New vision and focus

I have not been blogging in so long, I almost forgot I had a blog!  I have been doing Bible studies and have even enrolled in two ministry schools just that I have not been blogging about it.  If I had plenty of spare time maybe I would list all the Bible studies I have done in the last few years...Yeah right!  I can hardly remember them all.  Which is one of the reasons why I have come back to the idea of using this blog as my study notes.

I have no idea if anyone will even read this little blog, but if there is anyone out there, welcome!  As for ministry school, I probably won't use this blog much for those.  I am taking online classes at Christian Leaders Institute which is a fantastic program and I am also taking classes through the NCAG District School of Ministry.


It was during the last class at NCDSOM and in the reading of the assigned book Living by the Book that I was inspired to take a new look at how I approach Bible Study.  All of this coincides with my Sunday morning Bible Study where we are starting to study the book of Titus.  And so...here we go.  In depth Bible study, starting with the book of Titus.  No spending a lot of time making a plan, just going to jump right in.  Prayers appreciated :-)



Oh!  And I just remembered that it is the first day of spring!  How beautifully appropriate that I am refocusing my vision of spiritual growth on the first day of spring. I chose the verse for this blog when I started it years ago, it is not new.  The Holy Spirit has been working for a long time, I just have not always been cooperative!  But now...But Grow!

2 Peter 3:18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.


I pray that this simple, little blog will bless you as you also work towards spiritual growth. 

One done, what's next?

We had just completed Beth Moore's Stepping Up Bible Study and jumped right in to another one - Beth Moore's Breaking Free the updated version.

I did not even attempt to blog through this study, although I did manage to get through all the homework.  It was an intense and personal study and as always Beth is wonderful.  So even though I have been very quiet on this blog, I have been quite busy with getting into the word.

One of the things that the Breaking Free study did was rekindle my passion for memorizing scripture - I will do a post about that next - and also to get busy losing some weight.  It is fascinating to me that we were going to do the Made to Crave study in the spring, but for some reason we put it off - can't even remember why - and started into the Stepping Up study. Then Made to Crave was put off even longer until we did our summer study of Breaking Free.  The fascinating thing is that I think I have so much more passion for getting healthy now, than I would have if we had done the study in the spring. 

And to take it another step, when I was preparing for the start of the study over the last couple of days I truly felt God working through me. And I pray that He continues to work through me and through my wonderful friends who are planning to work through this study with me.  So here we go with Made to Crave...



I have no idea what I will blog about during this study, I guess I will just go with the flow and see what happens!

Pray with me...

I know that because I pretty much dropped off the face of the bloggy-world for most of last year that there are very few who follow this blog.  But if you are still here please join me in praying for Joanne.




I know Joanne only through her blog The Simple Wife. A couple years ago I found her blog and immediately loved her blog and her writing.  But the most meaningful part of her blog to me was that she introduced me to her Memory Monday.

I was not very faithful with Memory Monday, but the tool has really stuck with me (even if I have not been doing it faithfully).  In fact, when I finally got back to blogging and reading other blogs one of the first blogs I checked in on was Joanne's.  That was on the 12th.  On Jan 11th she suffered a major stroke and I have been praying for her ever since.  I also learned that she is the same age as me and for some reason that hits even closer to home.  Please join me in praying for her and her precious family -  but also join me in participating in Memory Monday as a way to strengthen your own walk with God.

Praying for Evie's Family

When you read other mom-type blogs you will find lots of things that are interesting, useful, funny, and sometimes very sad.

There are certain stories that have captured my attention and I have followed for awhile, and then there are the stories that break my heart and all I can do is pray.  Sadly there is another family with twins that one of the twins has passed away.  I will now continue to pray for sweet little Evie and her family.

Boo to New Year's Resolutions!

So if I were to be serious about making any New Year's resolutions I would probably include "more consistent blogging".   Well, it is a good thing that I am not serious about making new years resolutions because it is already the 2nd and I would have blown it.

Anyway, what I can do is try to be better.  Afterall, I did not finish blogging my way through the Daniel study, completely missed blogging through the Ruth study, and now we are half way through the Proverbs 31 study and I have not blogged about that either.  So rather than back track and try to update you on what I have missed, I will just simply start where I am and try to get back to blogging while I do my Bible study.

