9/24/2008

Hope of God's calling

I love Kay Arthur and truly grateful for her in-depth studies. If I know a thing or two from the Bible - I owe her for answering the call to teaching God's word faithfully. My DVR is set to record all her lessons and I play them in the morning as I get ready for work. She usually teaches an entire book of the Bible because she believes that God gave us 66 books and we are to study and know all of them. I am very excited to yet again study along - this time it's the book of Isaiah. Excited because I have not read the book of Isaiah in its entirety and it is the perfect opportunity to study it with none other than the beloved Bible teacher - Kay Arthur.

She started with the questions below:

• Beloved, do you long for true joy in your life?
• Do you feel like your life has no value – that you are just a number?
• Do you believe the darkness of your past – your sins, your failures, even your shortcomings – have made you useless to God? Unredeemable?
• Maybe you are a believer who has been convinced by the enemy that you could never really serve God. You believe you are ungifted and too untalented to possibly be needed in the church.
• Just as the author of Ephesians prayed, I am praying for you that God will open the eyes of your heart so that you “may know what is the hope of His calling” on your life.

Sadly, I answered all of them in the affirmative. To some extent, I've believed each and every statement. It's one thing to know the Word of God and another to actually believing and acting upon that truth. God has been teaching me to live out what I believe and not to rely on my feelings, situations, and circumstances. I have taken back the territory the enemy has been used to make me a captive. Another book that has been instrumental is Praying God's Word by Beth Moore. In her words, I want to make my liberty in Christ a reality in life.

Praise you Lord that it's for freedom that You have set free.

I put my trust and faith in a GPS...

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Pursuant to my last post, I borrowed my brother’s GPS to ensure a safe arrival to the amusement park in Pennsylvania. I checked mapquest to determine the length of my trip and it was going to take 3 hours and 50 minutes. I must add I am terrible with direction and (east, west, north, and south) makes no difference to me. Frankly, I prefer ‘turn right at such street and make a left at another. Anything else is a sure guarantee I won’t make it to the intended destination.

Anyhow, that faithful Saturday, I sat in my car with two 8 year olds in the back as I configured the GPS and I was a little annoyed that the distance was in kilometers instead of miles and I was not able to change it. Without the help of the GPS, I would have had about 2 pages of directions printed out from mapquest but it wasn’t so that day. I knew without a doubt the GPS would take me to my destination and I would hear the faithful words from the speaking lady ‘you have arrived’.

The boys must have asked at least a hundred times –are we there yet? Trusting my GPS, I would say ‘not yet – we are still driving in New Jersey’. They continually looked at the little instrument to check how much time was left. We stopped for bathroom breaks, breakfast, and gas – the lady on the GPS would warn me that I was going in the wrong direction. A big arrow appeared on the display telling me to make a U-turn. It even said ‘Please make a legal U-turn’ here and there. That little instrument was right there to keep me going where I’d told it I wanted to go. It was not about to give up until I was on the right highway.

The whole point of this post is, two days later on my way back – it dawned on me that I had totally put my faith and trust in the GPS. From PA to NY, there are signs posted that said the number of miles to NYC – for instance 150 miles to NYC. While driving in New Jersey – there were about 6-8 lanes and I was on the far right and the BIG sign leading to NYC was on the far left. I am thinking ‘wait a minute – why I am here when I need to be there? Trust me, if there was no GPS, I would have done anything that is considered safe to be in one of the lanes under the NYC signs. Somehow, I felt at peace, no worry, and let the GPS lead. Common sense said the GPS was taking me in the wrong direction – I didn’t argue with the little instrument but rested on the fact it knew what it was doing and we were going to be home as promised – again trusting the little instrument.

Yes. I did make it home although it looked I was headed in the wrong direction. Against reality, I decided to trust my GPS – I totally depended on it. TOTALLY. Right after, I went right pass what looked like the correct road to take but didn’t - I started thinking about what an insult it is to the Lord my God when I doubt Him. God gives us His Holy Spirit to live in us forever. He leads us. He guides us. He instructs in the way we should go.

Always available.

He is the Perfect Gift that the Savior promised to send to his followers after His departure. Only some of the people of the Old Testament experienced the indwelling of the Spirit of God. Here He stands ready to lead me in all areas of life and makes my path clear – but I have not totally surrendered. Not intentionally of course. Sometimes, I blamed it on not knowing for sure it’s the Spirit of God and that maybe it’s the other voices in my head. The voices that talked the ‘right’ talk but with the very intention to mislead me. Happened many, many times.

Did I have to do some repenting? Very much so. I have been thinking about it since then and asking the Lord God to fill me with His Spirit and to uproot anything including doubts and fears that are not from Him. I must say there’s been quite a difference. I learned a valuable lesson and God reminded me that even the GPS is not perfect because it had to do some recalculating at times when it lost contact with the satellite. Thanks be to God – never ever looses contact with us. Hallelujah!

God has taught me much since that valuable experience. I have returned to my first Love with my all.

More on that to follow in future posts.

Our Visit to Hershey Park

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School will start for us on September 3^rd and to bring summer vacation to an end – we took a trip to Hershey Park in the beautiful state of Pennsylvania. We planned the trip for this Labor Day weekend in order to be able to spend a couple of days there and we were not disappointed. My cousin and her two children joined us there and we were all excited about our trip.

And this was one of the main highlights for me:

These Hershey kisses are on one small part of the area.

I should be forbidden from eating chocolate for the next six months. I bought over $75 worth of chocolate. Yep. You could ask what I was thinking. I had my many reasons. I did buy them to share with my cousin and with very-very good intention to bring some back to share with others. But boy – did I eat my share of it and more than I intended considering I am on a 1500 calories\day.

After over an hour at the chocolate factory, it was time to move on the actual Park nearby.

And as for the kids, well

The Water Park was part of the main events for the boys. They had so much fun in the water and the slides. They came back shivering – took a drink- and ran back.