Following...

New Google feature: You can now become a "follower" on my blog using your Google, AOL, or Yahoo ID. You just click the Join this site link and use the information you would normally use to sign into your email. It's very simple and that way you can follow without having to get a blogger account. Have a great Friday!!

Top 10 reasons I love 07/31/09!

The top 10 reasons I love this day:

10. I am at a job I love.
9. I am listening to the Christian Music station that I love (J103).
8. I am drinking a French Vanilla Starbucks coffee.
7. I woke up on time.
6. It's Friday.
5. I am off for the next 5 count em...5 days!
4. I woke up in my right mind this morning, in a warm bed, and had running water to shower with...it's the little things that make life so great!
3. I woke up next to my best friend and husband of over ten years with whom I can be myself and know that he loves me just as I am. I am completely smitten by him.
2. I have two wonderful healthy kiddos waiting to spend the next five days with their mom!
1. I have been bought and paid for by a Savior who knows me yet still loves me and the God of all the universe knows my name and calls me friend.

Amazed by John 3:16

I was listening to a local christian radio station this morning and the devotion was John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." The DJ was talking about how glad he is that it says "God so loved the world" not God so loved the rich person or God so loved the white man, or God so loved the thin person...God loves us all...at all times.

Even in my worst moment the Father is completely in love with me. This is so hard for our minds to grasp. In our society people love everything...they love their car and their dog (look at the post before this) I even love my job. But real love...true love is a kind of love that does something for you that you can't do for yourself. Look at John 3:16 again it doesn't say God so loved the world that he told them so or God so loved the world that he had a fuzzy feeling when he saw them. It says "God so loved the world, that he gave his ONLY Son." God did something for me that I could not do on my own. He did something for you that you can't do on your own either. He became the propitiation for our sins. Propitiation (or the act of propitiation) simply means to gain or regain the favor or goodwill of (someone). So that means that Jesus Christ the blameless one took on the guilt and shame of our sins to regain the favor and goodwill of the father.

So I said all of that to say this: If you are drowning in disappointment over past or present failures know that John 3:16 is so much more than a Sunday School memory verse. It is the key that unlocks the chains that we put ourselves in God loves us so much that he did something for us we couldn't do, and just to prove it (because He knows we need him to speak plainly) he added John 3:17 "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." Even though so many who claim to be "christian" may judge and condemn you for your sins, Christ himself was not even sent to condemn you he was sent to save you. Not only from hell but from yourself. So enjoy the awesome gift you have been given and live today knowing that Christianity is not a list of rules and regulations to follow but the freedom of knowing that the creator of this world is madly in love with you and that nothing you can do will change that. So when you fail all there is to do is repent and try again knowing you are still the apple of His eye!

I will leave you with one of my favorite verses Romans 8: 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So blessed but...

Oh where to start? I love my job. I enjoy getting up and getting dressed up and going somewhere but it is more than just that. I like the people I work with. I like having my own space. I even like answering a million questions that a bank teller in Jersey has about her short term disability policy. I love my job. So what now?

Those of you who know me know that I don't sit still for long. My life is going great! I have a job I love. I am married to the love of my life. My kids are healthy!!! (Not even one breathing treatment in the last month). I have a wonderful church family. School is about to start for me and the kids and all of my school was paid for through grants and loans. Vacation is just a few weeks away...laying on the beach with my kids, my husband, and my whole (dad's side) extended family is just around the corner...but true to fashion I still have that sinking feeling something is missing. Ok so maybe not something but someone. You know what I am talking about if you know me at all. I want another child. I can't give birth to anymore. However my heart is just about to burst for another little one to love.

I am being patient. As patient as I know how to be. I am trying VERY HARD not to push the hub...although I havn't been able to resist the ocassional email or text of a beautiful little chinese girl. I haven't brought it up a million times or begged and cried...nope tryin to be adult about this and let him make his own decision. A great blog friend of mine gave me some advice. She said pray that God heals your heart or changes his. So that is my prayer. In the mean time I have found another way to give to the children of china.

I "met" Carrie click "here" for her blog. She works with a foster home in China. I read her blog and sat and cried for hours. I wanted to do something to help. I know I live in a small town and I can not go to China just because I want to. I have two children and a husband who depend on me and not to mention Sarah's Hope (a maternity home for unwed mothers) that we are trying to get off the ground. But I can do SOMETHING! After talking to Carrie I figured out that that something is a Operation Giggle. Click "here" for the blog that is not, I repeat, NOT, up and running as of yet (edited to add it IS I repeat IS up and running now!!!). I am working with Becky at Busy Mama Blog Design to get this blog up and running very soon. You can visit Becky's Blog Design page "here". All proceeds go toward her child's adoption costs.

