Part 3: Marriage Bible Verses

As a wife I know it's sometimes hard sticking to the bible and being the wife in a marriage as God intended us to be. I am not perfect nor do I expect my husband to be. When our faith and love is being tested; That's when I go back and read these verses from the Bible. They always seems to help me grow as a follower of God in my marriage. 

1.“Above All, Love Each Other Deeply, Because Love Covers Over A Multitude Of Sins.” – 1 Peter 4:8

This verse almost says it all. There will be times as a wife when we mess up, it's only human. Or maybe there are moments when your husband makes you angry. Remember this verse. Remember that Love conquers all. So love your husband deeply. 

2."Be completely humble and gentle; be patient with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace."- Ephesians 4:2-3

Another verse that stood out to me that fits perfectly. Even though it could go both ways, right now I look at it as a wife. I take a step back and think deeply what it means as a wife to my husband. In other words, act as God would and there will be peace. It is almost always easier said than done I know, but results are proof.

3. "Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate."-Mark 10:9

When my husband and I got married, we told each other we do not believe in divorce. We have been through some trials and that word, has come up in the past. But with being followers of God and putting our faith and trust into our father, no one can separate us.

4."Love each other as I have loved you."-John 15:12

Love your husband as God loves you. Need I say more? 

How To Be A Follower; Part 2 Guest post!

Today I am excited to introduce to you Erika; a beautiful mother and wife from the blog Shine On. I was honored when she agreed to be apart of my series about, how to be a follower as a Christian. As I was able to read their stories before I posted them up, I couldn't help but become even more excited for the Lord. I hope this is what this series does for you as well.  

   

 
Hello there, my name is Erika, I'm a wife to one amazing man who loves God and mother to two little girls.

 I blog over at Shine On.

Being a mum is the greatest blessing and responsibility in the world for me.  

     If I didn't have God cheering me on I would be lost.

Today I would like to share with you something that I live by.

Every time we take a decision about our children or our family we remember this:

     Rise your children to please God, don't do it according to the world's standards and values. In eternity, what you invested in their soul will count. Think about Absalom's story, how he had everything going for him but he didn't have God, he lost everything, including his life. 

Don't put money first, clothing, gadgets next exotic vacation or big name university. Those are nice things, but with no value before God.

Don't spend your time and resources for things that don't count in eternity.  

    Even if your child grows up and chooses not to walk with the Lord, you planted a seed in his  hart. God will use that, he would have a foundation to turn to.

( no, sadly this is not our house :) )

Raising children is hard work, I know, and I didn't get to the teenage years yet, oh boy. God will sure here from me 24/7, and the local CLC library too. Somehow feel refreshed and recharged after 30 min in a Christian library during the week.

Reading other blogs helps me too, knowing I'm not alone in this, and learning from other mothers that have been there, done that and survived.

 So, dear mother, you got this, don't ever think to throw the towel and give up, everything will crumble without your gentle touch, never doubt the importance of your work.

Hot To Be A Follower Series Part 1: Raising Godly Children; Guest Post

Lately I feel I have been challenged about being a believer in God and my faith. Of course whenever I feel I'm being challenged it pushes me even more towards wanting to better myself as a Christian. These life challenges can are big or small make me question how can I be a better Mother in God's eyes? How I can be a better wife as Christian. That's when I came up with the brilliant idea of doing a short series on my blog with other Christian women bloggers that I read. I am so excited to share with all of you this weekly series about how to be a follower of God. I tried coming up with a name for this short series but I couldn't make up my mind, ha ha. So you can think of this series as, Christianity or What it takes to be a follower of God. Of course I know we all have our own opinion's and I respect that of everyone. With that being said I am beyond excited to introduce my first Guest post/blogger to kick off this series...

Marci Smith:

You can reach her blog at  www.ittakesoneministries.org

She is an amazing women with such inspirational writing.

Raising Godly Children 

I was so honored when Kaitlyn asked me to write a guest post.  I have a passion for writing and teaching for Jesus so I jumped at the opportunity!  

My name is Marci Smith and I blog over at www.ittakesoneministries.org.  I am a mama of three awesome kiddos and a wife to an amazingly patient and funny husband.  We have been married for almost 19 years (Yikes! I feel old typing that!) and our kids are 17, 13, and 10.  Our oldest baby is a senior in high school and is currently applying to colleges all over the nation…sniff, sniff.  Is it wrong to visit my sweetie every weekend?  Yeah, I thought so.

Raising kids to be Godly can be quite a challenge.  Let’s face it, they are faced with worldly challenges every day.  My kids have heard and seen things that I wasn’t exposed to until I was an adult.  My husband and I have had to run interference on numerous occasions.  We have to trust God to lead us in our decisions daily.  

