has called me to be a warrior in the Spirit. As an intercessor, I make war on darkness every time I engage in a time of prayer, whether corporate or personal. To be making verbal declarations in a corporate prayer meeting though, that is a bit more out of my element.  I think that is just how the Lord likes it too. He likes to use me in ways that I could never take the credit for. Keeps me humble.

Even in my humility though, I am constantly left dazzled by how He has used me, even the way He used me this week. I feel so grateful to see Him using me as a vessel to touch others. For the last several years, He has been teaching me things and molding me in the 'unseen'. And when I say 'unseen', I mean I have no platform or area to express all that He teaches or gives to me. Most of it is used in my home where no one by my husband and children see it, and the Lord of course sees it all!  Yet now He has used me twice to pray aloud in a meeting of women, and I am overcome by it. It excites me that He could use someone like me. It shows me how good it feels to be used by the Lord, and makes me want to please Him even more with my love and obedience.

So why am I writing about all of this. Partly because I am so excited and undone by the way the Lord has been speaking thru me, leading me in prayer (out loud) for others in a corporate setting. I'm also writing it as an encouragement. That nothing that is taught to you by the Holy Spirit in the secret times of our personal lives is wasted, and we can never know the full intentions of the Lord in the wisdom and revelations that He gives to us. When we take the time to 'seek' Him and know Him, then He responds by giving us more and more truth and revelation and wisdom well beyond ourselves.

I am not anyone special in the natural world. I am a stay at home mom with three babies and a husband that I strive to take good care of. Yet I love the Lord and I choose to believe the things the Scriptures say about Him and what He says about me (in relationship to Himself). Therefore I am His child. I am even His favorite one! He is willing to speak the mysteries of the universe to me because I am His, and I am attempting to live according to His will for my life. Does that make sense?

Therefore He uses me as one of His vessels, and I am able to touch others by the power of His Spirit that lives inside of me. All I have to do is be open and obedient. It helps, though, that I try to spend daily time with Him. It makes it easier to hear Him when He is prompting me to step out, when I know His voice well, and have the confidence that comes with spending that time with Him. I wrote about the importance of spending daily time with the Lord here, if you want to read more about how I pull that off as a mother of three.

Pretty much the whole point of this blog is to build up other women and mothers with the revelations and teaching I have received over the last few years. Things I have learned from just living life with the Lord and things He has shown me personally. Other posts are about things that I have learned from good Christian teaching and put into practice in my personal life. Things that I think would be helpful to other women to know about or consider.

The Lord loves to pour out wisdom and revelation on those He loves, and He loves you. Be encouraged.


The Game Plan

Okay, so in the last post, you can find it here, I talked about the importance of my schedule in direct proportion to my ability to function in daily life and still find time to spend with Jesus.

Today I am going to give you a glimpse of what my schedule looks like.  On the front end I will tell you how I came about this schedule and be as honest as I can about how I work this thing.

First off, I did not even have a schedule before I had children. I didn't see the need for it, I was so overly confident that I could run the world without any sort of organization in my approach. For as often as my no-plan approach to running a house failed me, I always excused the failure with the idea that the lack affected no one but myself. If my husband was inconvenienced by the failure, I silently argued that he was an adult and could take care of his end of things when I didn't get around to it. I was really selfish during that stage of my life. Just being honest.

It was when children entered the picture that I realized my foolishness at not having a game plan. Now my failure did affect others much smaller and much more dramatic than myself. Kids thrive on routine, and I had none. All that to say, my life was a mess. My house was a mess. My emotions were a mess.

My husband told me to make a schedule. I laughed, I cried, and told him all the reason why a schedule was not the answer for me. Then I tried it.

First schedule, with one baby, was only a partial success, but it was still more of a success than having no schedule. So I revamped it, made it rather flexible. Tried again, a small increase in the success margin.

Revamped it again, and again, and again, enter baby two. More revamping. Shifting things to make a way for me to work part time while still running my house successfully. More success, but with success came the lesson of saying no, even to good things. How did I know which things to give up and which to keep?

With my 'Mommy Manifesto'.......another topic for another day, but it is pretty much a list of life goals, life vision if you will. Wanna read about my beliefs in having a life vision....check it out here. Been there, wrote that post a while back. Enjoy.

So these goals in my Mommy Manifesto help me know what is important to me personally. Some are general, others are more specific, but they help me pick which things to put in my schedule. For example, if intercession is important to me, then putting time in my schedule for that is one of the first priorities.  I put in the things that are the most important to me first, then I fill in the gaps with other things in order of decreasing priority.

Something I started a few years ago was an attempt to start 'tithing' my time to the Lord. That equals about 18 hrs of God time a week. Since that is pretty important to me, I put that time in my schedule first, giving it priority even above cleaning.

Now that I have confessed to something as radical sounding as 'tithing' my time to the Lord though, I should go ahead and mention that my schedule is not a cruel task master to me. It is more like a game plan, an overall goal for the week. More often than I care to mention, I do not get all 18 hrs in for the week. Heck, I don't even get all my scheduled cleaning in for most weeks. It is a goal people. I'm not perfect yet and neither is my schedule. If something doesn't happen though, I no longer beat myself up over it, I just shrug my shoulders and try again the next week.

