Tag Archives: Love
A Beautiful Letter…Repost from Raising Homemakers
This came to me this morning in email, and I thought I'd re-post it for you all to enjoy. It really struck a chord with me. Both in the desire I have to see my children create successful marriages, but also as a reminder to myself about my own marriage.
Our Greatest Role as Moms
Stumbled on this today…It's from another blog, but I must repost.
Our Greatest Role As Moms Is To Be Like Christ
Christ spent much time in prayer, in relationship with others, in service to the less fortunate, and even alone.
He was concerned with heart matters over physical matters.
He gave of Himself without complaint.
He forgave freely.
He instructed in what is good and against sin.
He meditated on God’s word.
He told lots of stories.
He recharged Himself spiritually and physically.
And, most importantly, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us! He lavished GRACE on a sinful, dying world.
……..
“We must be the parents who become the flesh of Christ to our children!”
In order to do that we need to know Him, LOVE Him, spend time with Him… LOTS of time with Him!
“You must be a gardener of your own soul, and then a gardener of your children’s soul.” “You can’t pass on what you’re not living.”
“The Proverbs 31 woman ‘clothed herself’ with strength and dignity… She had to ‘put’ it on. It’s a choice to be made.”
“Godly, strong, overcoming women who have a testimony don’t happen by accident.”
“You (and your children) are being groomed to become like Christ. Many times that’s done through difficulty.”
“He desires not for you to be happy and shallow, but to be Holy.”
“Our children learn how to believe & persevere by watching us. How do we handle trouble/discouragement?”
Our children will be prepared for trials in life by seeing how we trust and lean on God in our sadness.
“Your spirit is an example to others – how you walk with God is a model for your children to follow.”
We can’t give our children what we don’t have. If we want them to know and love God. We need to know and love God.
“Be a learner. Be curious about all that God has made (surround yourself with others who do the same).”
“God isn’t calling you to be exhausted, He’s calling you to rest.”
“Light a candle, put on music, get a real tea cup, make a pot of tea, invite someone to sit w/ you… & talk! Make some quiet time.” (Jesus went away to be alone and spent intimate time with friends.)
“Everyone needs a place of quiet that is nurturing to your spirit, enriching your soul. What nurtures your heart & brings you closer to God?“
“If your soul isn’t rich, how can you give richness to your child? Enrich YOUR soul!”(see Sally’s post on this here)
“Your children are watching everything you are doing!” “What are you doing in front of your children? What are you speaking in front of your children? Is it pleasing to God?”
“The spirit of a woman to speak light into darkness can change a whole family’s history.”
“God isn’t asking you to do more, he’s asking you to rest in him/trust him. The more you rest in him the more you become like him.”
“God doesn’t want you to be perfect. He wants you to love Him and make Him known to your children.”
“God doesn’t ask for perfection, He asks for a heart for Him!”
“Are you (am I) a picture of the incarnate Jesus to your husband, your children, your friends?”
__________________________
Until next Tea Time (next Tuesday) when we talk about the reason behind all of this (the arrows we are shooting into the future generations),
May you be filled to overflowing with God’s love and may your children be drawn to the light of Christ in you!
And remember…
God has a plan and purpose for each one of our children, and He has placed YOU as the parent of your children!
Check out more GREAT insights from the Mom Heart Conference from some of my blogging friends:
You Are Building Your Legacy Today
What Are Your Questions? Do you worry that you’ve blown it?
God Is At Work In Your Child’s Life(last week’s Tea Time post here at SomeGirl’s Website)
Feel free to pass this along to your friends! ♥ Love, Michelle (aka SomeGirl)
Disclaimer: Most of what I share in this and future Tea Times came directly (or was gleaned) from theMom Heart Conference hosted by Sally Clarkson. Where I quote directly from her or another speaker I will use quotation marks. In my haste to write down the great nuggets of truth shared with us I failed to write who said what, so my quotes will not be referenced. In other words, if you see something in quotes it was said by someone wise at the conference. 
post from the URL: http://somegirlswebsite.com/showing-love/2011/03/greatest-role-moms/
The First Christmas Happened Because God Loved
The First Christmas Happened Because God Loved
God - very God - became a babe all because of divine love. Christmas exists because of God's eternal, infinite, sacrificial love for those Jesus came to redeem. Should we not then, who have experienced His love, strive to preserve the essence of its beginnings by intentionally and passionately sharing His love with others? You answer, "Of course". But I say, "F irst, there are a few prerequisites".