We are currently studying Proverbs 31 using this study guide:

why am I always catching up?

So here I am again, months have passed and I have not posted a single thing on my blog....sigh....maybe someday I will get it together.  Any suggestions?  Prayers for me getting it together are also appreciated!!

Anyway, I did find some time while flying to read the book I was supposed review months ago and so I am just now posting that review.  Hopefully I can get back into reading more books and also get back to blogging my bible studies and blogging in general!

catching up...

I am so far behind!!! We had two weeks of swimming lessons then a week of VBS where I was the games leader, this was followed by a week of sniffles and trying to catch up at the house. In addition to that I received a homeschool catalog in the mail and got very distracted in researching kindergarten curriculums. Unfortunately for anyone who reads this blog (and I am not sure that there are more than 2 or 3 who do) the first thing that always seems to not get done is blogging :( I did complete the homework, I just have not blogged about it. I simply have to go back through my notes for week 4 and 5 to make the posts, and then will backdate the entries until I catch up. Can't think of a better way to spend a Sunday afternoon!

A new focus

This blog has been silent for much too long! No excuses, no whining or complaining - just time to move forward. Here is what is new and upcoming for this blog.

Book Reviews
The previous post you will have seen a book review. I have reviewed several books over on my other blog and thought that I would use this blog to review only biblically based books such as bibles or bible reference type books. The first book that came up that caught my attention was the God's Promises book. I then decided that I would include any reviews for childrens books on this blog as well.

By the way, I highly recommend blogging book reviews for Thomas Nelson. Free books just for your opinion. How great is that!


Beth Moore's Daniel Study
As some of you may know we recently moved back to our house in North Carolina. When we got back I joined some wonderful ladies in Beth Moore's Esther study. It has been incredible! So much so that a few weeks ago I raised the question about what study would we do next. Well, that eventually landed me into the role of faciliator of Beth Moore's Daniel study which we will start on June 8.

I have no idea how this will work yet, but I wondered if I could blog about the study as I prepare for each week. Like I said, I have no idea what that means yet! I plan to start to prepare for this study this week so I will blog as I go???

Experiencing God Study
Being back here also means I am back to attending Wed bible study at our church. We just started a new study called "Experiencing God" and it has a workbook that goes with it. Of course I had to get the workbook! I may or may not blog about that, I am currently just trying to catch up as I got the book right before the second week. Meaning I have three weeks to catch up on before Wed! Yikes!!


Summer Siesta - Ruth Study
And then, some of the same ladies from the Esther study will also be doing the Daniel study with me. But one of them found a summer study on Beth Moore's blog, the study will be on the book of Ruth. Maybe I will blog about that too???

All I can say is WOW! You would think I would be overwhelmed by all these workbooks bible studies going on at the same time. But I am not! By faith I am jumping into them and pray I can be a sponge to absorb what I need to hear and learn what I need to grow spiritually. It is time to put this blog to better use... But grow... so let's grow, will you join me? I am praying that you will. Please comment and let me know you have been here.

Ways to worship

It always amazes me how God can bring so many things together.

The path that the study of Genesis 12 led me on earlier this week brought me to the question - How to worship. As I often do I 'googled' it! I simply typed in 'ways to worship' and the first one I clicked on was titled 10 WAYS TO WORSHIP WITHOUT MUSIC. Here are the 10 ways they list, click on the title to read more about each item.

1. Worship through prayer


2. Get in a regular habit of reading the Bible


3. Obey God


4. Tithe


5. Build deep relationships with other Christians


6. Share your faith


7. Serve others


8. Build into your life the attitude of thankfulness


9. Begin turning over to God areas of your life that you have never committed to Him


10. Live a life of purpose

These are all great and each deserve more focus. However, it was number 9 that hit me hard! The first sentence of this point said "This is the heart of worship – surrender." uggg Surrender! My area of surrender, or what I have not been surrendering is weight loss. I have simply been lazy and stubborn about it. I know what I have to do, but I have not been doing it. It is time to surrender - God brought me here today to reinforce what I have to do (more on that in a minute).