I also leave a lot of flexibility in it. I have laundry on Wednesday and Friday mornings and I have a play date time slot on Thursday afternoons. If my friends can't hang out Thursday afternoon though, then I can switch one of my laundry mornings for that week to Thursday aftrnoon and have a morning play date instead. Or if I allot myself an hour for making dinner, but we have lots of left overs, then my girls and I can do something extra that afternoon because dinner will not take that long to prepare.

Making sense? I hope so.

So now that you know how I have developed this schedule, I am going to show you my current schedule. I have had this new schedule for about a month. My previous schedule I had for about three months. I would have to say that three months is about how long on average I have any given schedule before I need to make some changes to it. I usually re-evaluate my schedules every three months because with little toddlers, things just change that quickly. With a new baby, who knows how long this current schedule will last. Here is is anyways.


8/1/2012 Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
7:15 A wake girls wake girls wake girls wake girls wake girls wake girls wake girls
7:30 A breakfast breakfast breakfast breakfast breakfast breakfast breakfast
7:45 A clean up clean up clean up clean up clean up clean up clean up
8:00 A computer  computer computer  computer  computer  computer  computer 
8:15 Aprep prep prep prep prep prep prep
8:30 A prep





8:45 A prep





9:00 A MSF





9:15 AMSF





9:30 A MSF prep prep Laundry prep Laundry
9:45 A MSF prep prep Laundry prep Laundry
10:00 A MSF errands Coffee Laundry Coffee  Laundry
10:15 A MSF errands Coffee Laundry Coffee  Laundry
10:30 A MSF errands Coffee Laundry Coffee  Laundry
10:45 A
errands Coffee Laundry Coffee  Laundry
11:00 A
errands Coffee Laundry Interc. Laundry
11:15 A
errands Coffee Laundry Interc. Laundry
11:30 A prep errands Coffee prep Interc. prep
11:45 A prep errands Coffee prep Interc. prep
12:00 P clean up clean up clean up clean up Interc. clean up clean up
12:15 P Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Interc. Lunch Lunch
12:30 P make up prayer clean up prayer Interc. prayer swing cl
12:45 P make up prayer clean up prayer clean up prayer swing cl
1:00 P make up prayer clean up prayer clean up prayer swing cl
1:15 P make up prayer clean up prayer clean up prayer swing cl
1:30 P reading reading reading reading reading reading reading
1:45 P reading reading reading reading reading reading reading
2:00 P Prayer  school Prayer school Prayer school Prayer 
2:15 P Prayer school Prayerschool Prayer  school Prayer 
2:30 P Prayer  school Prayer  school Prayer  school Prayer 
2:45 P Prayer school Prayer  school Prayer  school Prayer 
3:00 P

school outing school
school
3:15 P

school outing school
school
3:30 P

school outing school
school
3:45 P


outing clean up

4:00 P


outing clean up

4:15 P


outing clean up

4:30 P


outing clean up

4:45 P


outing clean up

5:00 P dishes dishes dishes dishes dishes dishes dishes
5:15 P cooking cooking cooking cooking cooking cooking cooking
5:30 P cooking cooking cooking cooking cooking cooking cooking
5:45 P cooking cooking cooking cooking cooking cooking cooking
6:00 P Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner
6:15 P Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner
6:30 P clean up clean up clean up clean up Sm. Group clean up clean up
6:45 P



Sm, Group

7:00 P MESH/MOMS


Sm. Group

7:15 P MESH/MOMS


Sm. Group

7:30 P MESH/MOMS clean up clean up clean up Sm. Group clean up clean up
7:45 P MESH/MOMS reading reading reading Sm. Group reading reading
8:00 P MESH/MOMS Bedtime Bedtime Bedtime Sm. Group Bedtime Bedtime
8:15 P MESH/MOMS Prayer 
Prayer  Sm. Group EGS prep sch. 
8:30 P MESH/MOMS Prayer 
Prayer  Sm. Group EGS prep sch. 
8:45 P MESH/MOMS Prayer 
Prayer  Sm. Group EGS prep sch. 
9:00 P MESH/MOMS Prayer 
Prayer  Sm. Group EGS prep sch. 
God-hrs 5 2.5 1.5 2.5 4.5 2.5 1.5







20


Please take note of all the blank space. I no longer feel it necessary to fill in all the gaps with something. The blanks are free time, places to stick extra things that pop up from week to week. Some of my other scheduled entries are rather general, like 'reading'. I would like that to be my Bible most of the time, but sometimes it is a really good Christian book instead.  You will see my totals for tithed time at the bottom, which totals 20 hrs. instead of the 18 that I told you. That is so if I miss a few hours a week, it still comes out to 18 or so. If I get all these hours in, then I give the Lord a bit extra. No harm in that, right?

A few of the entries you will not know what I mean, like 'make up' day and 'swing clean', which both deal with my specific cleaning chores for the week. Hey, it's my schedule, it makes sense to me. Yours will make sense to you when you make it!

Now, if you have questions, let me know. Seriously, if you have questions, I want to try to answer them. Post them on here, and thanks for taking the time to read about me and my schedule.

The Lord is a God of order, He can help you be more so. Be encouraged.


*Note, after posting this I realized that part of my schedule is cut off.....but is mostly just more of the same format as the portion you can see. The only thing to note is most of my Saturday is wide open on my schedule because that is my Sabbath. You should always try to protect your sabbath and really try to rest and keep it low stress. :-) It's healthy.