The Light in My Window

The Light in My Window

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

The Essential Element of Preparation

It's a rainy, stormy afternoon here at my house. As the wind is blowing and the rain is pounding against the windows, I am thankful to be able to stay inside and write and also make some progress with all that is on my schedule for this busy week. The word for my week is..."preparation."

As I write this, I am leaving day after tomorrow for South Carolina where I will be speaking at a Ladies Conference all day Saturday, and again on Sunday to ladies during the Sunday School hour. So I have been in "preparation mode" for a couple of weeks now. Of course, I began writing and preparing my messages for Saturday a few months ago, as soon as I accepted the invitation to speak. This week I have been putting the final touches on the messages for each of the three general sessions I am speaking at, as well as preparing a lesson for Sunday morning. In addition, I have been preparing ahead for my other "normal" teaching obligations and for covering my responsibilities while I am gone. I needed to prepare for two Ladies Bible Study classes that I taught yesterday, as well as the next class which I teach the morning after I get home.

To further add to the preparations, following my weekend in South Carolina we are headed to Florida to visit our younger son and his family and to meet our NEW GRANDSON for the first time! Part of those preparations has been fun - getting to shop for baby boy things (I'm used to shopping for girl things - we haven't had a grandson born for nearly six years!) and for a present for his big sister. It also means that I have to organize and pack for our time there. My husband will be joining me for the trip to Florida but is flying the first leg of the trip, so I have to prepare and pack for him as well as myself. Because he is flying, everything big that needs to go with us to Florida has to go with me in the car when I leave day after tomorrow....so more preparations. Did I mention that I have lots of lists??

Preparing for a speaking engagement and for an extended time away involves lots of thinking, planning, and work, but there is also another kind of preparation that is even more important. I'm thinking of the need to prepare our hearts. Just as important as having well-prepared outlines and messages for my speaking is the need to prepare my own heart. I have been praying and asking the Lord to make me sensitive to the needs and hearts of the ladies who will be attending the conference so that I might be a blessing to them and that I might depend on Him for everything. I also pray that the Lord will prepare the hearts of the ladies so that He might minister to them. I love the verse in Hosea 10:12: "Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy, break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord..." Just as hard ground has to be prepared for planting, the ground of our hard, stubborn hearts needs to be broken up to receive the seed of the Word of God.

Whenever we come to God's Word, either on our own, or sitting under Biblical teaching we need to come with prepared hearts. One good way of doing that is by praying a Scripture verse like Psalm 119:18, "Open  my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law." Actually, the whole chapter of Psalm 119 is a great one to read when preparing one's heart. Preparation is also an important element in prayer. Part of preparation involves cleansing, which encompasses confession and repentance. We should learn to view preparation and cleaning not as punishment and something we "have" to do, but as a positive thing - we are preparing our hearts to receive what God has for us.

So my friend, the next time you have to make some preparations - for a trip, for dinner, for an afternoon of shopping or errands, or for teaching a lesson or class - I hope you will be reminded of the truly important preparation of your heart.

Signing off for a couple weeks, but looking forward to being back with you in March!
Kathi


Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Blessings Large and Small

Today is only Wednesday, but the week has been full of blessings!

First and most importantly, our new grandson Owen Michael arrived on Monday morning, weighing in at 9 lbs. 1 oz. and 23 inches long, and we praise the Lord for another healthy, beautiful grandchild! His delivery was relatively quick and easy (as childbirth goes, anyway!) and both Owen and his parents are doing well. He has a doting big sister in the form of Olivia, age 2 1/2. Owen is our eighth grandchild (although only our second grandson!) but the excitement and the blessing never grows old! We have plans to meet our new grandson in just a couple of weeks - I can't wait to hold him in my arms! Praise the Lord for the blessing of children and grandchildren!

