Signed, Sealed, Delivered...They're Yours!

Our support letters are out! After an entire week of editing, printing, labeling, folding, stuffing, printing on envelopes, much smudging, more labels to cover the smudging and addressing....236 support letters found their way to the postage machine at our church office yesterday morning!! YAY! We have about 15 more to, but that is slowly being done. This is such a relief and it feels good to know that the people we serve in our ministry finally will know why we're leaving and what we will be doing! Real excited to see how God builds up a team of prayer warriors who will lift us up to HIM while we are preparing and are away...people who we can come to and share the good and the bad and to bring praises and requests to them so they can talk to the Father about it as well! Real excited to see GOD nudge people's hearts to be more like His in generosity to give to help us serve and survive while on the mission field. We know that not everyone will be able to or will want to, but are excited to see what God does! When I look at the future, I can't help but smile in anticipation and excitement!

On another note....I still can't stop thinking about the last post I made on Sat. night...about my heart and mind being cluttered, just like my gutters were! Well, I get up and go to church on Sunday and guess what...there for me was a custom-made sermon! It was like God was speaking through Rick Dunn and was speaking to only me. Everything I wrote about Saturday or tried to convey, very weakly, in a journal was put into better words of exactly how I felt the last week or two in Sunday's sermon. So here is what it was about and what I am have been struggling with in the last week or two:

Sluggish Spirituality (eewww, that sounds nasty..and hurts a little..or a lot!)

The pastor shared about how we have a "pull toward dull or sluggish spirituality....it's a natural drift of who we are." YES, this is what I was trying to say. This is what I am so frustrated about. In the evenings, instead of reading more, meditating, memorizing, talking over the Bible more...why have we been getting into this rut of slouching in front of the couch to watch something that has no eternal value on my life! I don't think it's bad for me to watch television, but I think it's bad for me to be a slug and put superfluous things before the Lord. I don't want to be sluggish, I don't want to melt in front of the tv. As I was laying there last week watching tv, I thought to myself...why am I still up, watching something that I don't really care about...and I would rather be reading. But, ya know what...I didn't get up! So, I need some boundaries and I need to get my priorities straight. Two weeks ago, I didn't feel this way, because I wasn't doing this. I hate the human flesh most of the time because I feel like this a lot:

"For what I am doing I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate...For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing that I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good.

Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Therefore, there is now NO condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."

Romans 7:15,16,18-21, 24-25a, 8:1

O Praise the ONE who paid my debt and raised this life up from the dead!!!

Some things I am trying to do to not be spiritually sluggish and pursue my Father and other relationships is get my priorities straightened out. I know that I am not going to get it right every time (last two weeks of my life-great example), but "one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead. I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained." -Phil. 3:13, 14, 16

Here is what Steve and I are trying to do:

-go to bed earlier

-wake up earlier and spend time with the Father EVERYDAY, not when I feel like it. If I don't get up I will tell myself I will do it during nap time, but it never works out for me that way. I have to do it when everyone is still asleep.

-have family worship night with our kids

-be consistent about reading the Bible with our kids every day

-pray together daily

-pray for my children daily

-have a family worship time

-have a family day once a week

-have one or two families over each week for dinner to pursue better relationships

-memorize Scripture weekly (for Steve, Cali & Noah)

These are things we have strived to do for a long time, but just in the last week or so we have been going to bed so late and then I don't want to wake up early in the morning and then during nap time I don't spend time with the Lord....the late to bed again...and so the cycle continues. I need my time with the Lord. I am a different person with Him!