Around here yesterday . . .

Yet again, I have no computer but I can thankfully use my husband's laptop!
Lots of work is going on around here and I need to *work* to make some time for relaxing before the hurried life of school starts back.

Yesterday, I got an early start in the garden and wished I hadn't let so many days slide without going out there. My husband does the nightly watering unless he isn't home and he gathers the new day's harvest each morning. I hand weed little areas at a time, every so often help check for produce ready to be picked and make sure everything we bring in gets eaten, preserved, processed and/or stored properly.

I was concerned about my basil plants (sweet and cinnamon) bec they have done SO well but are the ONLY things surviving from the area I planted them in. It is here, in front of my writing window and has formerly been an herb garden, a flower garden and a place for miniature roses. Now? It seems to be doomed for any healthy plant growth! Well, the confederate rose thrives here .... bigger than any we've ever seen every single year. . . the heirloom roses do just as well. Morning glories are fine but doing even better on the other side of the porch and the basil are making it. The parsley, cilantro, wild flower seeds, cucumbers, dill, and whatever else I planted here are all gone or almost gone. I got all the weeds away from my basil and will plan to mulch it in the next few days.

My jasmine is getting surrounded and almost covered by weeds! These are hard to pull so my husband has agreed to try the Roto-tiller around those, our green beans (can't even get to the beans!) and the edges of some of the other little gardens.

We surveyed each plant before having our morning coffee yesterday morning and there are things getting ready to bloom or blossom all over the yard!

Once back in, I made our coffee, took my thyroid medicine, did quiet time and started the laundry. I got about five loads done and should finish the other three up today!
It isn't backed up laundry --- we just have to wash sheets and blankets way more often than some bec I cannot stand pet hair on them and we have two indoor beagles and two indoor cat with a six month old cat I've been trying to keep OUTDOORS.

I washed and trimmed a HUGE bowl of radishes from our garden and cleaned our fridge! Took everything off the door shelves and took the door shelves out to soak in hot, soapy water while I went through all the bottles and smaller items to see what to keep and what to throw away.

When that was all done, I cleaned the rest of the fridge ...shelf by shelf. Got it all scrubbed and wiped down and all the drawers cleaned in the sink, dried and put back in their places. It was wonderful to SEE the produce drawers and to have everything organized again. I have a thing about refrigerators being neat and clean an d every time ours isn't... I dread getting it back that way. DEFINITELY not my favorite household chore!

My daughter helped cook yesterday (recipes and food journal at http://www.nutmegnotes08.blogspot.com/ ) and had dish duty all day along with helping to clean the counters, helping with laundry and a few other things. The youngest (seven years old who thinks he is at least 32) cleaned the cabinet fronts, made one of the beds, and cleaned the toilet inside and out.

I ended up with no computer for the better part of the day so I did some Bible studying and journaling and even took a short nap!
There is our little catch up for the time...smile.

Grace, mercy and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, teh Son of the Father, in truth and love. 2 John 3

Done In Love

Done In Love…

How many references to love are made in the Bible? I'm sure there is
someone out there who has this information on hand… I'm not one who
does or desires to. I do know that it would probably take a long,
long time to manually count the times we find "love" of all kinds in
this Book provided us by God.

There are just as many things on our daily "to do" list as there are
mentions of "love" in the Bible and we need to see how we are doing
these things. Are we doing everything in a state of love --- an act
of love ---choosing to treat and perform with love in our hearts?

When we get up in the mornings we choose to greet the day with loving
gratitude to God for giving us this bright and new chance or choosing
to count everything wrong and all the tasks which must be faced in
the hours ahead.
When we cook breakfast and start about the daily chores… is love from
our hearts pouring out into each thing we do? Food preparations become
mundane to us after doing them meal after meal and day after day. The
Bible mentions MANY times the preparations of foods because this is
important.
Preparing food must be done in order for those in our homes to be
properly fed. Preparing meals offers us the beauty of routine…
structure…and consistency. We can tie other routines and tasks in
with meals and have a well managed home by habit.