Owen was almost a Valentine's Day baby. Being able to celebrate Valentine's Day with my hubby was another blessing. We have been sweethearts for over 40 years, and I am truly blessed to be married to my best friend. We celebrated with our traditional dinner for two at home. I am thankful for the blessing of love and marriage.
Other blessings this week have been not as big or obvious, but they were blessings nonetheless. We have spent many hours in the car this week. Monday evening we had to go to Richmond, and while we had some light snow here in Williamsburg that morning, it changed over to rain in the afternoon and the roads were fine. Unbeknownst to us, they were not fine in Richmond (about 35 miles away). It was several degrees colder there, enough that the roads were icy. We saw accident after accident along the side of the road. We sat in one traffic tie-up for about 40 minutes on the way to our destination due to an accident involving multiple cars. On the way home it was even worse, and we ended up sitting for well over an hour. What normally would have taken an hour or two that night to travel ended up being a 4 hour trip. I was so thankful to get home safely at 10:30 that night! Praise the Lord for the blessing of His protection!

The reason we have spent so many hours in the car this week was that a member of our congregation was promoted to Heaven. The graveside service my husband conducted was 2 1/2 hours away, and again the Lord blessed us with safety. We asked people to pray for protection in traveling and for the weather, because it POURED the whole way there, so much so that we could hardly see at times. Do you know that before we got there, the rain completely stopped, and when it was time to begin the graveside service the sun even came out? Another blessing! Even the funeral director remarked on the change, and the husband who had lost his dear wife responded with "Well, several of us talked to the Lord about that!" Praise the Lord for answered prayer!

As I write this, we are tired. We have had long days and short nights. Today was the funeral service at our church. My husband has been very busy taking care of all the details for the two services as well as preparing his regular sermons and keeping up with the normal everyday responsibilities of ministry. We are thankful for the blessings of people who have been willing helpers, and for strength.

Do you stop to thank the Lord for your blessings? Not just big things like new babies and special occasions, but the blessings of safety, rest, comfort, and what we might consider "everyday" things? Often we are quick to complain about things that go wrong, but we need to be just as quick to give God the thanks for every blessing. I like this quote by Charles Spurgeon: "Let us daily praise God for common mercies - common as we frequently call them, and yet so priceless that when we are deprived of them we are ready to perish." We daily pass up countless blessings and reasons to thank God without even realizing it.

"Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation." Psalm 68:19

Joyfully,
Kathi

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Building Hedges in Your Marriage

As I am writing this, it is just a few days before Valentine's Day. Since it falls on a Sunday this year, we are going to have our Valentine's celebration on Saturday night. We love having a special dinner at home for our Valentine dinner! I move our table to a spot in front of our fireplace, and set it with pretty dishes and flowers and candles. We plan a special menu and enjoy cooking together - usually some kind of steak and seafood combination, with fresh veggies and a special dessert. My husband loves anything salted caramel so I found a new recipe for salted caramel mini-cheesecakes which I'm going to try. I will let you know how it turns out! With a setting and a menu like that, who needs a restaurant with the crowds, rushed service, and inflated prices? Whatever your plans for Valentine's Day are, the point is to have some plans, whether it is dinner, dessert and coffee, a picnic on the floor, or an activity you enjoy doing together. Make it a celebration of your marriage! The effort is worth it.

I overheard the following conversation in the gym last week:
Woman 1: Aren't you ------, the photographer?
Woman 2: Yes, I am!
Woman 1: I thought so! You might not remember me but you took our daughter's wedding pictures a couple years ago.
Woman 2: Of course, I remember. How is your daughter doing? I heard she had a little boy.
Woman 1: Oh yes! But she and her husband are divorced now. She's getting remarried and is expecting another baby.
Woman 2: That's wonderful! I'm so happy to hear she is doing well.

Umm, I'm sorry, but I don't think that's wonderful. Because God doesn't think so. What makes it worse is the fact that stories like this one are the norm today. People accept divorces, extramarital affairs, and split families as an inevitable way of life. As one who is married to a pastor who has done a lot of counseling over the years, I can tell you that the ones who suffer the most in these sad stories are the children. They end up confused, insecure, being shuffled from parent to parent, or in the care of their babysitters or grandparents more often than not. When they become teens they look for love and acceptance in all the wrong places, and many of them will fall into the same patterns and problems of their parents. Yet we are told over and over again, "They will be fine!"

The really sad thing is that this is happening more and more in the church. When you are in the ministry you hear a lot of stories like this - over and over again. There are many factors which contribute to the failure of Christian marriages, which I do not have the time or space to elaborate on, but one thing is certain: These marriages do not fall apart overnight.

