Good morning Beautiful Saints!!! I pray everyone is doing well and enjoying the Fall season here in the United States. Most of us have put our gardens, (such as mine is) to bed and are dreaming about next years gardens already. I picked the last of my peppers and some of them are drying naturally and will be beautiful when they are done. Some of them, I am eating on daily. That's what I'm already looking forward to next year, more peppers and tomatoes. Yes!!!! I do have a couple of ferments going with some of my hot peppers and then some onion and fruits added to them. I can't wait for them to get ready to be blended and turned into hot sauce. Really looking forward to that!!! I have my seeds, my notebook and pen ready to sit down and plot out as much as I can. I will be ready to get my starts going around the last of Jan, to the first of Feb, and then watch out!! hahahaha I have lots of pots to filled with goodies. Yay!! Thank You Lord!!!!
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I was going thru some crafts yesterday and found a set of jewelry that I had made and I wanted to share it with y'all. We was actually going to the bank and I knew I was going to see a friend of mine and I wanted to bless her with a set of jewelry and I thought was perfect. I had actually forgotten about this set. But it is beautiful. I will tell you that the beads were made from a kleenex box. Yes, you read that right. I love all kinds of boxes and the kleenex boxes are perfect. See what you think. Click on each picture to see a larger version of it.
So, just as a reminder when you're crafting, have fun and leave perfection outside. Let the freedom of "imperfect" be the deciding factor in whatever you do. Crafting is supposed to be relaxing, it's not rocket science, no one's life is hanging in the balance or depends on your perfection in the project. Be perfect when it matters. But let your crafting be one of those areas that doesn't have to be perfect to be great. Besides, what one person claims as perfection is another persons flaws and vice versa. Who's right? Neither. So, what I decided years ago was to just have fun. If others like it, yay, if they don't, then so what. It's my creativity, not theirs. And I can tell you, most of the time I don't ask for anyone's opinion of my crafts, so if they offer an opinion and they want to be a little snarkey about something, I just tell them that if I had asked for an opinion, it might bother me, but since I didn't ask for one it doesn't make any difference. And my rule of thumb is to be kind in what I say to build others up. Not everyone is that way, so, I am ready to address any and all "unasked for" opinions.
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As I sit here this morning, I must confess and admit my struggle. Do you ever struggle with anything? I struggle with a lot of things. Attitude, highs and lows, anger, pride, guilt, shame, solitude, expectations.................and so many more things. As I struggle with these things, I find myself questioning everything. I've come to the conclusion that asking questions is a good thing. It's the only way I've ever been able to find real answers. In my search for answers, I find my Lord and Savior in a very real way. Because, to be quite honest, the answer to every question I have boils down to my relationship with my Savior. Everything I mentioned and the things I didn't mention by name are all mannerisms and behaviors and mind sets that can and should be under the covering of Christ. If it isn't, whose fault is it??? I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt, that it is NOT the fault of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!!!! The fault falls squarely on me and my determination to hold on to these things!!!!! Therein is the struggle. My spirit wants to turn it over and get rid of it, but my flesh is so stinking rotten that it won't relinquish those things that the blood of Jesus has completely covered. Paul spoke of the struggle between the flesh and spirit. It is a real struggle. It's a struggle that I deal with daily. I pray daily to be better today than I was yesterday, with His help. I can't do anything on my own. I've learned to not even try.
I think some of the expectations that I seem to struggle with is when someone expects me say what they want to hear. If that is what anyone is looking for from me, you won't hear it. I try make sure what I say is in alignment with scripture and leave my opinions out of it. If it's my opinion, you will know that's it's my opinion. I want you to be able to find what I say in scripture. Hopefully, even if it's my opinion, my opinion will be scripture based. One thing for sure, when we base our opinions on scripture, we will be in alignment with God. If my opinions don't line up with scripture, someone is wrong and it is NOT God.