When we answer the phone… reply to an email… pen or type out a letter…
or open our doors to a knock… is our immediate and ending response
one of love? When we are driving the kids to school or appointments,
meeting with teachers or doctors and so on… does love flow from us?
While helping with homework… talking over dinner… or anything else…
is there love in you? In me?

I would so love to say that love just rushed out like a waterfall in
every encounter of my ever day. It isn't the case. I always, always,
always fall short. Why? Because I daily have to remind myself that it
isn't "my love to give. I have no love to give… any "love" I could
dig into my soul to
find of my own would not be love at all. Drawing from Christ in me is
a different story! HIS love is so grand and such a strong, true, and
endless one, there are not enough chances to pour it out in one day!
If I remind myself that I don't have to manufacture or create this
love --- that would be an impossible task --- All I have to do is
open up my inner doors of reserve to that glowing and pouring love of
the Lord.

What happens when I throw aside myself and exalt the love of Christ?
When I'm washing the dishes, communicating with others, making beds,
dealing with and disciplining our kids, preparing our meals and on
the list goes (?)… I am doing so with inner peace and tranquility
only experienced when God is loving THROUGH me and that love flows
from me and into every one who I come into contact with.

We are called to walk in love. "…and walk in love, just as Christ also
loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to
God as a fragrant aroma." Ephesians 5:2 NASB. May we give ourselves
up for Him, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma!
Walking in love, sisters, and living in love. Not our love… His love.

We can love our God because He first loved us by giving His only Son
up for our eternal lives. We can love our husbands ---even when it is
hard --- because our example is Christ and the church.

32 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his
wife, and the two will become one flesh.

33 This is a profound mystery – but I am talking about Christ and the church."

Ephesians 5:32-33 NIV.

We can love our children through all the ups and downs
and show them that love and we can train other women to do the same.
(Titus 2:4).
We can love others ---all others --- See I John 3:11.
How can we love others all the time?
We can because love COMES FROM GOD.

"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.
Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God."
I John 4:7 NIV.

Love is not a feeling. Feelings come as a reward of love… but love is
an action. Love is a choice. Sound wrong? It probably is compared to
what the world teaches. The world teaches real love is felt and
when we don't feel it anymore it is gone. The world tells and teaches
us to not do something in love unless we "feel" it. The Bible seems
to point us in a different direction. The Bible says that we are to
love… period.

"Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue
but with actions and in truth." I John 3:18 NIV

I encourage you to focus for the rest of this day (we learn to take
things ONE day at a time, don't we?) on walking in love. I urge you
onward to remember that love is always a choice and it comes from
God. I pray that everything, everything, yes, everything you do… will
be done in love.

Love:-) Sandy

My Quiet Time Notebook

My Quiet Time Notebook

I have had several journals, notebooks, and binders for all kinds of things and I just can't get enough of them:) There is just something about having things gathered in one place appealing to me.

Anyway, I have planned to put together a Prayer Notebook but have already filled up several. After seeing the Quiet Time Notebook on the Catherine Marshall site I shared and knowing the purchase isn't in the budget, decided to make my own.

Mine will probably be one of the most basic anyone can think it but I want simplicity. Why? To keep me at it so I'll have a collected place for my quiet time to be recorded. This is a trial run to see if I like the format bec/ I have a part of my closet filled with journals, prayer journals and more. Most were filled up during my daily quiet times. It may be that a simple notebook is what I stick with. I just think trying something a bit more organized might give my times a boost. Plus... it is an excuse for yet another notebook.

If we manage to get my computer glitch fixed keeping us from loading new pictures onto the computer OR into the printer... I will share pictures!

Meanwhile, I'll describe my plans and let you know how closely I do or don't stick to them!

Thin 3-ring binder (have one on hand)

Front of Binder: I hope to print a picture with maybe a Bible verse on the front.

Inside:

Cover sheet: Quiet Time Notebook 2008
A Record of my Daily times set aside to spend with the Lord.
Prayers, Scriptures, Ideas, Thoughts and Listening for the Lord.