We Must First Know the Unknowable
Sharing God's love has to be motivated by the incomprehensible truths surrounding it. One such truth is that love exists only because God exists. God is love (1 John 4:8) and love is of God (John 4:7). He is the Author and Essence of love. There is no love outside of God.
And though describing God's love is like trying to fit the ocean into a thimble, let us bombard our minds with its majestic character. God's love is:
Spontaneous and uninfluenced. His love stems from Himself alone. There was nothing in you or I that predisposed God to love us. In fact, it was quite the opposite. We were ill-deserving of His love and should have been objects of His wrath. He loves us because He is love and chooses to demonstrate His love to delight us and to glorify Himself.
Immutable. God's love can undergo no change of any kind since He is unchangeable Himself. His love for you will never diminish because of your sin, nor increase because of your obedience. It is based purely on His grace, never on your performance.
Sovereign.
Since God has sovereignly set His affections upon you, nothing will be able to separate you from the love of God , "…neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing"(Romans 8:38-39).
Infinite. There are no limits, no boundaries, nor constraints in the expression and depth of God's love. "The measure of God's love is seen in how much it gives…The cross is the crowning proof of the reality and boundlessness of God's love" (J. I. Packer). He gave the greatest, most infinitely precious gift of all time when He gave His Son.
Eternal. Since God is eternal, it follows that His love must be also. He did not begin to love you when you turned to Him. No. Not even so much as one nanosecond has ever existed in which His love was not fixed upon you.
Holy. God demands holiness in the objects He chooses to lavish His love on. But this demand was not put upon us. No. Rather, His great compassionate heart compelled Him to send His perfect Son to become our sin bearer, making us righteous before Him and qualifying us to be recipients of His magnificent love.
We Now Love Because God First Loved Us
Because of the Fall, man has notoriously failed at love on every level. The fact that mankind craves to love and be loved simply testifies of the remnant of God's image within him.
Man's love antennae has been seriously damaged and it took the God of love to redeem man, empowering him to love again. We can now love because God "first loved us" (1 John 4:19) and manifested that love by sending His Son, born of a woman, into our cruel world to rescue us from our unlove.
We Must First Passionately Pursue "First" Love
Being creatures of habit, it is natural for us to fall into our daily routines and be satisfied with the status quo, assured that all is right in our little worlds. But not so, according to the One who sees our hearts and the lack of love there for Him and others.
Revelation 2:2 reveals that we can do a multitude of good things - even serious ministry – without love. Jesus commands us then to remember, repent and pursue our fir st love (a passionate love for Christ) and the resulting outflow of that love.
Love Must First Be Divinely Inspired in Us
We must daily be coming under the influence of Gods' divine love in order to manifest it back to Him and others. We fall short in our perception and expression of love until we, being awestruck by God and His love, realize how dependent we are upon His Spirit to allow His love to flow like rivers of living water from our innermost beings (John 7:38). It happens only as we first sit at Christ's feet, loving and listening to Him through His word. Charles Spurgeon said, “You cannot love a thing without becoming something like it, in proportion to the force of love; and just in proportion as you love Jesus you must become like him.” Only by loving Christ can we become like Him and love as He loves.
Applying First Love First at Christmas (and Always)
True validity cannot really be given to the celebration of Christmas until divine love is its preeminent purpose and expression just as it was for the first Christmas. By definition, divine love is the "bond of perfection" or unity (Colossians 3:14). Love unites. Other purposes, excellent as they may be, can bring about unnecessary division. Motivations such as traditions, family, ministry, food, witness and even faith, when divine love is not preeminent, produce only a clamorous event (1 Corinthians 13:1-3) which profits nothing for honoring the God of love. So, as we go about our activities let us purpose to set love – the perfect bond of unity – above all else. May we not just be busy this Christmas feeding the hungry, preparing our real food feasts, guarding our children from the paganism and materialism of the secular celebration of the holiday or whatever else is of importance to you. Rather, may God's eternal and indescribable love be the beginning and end of all we do and say. "And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony."Colossians 3:14
What serves to keep your love for Christ and others fervent at this busy time of the year? Have you ever had to forgo some "good thing" you had planned in order to "put on love"?