Operation Giggle is going to be a Christmas Gift Drive for the 50 or so children at the foster home. I will be posting more information to the site just as soon as I can. Please be praying for God's leadership during this time. Until next time...

Sherri

New Blog

Just so you know I am in the midst of sitting up a new blog it is http://romans12-9.blogspot.com/ I will let everyone know when I get it up and running.

I am working 40 hours a week at my new job and I LOVE it. I am so blessed to have found this job. I pray that I can be the employee I need to be and thrive at this company.

Please pray for me and my family as we take new steps of faith over the next few months.

Hope all is well!

Sherri

A Long Time Coming

Sometimes we have to wait, and wait, and wait, and wait. We don't always know what we are waiting on we just know that something good is on the way and until it arrives we must wait. That is the place I have found myself in for the last two years. Waiting. Not being lazy or standing still but actively waiting. I still had to be a mom and wife, I still volunteered at school, attended church, supported my friends, went back to school, but the whole time I was waiting. See I lost a job that I absolutely loved two years ago last month. I was heartbroken. I had been there several years and I never planned on leaving. When I lost the job I didn't think I would ever find another one that was as great as that job. I was hopeless. Or at least I thought I was! But this week almost 2 years to the date later I got a new job. A job I never imagined I would get. A job that pays more than I've ever made and that will allow me to still be in school and spend time with my children. This job was WORTH THE WAIT! I hope that I have learned a little patience from this time of waiting. I am not sure I have learned to wait gracefully but I do believe I have learned to wait like my nine year old does. Having spurts of gracefulness accompanied by regular bouts of whining and temper tantrums. Oh thank you Heavenly Father that you don't throw the marred clay away. Thank you that you rework me, and that even if my moments of thoughtlessness, even in my moments where my faith fails and my hope seems lost, you are by my side ready and waiting to pick up the pieces of my shattered heart and mold them back into something you can use. I thank you, I praise you, and I honor you Heavenly Father for every good thing that you have placed in my life, even times of waiting!

At War with Perfection

I hate Perfection. I hate the way it yells at me and reminds me how far away I am from it. I hate the way it seems to always be just a little outta my grasp...a little cleaner house, a little bit better behaved children, a little more loving husband, a lot thinner waist. Ughhhh! My dad tells me it's a disease. I am back in school and I have to have a 100 on everything. Not a 98 or 99...a 100. In my Math class I had this semester you could retake every test or quiz until you were satisfied with the grade I took every test until I made 100 but then when we got to the final I missed one and the instructor wouldn't let me retake it because I had a 100 on everything else and it wouldn't change my grade. An A is an A. It almost drove me to tears. What is this "disease" that drives me to try to attain the unattainable? I'll tell you...it's sin. It's the sin of trying to "Earn" the gifts that God has given me. NEWS FLASH I don't deserve them and never ever ever will! The only thing that has made me Worthy is His blood applied to my heart.

I am so imperfect. I have SUCH an imperfect past...oh how my heart longs for one of those big erasers that would just erase everything I've done to sabotage myself and my heart. I would love to take the people that have broken my heart and just blot them out of my memory. But that is not possible and even if it were it wouldn't be wise to do because the mistakes I've made are what made me who I am today. How would I ever know what a great husband I have if I hadn't been in some really BAD relationships? How would I know the value of a friend if I hadn't lost a few, How much would I depend on undependable people if they had never shown me their true colors.

This week I was told that someone whom I trusted shared somethings about my past that I NEVER wanted anyone to know. At first I was mad, then hurt, but finally I realized that I can not guarantee that the details of my past will never be shared. But one of my favorite verses says:

John 8:7 And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. 9 But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.

My accusers may not have to make up one thing about me to say something bad, it may all be true but Christ himself said that only those without sin can cast the first stone. Time and time again I hear accusers speaking in my ear and time and time again Christ steps in and the stones fall and I am left alone standing before Jesus. I have only one thing to say to all those accusers. I'M NOT WHO I WAS! God has changed me. He has done something in me that I could never ever do on my own! He broke the chains that the devil put me in so long ago. He broke addictions and he broke generational curses that were on my life. I am FREE! Free from my imperfection, Free from your accusations, and Free to do what God calls me to do without fear of my past being exposed. Sin is sin and the sins of my past and my present are no worse then everyone else's. The devil loves to make us all believe that we are the worst of the worst but the truth is we are all equally sinful without the grace of God. It's time for Christian people to stand up for each other not against each other. We need to realize that Satan is the enemy and allow each other to be Free to be who they are!