First Tab: (haven't decided what kind of tabs I'll use. Either those pre-made ones or I'll cut and adhere some of my own)

Prayer: I'll hand write and/or print concerns, requests, praises, and more. Write out my prayers in the way I've done by habit for some time now:

1. Thank and praise the Lord. I thank Him for the morning, silence, happiness, specific blessings, time with Him or whatever is on my heart.
2. Ask forgiveness of sins. Repent of any known (write them specifically unless they could hurt someone and those are left unwritten) and unknown sins. As His forgiveness, cleansing, and for help.
3. Intercessory prayers. Pray for Blake, our kids and their families, and then requests or needs for and from others.
4. Prayers for the desires of my heart, prayers for help in personal areas. Personal prayer from me to the Lord.
5. PRAISES. I praise HIM just for being HIM in the start of my prayer time and end it praising Him for particular things He has done in our family and for/with others.

There are additions along the way but those are the basics.

Second Tab: Scriptures. Any speaking to my heart or showing me a truth, that catch my eye, make me want to study deeper on and so on.
I write out Scriptures more than anything. There is something rhythmic about reading them and writing out each one. Sometimes, I'll follow with a prayer using the Scriptures I just wrote.

Third Tab: Notes. These can be on Bible study, links to try, thoughts that come to me, distractions to get out of my head, to do's to keep me from losing focus, just notes and more notes. Smile.

If I want, I'll add tabs for inspirational things, prayers from others (there are a few from dear friends I folded and placed in my Bible) and whatever is wanted or needed.

If you have a quiet time notebook or journal you'd like to share about or share a picture of, please let me know! I'd love to see and if you'd like --- share it!

Quiet Time/Thursday

Quiet Time/ Thursday

Online Resources

I know these aren’t extensive but I just wanted to share a small list to keep things simple. I haven’t been diving into all of these sites to know them in and out but from what I did read through… they seem like good starting points. I always tell people to please read with spiritual filters when getting information from the internet so we aren’t easily deceived.
That said, I love finding neat things online and here are the sites I am sharing for our Quiet Time series.


Message Board on Quiet Time
{I haven't checked this out yet other than scrolling through to see the topics. I wanted to spend more time reading the neat threads on favorite Bible study tools and plan to go back for those and maybe some others!}

http://www.quiettimecafe.com/

One ministry explaining what quiet time is or can be:

http://www.quiettime.org/whatisqt.htm

Very affordable books from Christian Book Distributors. One of my all time favorite online places to shop! Don't get to do so very often but I love this store! There is a book on Quiet Times right now for $3.99.

www.cbd.com OR www.christianbook.com

Ideas for and Notes on Quiet Time:

http://www.fbcsmyrna.org/quiettimetips

Another favorite site :) Karla sent me the link to this site a long time ago and I LOVE IT!
Here, the site owners offer free quiet time pages to print!

http://tinyurl.com/4w3vuy

Quiet Time Testimony/George Mueller

Written by: George Mueller

"While I was staying at Nailsworth, it pleased the Lord to teach me a truth, irrespective of human instrumentality, as far as I know, the benefit of which I have not lost though now. . .more than forty years have since passed away.

"The point is this: I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not, how much I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. For I might seek to set the truth before the unconverted, I might seek to benefit believers, I might seek to relieve the distressed, I might in other ways seek to behave myself as it becomes a child of God in this world; and yet, not being happy in the Lord, and not being nourished and strengthened in my inner man day by day, all this might not be attended to in a right spirit.

"Before this time my practice had been, at least ten years previously, as an habitual thing, to give myself to prayer, after having dressed in the morning. Now I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God and to meditation on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed; and that thus, whilst meditating, my heart might be brought into experimental, communion with the Lord. I began therefore, to meditate on the New Testament, from the beginning, early in the morning.