When our oldest child was younger, people used to tell us we needed to lighten up a bit.  They told us that if we were too focused on God, our son would be left out and not have any friends.  I’ll be honest, that scared us in the beginning.  The thought of my baby sitting all alone at lunch and not having any friends to hang out with on the weekends made my throat feel like it was constricting!

Thankfully, we did not back down; we trusted God to take care of our munchkin.  We knew that if we obeyed God, our son would be blessed.  

We relied heavily on Deuteronomy 6:5-7

5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.  6 These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart,  7  Repeat them to your children.  Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

Basically, we are told to live our lives for God.  Our character, morals, behaviors, and attitudes will be evident to our children.

Listed are the things that proved successful for our family.  All of our children have hearts for Jesus and His world.  They are confident cuties who strive to live their lives for God.

Make children accountable from a young age.

Learning to accept responsibility is huge!  Kids must be taught to be accountable for their actions, behaviors, and words.  Never let them off the hook or make excuses for them.  

Empathetic hearts are taught.

In order for children to be God focused rather than me focused, they must be taught to love and be empathetic.  Rather than looking down on those who are different, teach them to love the way Jesus does.  Let them come up with ways to be kind and loving to people in need.

What goes in always comes out.

This one is huge at our home!  Everything that goes into eyes and ears will settle on the heart and come out in behaviors and actions.  There is no such thing as harmless immorality.  Parents must be mindful of what children are listening to and watching. 

Be Jesus lovers  7 days a week.

It is very important to attend church regularly as a family.  Kids learn that worship and praise are priorities.  However, openly loving and sharing Jesus shouldn’t just be a Sunday thing.  As parents, we must live out our faith every single day.  We must be doers of the Word and not just hearers.

Let them fail.

This one can be difficult.  We love them more than the breath we breathe and it hurts our hearts to see them fail.  However, it is good for them to learn how to fail in a controlled environment.  When they do fail, we can teach them how to get back up.  They will learn to rely on God and let Him lead them.  

Parenting can be a difficult thing, but when God is the focus the rewards are amazing!  Children that are taught to love God with all they are become adults who are confident in themselves and God.  They will know that their worth comes from Jesus Christ alone.  

I highly recommend the book Parenting by the Book written by John Rosemond.  

Love God with all of your being and pass it on.  Your generations will be greatly blessed! – Marci 

The Power Of Prayer

Let me start off by saying I am a true believe in the power of prayer.

I was born and raised most of my life in a Christian Reformed church. Although I do believe it takes our own time to become a honest believer in God. I have always believed and still do that there is a haven and hell. I've always believed there is one God, I've always trusted in the Bible and so forth. It wasn't till I had my break through when I became pregnant at the age 18 and put all my faith and trust in our God. 

That's when I learned the power of prayer is real. It wasn't just something people would tell me to do so I would feel better about a situation. I finally realized others weren't saying "I'll pray for you" just to make themselves look like a better Christian. Even though I was an honest believer in God and attended church with my family as often as I could and volunteered in the nursery, I didn't pray as often as I should have.

I started off with little prayers here and there. It was amazing how I felt as a human being afterwards. I don't pray out loud or in front of people often. Maybe I should? I wouldn't even tell my own husband when I would pray about a certain situation when my prayer was answered. After a while I started to tell my husband about my prayers being answered. I didn't know whether he believed me or not; he is sometimes hard to read. 

Then it hit me. If you recall in a previous post about me writing that our dog ran away and we couldn't find him. We usually find him within 15 minutes in the park behind our home. This time was different, he escaped without his collar on. Night drew near and I was sobbing like a little girl who lost her dog. Yes I admit it. I felt lost and not sure which direction to take at this point to find him. The next morning we had my husband's Grandma's funeral, which we had to be there at 10AM. I felt doomed that I was not going to have time to find our dog again. So I went to bed knowing there was nothing I could do at that point but PRAY. I prayed and prayed and talked to God while my husband was sleeping next to me. He had no clue because I was praying in my head. 

The next morning I get a call from a strange number.  I answered the phone with a simple hello since it was 8AM. The lady on the other end then says, "We have your dog Porter at a local Veterinary clinic. He is fine. A client of ours found him and brought him in." my prayers was answered. 

Later that day while driving my husband had asked me if I prayed that we would somehow find Porter. I replied yes I did pray and continued to ask him why he was even asking me. Ha ha. He had no reason. I left it at that and just thought maybe he's starting to become a believer in the power of prayer. 

A Book To Save My Faith?

