Gateways to Joy

What has God placed in you? You know, that gift that He's gifted each of His children with in order to do Kingdom work here on earth? Are you using that gift?  Or do you feel as if you've been over-looked? Maybe you don't exactly know what your gift is yet. Worse, maybe you feel "unlikely" to have been given one. Are you one who sees yourself as "unlikely?" Hm? "God chooses to use the most 'unlikely,'" says author and speaker Patsy Clairmont. Throughout Scripture we can find that statement to ring true.  Seems that all God used were the unlikelies.  For crying out loud, look at Jesus.  It was said that nothing good can come out of his home town when people found out where He was from.  I would call Him a pretty unlikely in the eyes of the locals. Maybe you've been told you're an unlikely.  Unlikely to do this and unlikely to accomplish that.  I sure have. Though it wasn't always with words.   Sometimes it...

'A nd we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose." ~ Romans 8:28 I share with you, what I've echoed to myself these past couple of weeks.  Feeling from your emails that some of you may just be in need of this reminder too. I would also like to share a quote with you from a book that I am reading by M.R. De Haan, MD called "Broken Things." If you are being broken by disappointment or bereavement, by loss or pain, by weakness or sickness, remember that although to us broken things are tragedies, to God they are opportunities to be used for His glory.  We cast the broken things aside and call them "junk," but God casts the "unbroken" things aside as useless. "Remember, before there can be life there must be death.  Before there can be joy, there must be weeping.  The joy that floods the mother's heart at the sound of the first cry of her new newborn ba...

Y esterday while enjoying a long country drive through long rolling hills ... having good conversation with my husband, and us soaking up the brightly beaming sunshine, my thoughts went to obedience vs. sacrifice.  Ocean of waves rolled through my thoughts on the subject, in between my breaks of talks" Awe, what a nice topic to blog about,"  I thought as I looked far into the horizon... wind hitting my face. Once I was home, immediately upon walking through the door, I saw my 17 year-old son lying on the couch in a peculiar way.   "What's wrong with you? "  I ask him. "I'm weak." "Have you eaten?" " No ma'am,"   he says. Right after those words left his mouth, my 11 year-old daughter called out,  "Mom!  Look at my finger!  I think it's broken." Following her cry, came the lamentation of my two younger daughters Krishtiana 10 and Kennlie seven,   "Mom can we come out of our rooms yet?" Sniffle...