"The first thing I did, after having asked in a few words the Lord’s blessing upon His precious Word, was to begin to meditate on the Word of God; searching, as it were, into every verse, to get blessing out of it; not for the sake of the public ministry of the Word; not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon; but for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul. The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a very few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication; so that though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer. When thus I have been for awhile making confession, or intercession, or supplication, or have given thanks, I go on to the next words or verse, turning all, as I go on, into prayer for myself or others, as the Word may lead to it; but still continually keeping before me, that food for my own soul is the object of my meditation. The result of this is, that there is always a good deal of confession, thanksgiving, supplication, or intercession mingled with my meditation, and that my inner man almost invariably is even sensibly nourished and strengthened and that by breakfast time, with rare exceptions, I am in a peaceful if not happy state of heart. Thus also the Lord is pleased to communicate unto me that which, very soon after, I have found to become food for other believers, though it was not for the sake of the public ministry of the Word that I gave myself to meditation, but for the profit of my own inner man.

"The difference between my former practice and my present one is this. Formerly, when I rose, I began to pray as soon as possible, and generally spent all my time till breakfast in prayer, or almost all the time. At all events I almost invariably began with prayer. . .But what was the result? I often spent a quarter of an hour, or half an hour, or even an hour on my knees, before being conscious to myself of having derived comfort, encouragement, humbling of soul, etc.; and often after having suffered much from wandering of mind for the first ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, or even half an hour, I only then began really to pray.

"I scarcely ever suffer now in this way. For my heart being nourished by the truth, being brought into experimental fellowship with God, I speak to my Father, and to my Friend (vile though I am, and unworthy of it) about the things that He has brought before me in His precious Word.

"It often now astonishes me that I did not sooner see this. In no book did I ever read about it. No public ministry ever brought the matter before me. No private intercourse with a brother stirred me up to this matter. And yet now, since God has taught me this point, it is as plain to me as anything, that the first thing the child of God has to do morning by morning is to obtain food for his inner man.

"As the outward man is not fit for work for any length of time, except we take food, and as this is one of the first things we do in the morning, so it should be with the inner man. We should take food for that, as every one must allow. What is the food for the inner man: not prayer, but the Word of God, so that it not only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts. . .

"I dwell so particularly on this point because of the immense spiritual profit and refreshment I am conscious of having derived from it myself, and I affectionately and solemnly beseech all my fellow-believers to ponder this matter. By the blessing of God I ascribe to this mode the help and strength I have had from God to pass in peace through deeper trials in various ways than I had ever had before; and after having now above forty years tried this way, I can most fully, in the fear of God, commend it. How different when the soul is refreshed and made happy early in the morning, from what it is when, without spiritual preparation, the service, the trials and the temptations of the day come upon one!" [1]

Quiet Time ~ Tuesday

Where do I have my quiet times?

This is in transition because I’m moving my desks into another room. Right now and for awhile, I’ve been doing my quiet times either at my desk in my bedroom (just to be close to the computer so I can use my Bible study program and for Matthew Henry’s Commentary --- more on those later) or at the dining room table.

When I move things into the other room (today, hurray!) … I am going to see if there is a place by the window for me to have my morning quiet time.

Previously, I have held my early morning moments with the Lord on my couch with a fire crackling in our fireplace. For safety and space reasons, we had to tear that humble hearth out and how dearly I miss it! I still light a candle during my quiet time as funds allow.

In the evening, I’ve been reading my Bible in the bed from the night stand right before falling asleep.

What I bring or have on hand:

A Bible. I have different Bibles so I take whichever one I want at the time.
A journal I use often for writing out prayers and also for recording Scriptures that speak to me, observations I’ve noted during Bible study, and things like that. I also let any thoughts coming at me flow onto the paper so nothing is blocking my concentration.
These are the basics but I also almost always have a devotional, book based on Scripture, poems, music, and things like that.

My routine:

I guess it is considered a routine since I try to have this time before much else but there is no set time. Like, I always start the coffee first because I like having a steaming cup close at hand to sip on while reading. I almost always start the laundry for the soft background noise. I like my morning quiet times as early as possible but with my thyroid still being regulated… sometimes I cannot sleep at night and it causes later morning rising!

The only other part of my routine is reading the Bible right before dozing off at night from a Bible I keep on my nightstand.

Love,Sandy