So, if you ask me something, just understand that I will not lie or tell you what you want to hear. If there is something specific you want to hear, ask another friend. I believe in pushing, pulling and dragging others along to be better. That's what I want and try to do. But I'll never just tell you something because that's what you want to hear. I have had 2 very wonderful ladies in my life that have done that for me. One of them went home to be with Jesus in 2015 and I miss her daily. The other lady is still a sounding board for me. I know she will always be straight up honest with me and any thing she has to say is ALWAYS scripture based. For that, I will be forever grateful. I have at least 2 people in my life that cared enough about me to tell me the truth, even when it hurt. That is a real friend. We all have too many fair weather friends. But a friend who is willing to tell the truth, even though it hurts, is a true friend. My hearts desire for each of you is that you have at least one of those friends in your life. I was blessed and fortunate to have 2 and I thank God for them both all the time.
What we believe matters. The way we live our lives matters. How we as Christian ladies dress, matters. There is a lot of things that matters when our personal testimonies are on the line. There is so many conflicting messages in the world today that we have to set some boundaries and guidelines to keep the worldly influence at bay.
If we believe there is no God, then that will be the way we live our lives. And our clothing with be representative of what we believe. We as ladies, need to put on the "Full Armor of God"!!! That is what I'm talking about how we as Christian ladies dress. I set boundaries and guidelines to keep the world from coming into my home, unless I want it to come in. Am I perfect? Laughably, NO!!! But, that doesn't keep me from striving to be better each day. That doesn't involve reading the Bible for so long, watching videos and doing Bible studies to the point of excluding everyone from my life to be so religious. Our relationship with Christ is just that, a relationship, not a religion. We need to try hard to understand that. When we set religious goals, we are trying to say that we are earning what ever God has for us. That is wrong. If you read the Bible, do it because you are hungry for the Word. You don't have to tell everyone that you have a routine, because that's what you have is a routine. There is a difference between a routine and being hungry for the Word. Being hungry for the Word puts you in the proper place to be fed by God. In other words, when we hungry for the Word, we will begin to understand the Word. Without hunger for the Word, we get "fat, full" of ourselves. I see that a lot and I'm sure if you stop and think about it, you probably do too. The fact of the matter is, I can't understand anything for you. You can't understand anything for me. It is only when we are hungry for the Word, that's the beginning of understanding and that only comes from God.
Jesus said when you pray, go to your closet, where you are away from others ears and pray. (my summation of what He said, but it's there, in scripture and you can find it easily enough.) If we pray big and lofty prayers with meaningless words for other ears to hear, we have received our reward, they heard it. When we pray to God, and want Him to hear our prayers, we need to do that in private and pour out our hearts to Him. That's what He will hear and respond to. Now, I'm not saying corporate prayer is bad. People pray in public all the time and most of the time, that's a good example of what public prayer should be. Petitioning God for the corporate needs of the people and praising God corporately are wonderful to be a part of. Are you talking to God on behalf of the people, or are you saying a lot just to be tickling the ears of the hearers? Even in corporate settings we have to be careful when we pray, if the one praying aloud is being the voice for the people.
Just a lot of things running thru my head for the last couple of weeks and trying to make sense of it all. This post was actually started on Oct. 30th, and I'm just finishing it up. It took me this long to think about it, pray about it, and then come back to it every once in a while with more to say until I finished it this morning. So, who is this post for???? Well, in short, it's for me!!!!!!! If you can find some use from this post, then yay, but it was actually what God has been saying to me and showing me and He has to do this from time to time, because like all of us, I need to be told over and over some things. That's the only reason I started a blog in the first place. I said I would use it to glorify Him and for Him to teach me. As long as He is in it, I'll keep doing this blog. My main goal is just to show you that He is only as big as we allow Him to be. We can restrain how big God is in our lives. I NEVER want to restrain God in my life. I want to get out of His way and let Him do what ever He wants to do.
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Well, that's just about it for this morning. I hope that can and will purposefully praise God every day and thank Him for all He's done for you. Especially since Thanksgiving is upon us. Let us be thankful to God for His many blessings and all the love He heaps upon us. Always remember how much He loves you. I love y'all too. peace, blessings and love, patty
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