There is a very good book by Jerry Jenkins entitled "Loving Your Marriage Enough to Protect It." It contains some very valuable insight and advice on the subject of building "hedges" to protect your marriage, and having these "hedges" in place before the enemy attacks. The book deals mainly with hedges having to do with protecting your marriage against infidelity, but there are many other Biblical principles that we can put into place as "hedges" to protect our marriage and help it to be all that God intends it to be. God intends marriage to be for life, and He has given us the wisdom and tools in order to protect our marriages. Psalm 89:40 says,"Thou has broken down all his hedges, thou has brought his strongholds to ruin." Strongholds, or those things that we think are invincible, are broken down when we fail to put hedges of protection into place to protect our marriages, and when we fail to maintain those hedges.

The stakes are high. The danger is real. No marriage is immune to the attacks of the enemy. Love your spouse and your marriage enough to plant and maintain those hedges.


Till next time,
Kathi












Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Keys to Perseverance

This week marks the one-month point of my membership at the Y and beginning a new habit of going for early-morning workouts with my husband. It is going quite well! I have gotten used to getting up at 5 in the morning (mostly!) and have developed some good routines for cardio and strength training, as well as time exercising and swimming in the pool. I can't say that I have lost much weight, but I am definitely becoming more toned and fit, feel great, and I remind myself of the health benefits I am working for.

But - this morning was hard. I didn't sleep well last night, was awake and up at 3:30 a.m., and had just gotten back into a good sleep (of course) when the alarm went off at 5. I REALLY didn't feel like getting up, getting out of the house, and working out. But I did. I kind of slogged through the first 20 minutes on the treadmill until I started feeling a spark of energy, and ended up finishing my entire workout.

This kind of goes along with the subject that I have been studying this week, which is perseverance. The Lord has impressed upon me in several ways this week the importance of persevering in our walk with Him. To persevere means "to persist in a state or undertaking in spite of opposition or discouragement. " So much of our Christian life calls for a need to persevere. And I'm not talking about getting up to exercise when it is still dark outside and I am tired. There are a multitude of everyday trials, discouragements, oppositions, and problems that tempt us to give in to our feelings of discouragement and despair, to wonder if God knows what He is doing, and to doubt that God is really a good God after all. There are days when we feel like failures and that God will never be able to use us. The temptation to quit is very real.

In her book Disciplines of a Godly Woman, author Barbara Hughes says, "Faith in the goodness of God in the face of adversity doesn't just happen. It grows out of the discipline of perseverance in the day-in, day-out grind of our everyday life." We can persevere because we can be confident that God is completing a good work in us (Phil. 1:6). We can persevere because it is in times of adversity that we better see God for who He is, and not just what He does for us.

This week I have been reading and studying 2 Cor. 4. The apostle Paul is a great example of someone who learned what it means to persevere. He had about every adverse circumstance and opposition that you can think of in his ministry. But in 2 Cor. 4:1 he says this: " Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not."  The context here is Paul's ministry, but we all have ministry of some sort - we are wives, mothers, teachers, employees - whatever God has given us to do. I think in this verse we have one of the keys to perseverance: we have received mercy, or grace, from God. We have to remember that He provides grace and mercy in order for us to persevere.

There are many other great truths in this passage that I studied this week, but I will just mention a couple. Verses 5 and 7 remind us that "we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us." We can persevere because it is not about us - it is about the surpassing excellency and power of the Lord. We are just "earthen vessels" (clay pots!) who are prone to the pitfalls of this life, but the real treasure and the reason we persevere is the Lord who is working in us.

Perhaps the best encouragement when it comes to perseverance is in verses 17 and 18: "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the unseen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal." The stuff that happens to discourage us and tempt us to give up on living for the Lord is just "light affliction." When it is happening, it sure doesn't feel like "light affliction" to us - but the reason is found in the next verse: when we keep the proper perspective, we realize that these things are just temporary, and they will not last forever! Our responses and our keeping on for Him are forever. We have all of eternity to look forward to being with the Lord, and all of our present suffering will be a thing of the past.

When you are tempted to give up or give in, remember:

He is in sovereign control.
He gives us grace for every trial.
He does not ask us to understand, but to trust.
If we keep our eyes on Him, we can walk in obedience through our storms.

"The secret is Christ in me, not me in another set of circumstances." (unknown)

Keep on keeping on!
Kathi