As I was browsing Target this evening with my three lovely daughters in search of the perfect Easter dress, my heart told me to go look at the books. After the fun of trying on the dress with the help of my daughters , we made our way to the book isles. Not to mention I haven't looked in the books for a long time. I just haven't had the time to actually sit down and get lost in a book. If you know me personally, I love to read. Whether it is a short children's story to a think chapter book. One of my favorite authors is Jodi Picoult. As I am glancing through the books on the shelves this certain book pops out at me in an instant. It was titled, "To Heaven And back" by Mary C. Neal, MD.  I then questioned in my head, "what steered me to the books and why did this certain book pop out at me"? I didn't even hesitate; I grabbed the book and gently set it in the the cart.  

Alright so let me be a little honest here, this is not easy. At one point I started to feel ashamed of myself for losing faith. It all started around a year and a half ago. I have allowed a person in my life and trusted to easily. Which is one of my flaws. I like to give others the benefit of the doubt. You know don't judge a book by its cover? Or Innocent till proven guilty? But I have learned that does not always work. You should read the introduction of a book first. 

After months of having my faith tested and belief in God tested; yes I said it, I started to fall apart on the inside. I remember like it was yesterday after a night of crying; okay crying would be an understatement; I sat up on my bed literally shaking my fist in the air looking out my bedroom window.  It was my very last prayer I had said, asking God himself, "why are you doing this to me?! What did I do to deserve to be treated like this?!" As I ended my prayer I told him that I can no longer take it and to remove all of it from my mind. As months went on I still had to deal with the questioning of my faith.  and therefore I started to question God himself. He was not answering my prayers let alone giving me any sort of signs. I still had to deal with tearful days turned into nights. Along with the feeling of family not feeling so much like family at all. 

During those months I developed sever anxiety to the point of almost vomiting in public. I couldn't go anywhere literally with out my husband along my side. I became a prisoner in my own home. And on the days where I would be depressed or cry in front of my daughters because holding it in was no longer an option physically. It killed me inside that my daughters had to watch me go through this hurt. Yet I felt I couldn't explaine to them why I was crying if they caught me or tell them who made me cry. I usually tried to hide my pain, but it wasn't always easy. They were just too little and I didn't/don't want my daughters to grow up judging. But with the love of my husband and daughters by my side during this hardship I have endured a stronger me. I have slowly overcome the anxiety and with a little help now thanks to anxiety medication. Soon hoping not to need them at all.

Back to the book. Once I tucked my daughters in tightly, I couldn't wait to get my hands on my new book. I wasn't quit sure why. It's not the kind of book I would be reading right now that's for sure. After reading the first chapter I couldn't help myself but to keep reading on. I felt my spirits being lifted and my faith regrowing inside me the more I read. Could God have planed me to buy this book? Was it for a reason? Or was it just a coincidence. I believe it was Gods beautiful work. Not to mention Easter is this coming Sunday. Maybe it's a good day to start heading back to church again?! I think so!

Will I forgive? yes I do. Will I forget? Heck no. I don't think most people can forget how they are treated badly to an extant and blamed unfairly. Will I be cautious with my friendships weather its with family or friends? Of course. I almost have a guarded double wall now that's for sure. But I have learned God has a plan weather or not we know what it is at the time or why we have to go through so much pain and hurt. But don't lose your faith...trust me!

My Prayers For Newton, CT & Thoughts

I had originally written a different post to put up last night, but I couldn't do so with such heart ache I feel for what had happened at Sandy Hook Elementary school. Therefore, I choose to write my thoughts, prayers and condolences.

I don't think any of us will forget the day one of our country's city's endured one of our nations most horrific tragedies. Especially those of us who are parents with children who attend school. Once I heard the news break in across our TV and learned what had happened, I can't even begin to explain how badly my heart ached for those involved. I instantly started praying. Not only am I still praying for those involved who are suffering such grief and trauma, but also for schools and our country to become closer to God. I instantly couldn't wait for school to get out so I could pick my daughter up and embrace her tightly. When I arrived at her school I knew I wasn't the only parent feeling anxious to hold their child after hearing watching the news. The parking lot and pick up lines were longer than normal at an earlier time. As I hear the stories I can't help but think of my own children. My oldest is 6 years old, who is so excited about school; she looks forward to going everyday. For someone to take that away from sweet innocent children just makes me sick to my stomach. I have not told my daughters. I'm still torn in that certain area. I feel shes too young to take it all in. I also don't want her to be afraid to go to school. So for now, I'm not saying a word about it to her. Maybe eventually, but not for now. I know now when I give her that hug and kiss, “Have a good day. See you later. I love you.” I, as a parent, will have that fear in the back of my mind. We can all argue over politics and gun control. Yes I feel some can be changed, but I feel the biggest change of all that needs to be made is letting God back into our children's schools! I don't understand how someone can do such a evil thing. I'm sure we will never know. I send my prayers and send my condolences to Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, CT.