SSMT Verse & A 30 Day Challenge

Here it is the 20th of the month and I have yet to post my newest Siesta Sista' Memory Team mid-month verse.  The participants are to post our verses on the first and 15th of each month and then spend the two weeks in between posts to memorize the verse.  Finally, the Lord revealed my next verse to me.  It is a few days late, but I believe it is His perfect timing.  You will see why if you read on a bit........

The verse is: Matthew 26:  ⁴⁰ Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked Peter. ⁴¹ “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.”

Last month I attending a women's day retreat/conference with a couple of my friends and my mom.  It was a great time of fellowship, sisterhood and connecting with the Lord.  While there, the speaker challenged all of us to read only the Bible for 30 days.  After prayer, my friends, my mom and I accepted the challenge.

Here is the other side of that commitment:  You see, I am reading at any given time, never less than 2-3 books simultaneously.  They are all written by Christian authors and offer much insight into daily living for Him and daily dying to self.  In fact, one of the books I was in the middle of reading through at the time of accepting this challenge is a book written by a friend!  Of course, I questioned God's timing on this.....and double checked my heart to make sure that this is what He wanted for me and not something that I was doing, just to be doing.  "Commit to only reading the Bible at this time?  Really, Lord, is this what You want?"  The answer: "Yes!" Thus, I committed and began reading only my Bible each day during my devotional times.

It was pointed out to us at the conference, that one of the reasons for Eve being drawn into a conversation with the serpent (the true picture of the devil in disguise) and eventually deceived by him, was that she receive information from God really almost "second hand" through Adam.  There is always danger when my main source of information comes from so-and-so who got it from the Bible.  This is my Spiritual Food, after all!  Would I likely go into a restaurant and begin eating off a partially eaten plate of food that someone else was finished with and had placed at the edge of the table....waiting there on the edge of the table to be taken away by the waitress?  Not at all!  It is when I go to the source, when I read His Word for myself that the greatest discoveries and greatest insights are available to me.  As a Christians, I have direct access to God...no go- between, no translator, no "He said this....He meant that": just Him and me!  Ah, bliss!

While hard not to read a "good book", I have found it greatly beneficial to take time to only get my food from The Good Book for this short season of time in my life....30 days.  Recently, my 30 day challenge ended and I began to re-read the book my friend wrote.  I have decided that when I have completed that book, I will recommit to reading only the Bible for 30 days before starting another book.  It will be hard, since I have another friend who recently wrote her first book that I REALLY want to start reading.  But really, 30 days....is that really a lot of time to set aside in dedication and focus on Him and His Word?  For me, no.

It is with anticipation that I read His Word each day.  Even though I am reading my friends book at this time, (it is His word that gives me the nourishment that I need to live.  And really, what author would take offense to me getting greater pleasure, greater insight and greater understanding of God  from reading His Book than from their book?  Not likely!

With all of this said, it is time for me to get to bed, Bible in hand and reading The Good Book.....after all, it has a glorious beginning and a glorious end!  Mwah!

Memory Verse #19

Psalm 73:26

New International Version 1984 (NIV1984)

²⁶ My flesh and my heart may fail,
   but God is the strength of my heart
   and my portion forever.


Confidence and assurance in Him for all that I need...in times of plenty and in times of want; in times of joy and times of sorrow; in times of comfort and times of struggle.  Even though I may fail, He will not. 

One Big Happy Family

Recently, I was on a popular site for finding your family history when a wonderful thought came to me.  You see, my family history is a little different (isn't everyone's).  My dad was adopted by his "dad" (step-father) and he didn't meet his biological father until my dad was 21 years old. His fathers line cannot be traced past his father.  My paternal grandmother was born in Canada and her family history can be traced back a total of about 6 generations.  Now, my mom's side is a different story!  Her father and mother were Mormon and so our family history on my grandfather's side can be traced back to 1406!! That was actually pretty cool. I discovered a lot about my family, but unlike the tv show that advertises the site, I did not find any hidden family secrets or a long lost famous family member. Nope, just a lot of hardworking people who came across the plains in handcarts or down from Canada in hopes of making a better life for themselves here in America.

Thinking about my personal family history I began to pray and thank God that even though my family is comprised of a diverse group of  people, so to speak, my parents made a decision to follow the Lord.  These decision for my parents came later in life, and at 18 years old, I too decided to follow Christ.  I have raised my children in the ways of the Lord, and I have full hope and confidence in Him that one day my children, too, will follow after Him with their whole hearts.  As I was praying and thanking God for the heart changes He has made in my family, ?he began to place a thought in my heart.

You see, when we begin to follow Him, we are grafted into His family.  Therefore, my "relatives" become those spoken of in the Bible!  If you are a Believer, you too have a rich family history of Christ followers!  Think about it!  One of your family members faced a den full of lions and lived to tell about it.  A women in our family history once met Jesus at a well at a time in her life when she was so low and so depressed due to the sin in her life that she felt ashamed and unworthy to gather water with the other women in her community.  Jesus picked up her broken heart, spoke life and truth into it and she was a changed woman!  Wow!  Then there is a family member who spent some time in a whale and ended up right where God wanted him to go!  There are stories in my family of a woman giving birth to a child long after her child bearing years had come and gone; people in my lineage who walked and talked with Jesus; and even a man member of my family was brought back to life by Jesus; another was freed from a demon; one went from being a man willingly killing Christians at the very sight of one into a man who was a close, personal friend and witness to Christ who eventually died for His faith.  WOW!  These are amazing people, and they are related to me because of my adoption into the family of God.    Cool!