As I was typing this very post I paused to go to the bathroom, not that you needed to know that, but... As I often do I take an extra minute or two to read a magazine article, and I so happen to keep all the magazines in the bathroom. Anyway! I am in the middle of a Good Housekeeping magazine right now and when I turned the page to get to the next article I found, "The 10% trick". The premise of the article is that a complete overhaul of something (such as a diet or exercise program) is too overwhelming and therefore very likely to fail. Instead we should focus on changing things in small ways, 10% at a time for example. Well what hit me hard today was the first point...

Lose 10% of your body weight. This immediately brought me to the Weight Watchers program where one of the first goals they suggest is losing 10% of your body weight. Several months ago I joined Weight Watchers online, but have been lazy and stubborn and have been ignoring it. Time to change that, and I have!! I have been putting in my points all week.

Then the article went on and point #8 was Can the Cola. I have generally allowed myself one Pepsi a day and even calculated it into Weigth Watcher points when I was tracking. The article made the point that just one 20 oz soft drink is 240 calories, which is more than 10% of a 2,000 calorie diet. Yeah, that was a big ole hard hit too!

It was September 1 when I started this post and the calendar verse for that day was 2Thessalonians 1:7 And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels. I immediately focused on "to you who are troubled rest". I need to rest, I need to get up earlier so that I can do my bible study and have time with God. I need to do this so I can start each day on the right track. Even more important to do this, now that I have started my fast!

Yes, you read that correctly. I am doing a 40 day junk food fast. I grabbed the idea from Tyler's blog Titus 2:3-5. She called hers the 'fast food fast'. As much as I love fast food, my struggle lately is more with junk food - especially chips and Pepsi. I must say thank you to Tyler for the idea and encourage you to read her posts on this. It is so encouraging, it is more than just giving up junk food it is a study in obedience to God.

As I complete this post we (yep Hubby is doing it too), I am completing the 4th day of this junk food fast. Yep that is 4 whole days without a Pepsi - that in itself is amazing! But it is all God and he deserves all the glory.

Thank you God for leading me in this direction, through it I know I will grow closer to you. Please help me as I struggle to overcome the temptations of junk food and continue on the quest to lose weight. In Jesus name, Amen!

Struggling with time

My routines look fabulous on paper but never translate well into real life! It seems that there is always something going on that needs to be dealt with or taken care of. Last week and this week I have been tackling cleaning and getting every room organized. I have this vision that if every room is neat and tidy every single day then they will be easy to keep that way. Like I said, it is a vision - I am getting close to it being reality, it is just taking some time.

Then this week Ben & Carlee decided that we should start potty training. Go here to read about it on my other blog. So this week I have been a little busy with potty training and also still trying to get the house cleaned and organized.

On top of all of that I am also planning and organizing to start our home preschool. All I have left to do now is the daily lesson planning and photocopying worksheets.

All of this is really just a bad excuse. Why should all of these things get in the way of my time with God. Why am I not putting Him first? Spending time with God every day should be my first priority. I know that the more time I spend with God, the more at peace I will be, the more blessed I will be, and for my children I will be a better Mother. I know this, my faith is strong enough to know all of this deep in my soul. So why am I so stubborn about this, of course stubborn is also being disobedient!

What do I need to do to make a commitment to God and to myself to spend more time with God in prayer and in the Word? Simple - I need to get up earlier, I need to get up before my kids do! UGGGGGG if you know me you will understand that this sucks! I am definately not a morning person! As a teenager, my mom would send the dog downstairs to wake me up because I was such a bear! I am pretty sure that I have drastically improved since then, but I still do not wake up well. Blah blah blah I just realized how badly I am complaining and at the same time how disobendient I am being to God.

I will get up early tomorrow morning!!! The best way to do it is to pray for help. Dear Lord, I know I have been dispobedient to you. I desperately want to spend time with you and study your Word. Please help me with this. Help me to get enough restful sleep, help me to wake up before my kids so that I have that time to spend with you. Please give me encouragement so that I can do this and start being obedient in this. In Jesus name, Amen!