My Husband’s Grandfather ~ My Fondest Memories
Papa (Earl) Bickford was an incredible man. He died today after a weekend battle with pneumonia and some other complications including some abdominal issues and kidney failure. Let me take you back to the beginning. I met Papa when I had just graduated from high school over 12 years ago. My husband and I were good friends (not dating or married of course) and he invited me to his high school graduation party. Scott has three other cousins who all graduated from the same school together. What a neat family, and such a blessing to all go to school together. They even had the same teacher in fifth grade…Their own aunt! Anyway, I digress. I met Papa at this party. He was inviting and cheerful and ornery all at the same time! He gave me his famous bear hug right away. I would learn a lot from this man…But at the time he was just a friendly grandpa of a good friend. Scott and I would go on to date all four years of college and get married that following fall in 2002. Nearly every family event happens at Papa’s house, if not the house right next door where their oldest daughter, Linda lives. (Affectionately known as Deeta) With such a large family, I saw Papa almost weekly. Whether just dropping by to say hello, hang out with Scott’s family on a Friday night, or celebrating one of the 30+ birthdays during the year, he was always there along with his wonderful wife, Nana (Lois) and the rest of their grown up children, their children and grandchildren.
The best part about this family that I am proud to now call my own, is their love for Jesus Christ. We may not be the most perfect group, but we are perfectly forgiven through the blood of Christ. And it all started with one man falling in love with one woman. I never knew how Papa came to know the Lord, but I’m sure one of these days one of his girls will tell me when we are all past our grieving for the loss of Papa on Earth. He raised his girl’s right, and through the work of the Holy Spirit, they all came to know Christ. That is a legacy that I pray my husband and I can leave behind with our children as well. Papa was such an awesome role model. None of us wanted to leave his hospital room this past weekend, as we just couldn’t bear to be without him. What were we to do now? Continue to bring glory to Christ through this circumstance. That’s what Papa would have done. As I sit here in tears, I can think of such wonderful things that Papa did and how he acted that bring a smile to my face even in my sorrow. He was always happy, even if he was hurting from stretching his body too far in his old age. He was a strong guy and darn if he was going to let anyone except those closest to him know he was in pain. Whenever you asked how he was, he almost always said something silly such as “Ornery as ever.” Or “Just trying to get into (or stay out of) trouble” Everyone who crossed Papa’s path was his instant friend. Of course family always came first, but everyone knew Earl and the family that he held dear. Papa and Nana were wonderfully generous with everything they have. They worked hard for what they have, and God has blessed them in countless ways. Scott and I love to hold our children’s birthday parties in their back yard, where kids can swim in the pool (or in the sandbox) and have a fire in the fire pit, camp out on the lawn, ride go carts down the drive or sit and talk; All in the same day or night! Sometimes there were so many people coming and going from their house, I wondered if they thought they had no privacy. I sure know that I always got a smile from them whenever we all piled through their open door.
I will miss Papa and the old life that having him around meant. I will long for our family to all be reunited with him in heaven. I know that those God chooses to leave behind have work still to be done on Earth and that God took Papa at exactly the time he had planned. Papa now has very special work to be done with Jesus in Heaven and right now he is enjoying his new body that is without suffering and pain. He’s enjoying the ultimate homecoming party with Christ and those who were waiting for him. Jesus has perfected Papa’s faith and finished authoring the story that He so carefully and lovingly wrote for our grandfather. I am truly blessed to consider myself one of his grandkids. He will always be remembered by his four daughters, their husbands, their twelve children and the fifteen great grandchildren ranging in age from 8 years old to 8 weeks old.
We miss you already Papa. What a beautiful day it was today when you left us behind, if only for a little while. I love you.
~Courtney
Praise to God for a Living Hope
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade–kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith–of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire– may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls. I Peter 3:1-9
