Revival time

I think it's time for me to revive this blog and start sharing more about how God is leading me now and has been leading for the last three years.  Has it really been almost three years since I wrote an entry for this blog?  Well, life has definitely been interesting over that time.  I'll share some about all of that along the way, but for right now, I just have to say that I am thankful to God every day.  I know that He will never leave me.  The journey that I have been on is exciting, scary, painful, and joyful all at the same time.  God is good all the time! All the time, God is good!  So here I am.  I'm still on my own, but I am surely never alone.

His Banner Over Me

When I was in the youth group at my church, one of my favorite songs went like this, "Jesus is the Rock of my salvation, His banner over me is love... " I'm not sure what the actual title of that song is, but I know I loved to sing it and also do the hand motions with it. But I never really thought about what those words actually meant. The latest name of God that we've been studying is Jehovah Nissi, which means God is my Banner, so I've found out a little bit about having God as my banner.

The first time this name of God was used in the Bible was in Exodus chapter 17. God has brought the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt and has provided the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea, and now the Israelites are headed for the promised land and the first enemy they face is Amalek. Amalek is the grandson of Esau and is opposed to God and His people. As they are facing battle, God tells Moses to stand at the top of the hill and hold his staff up, and the people of Israel will be victorious. Moses' staff represents the power of God, and it is also symbolic of the banner or standard that is used by soldiers to lead the charge into battle. When Moses would lift up his hands with the staff, the Israelites would have the upper hand in the battle, but when his arms grew heavy and came down, the Amalekites would gain the advantage.

After a while Aaron and Hur, who were with Moses at the top of the hill, helped him to keep his hands high in the air for the rest of the day so that the Israelites were able to defeat the Amalekites. Afterwards Moses built an altar and named the place Jehovah Nissi, the Lord is My Banner.

I need the Lord to be my banner. He is my standard and my strength. I need to depend on Him on a daily basis and I need to choose each day to follow Him in total obedience. When I have the Lord as my banner, I am able to defeat the enemies that threaten to overtake me, but when I don't hold my banner high, I am defeated. Jesus came so that I could know personally the power of God in my life. He paid the price for my sin with His blood, so that I could have the banner of protection that only comes from God. That was the ultimate act of love. His banner over me is love!

"...the Lord your God is going with you! He will fight for you against your enemies, and He will give you victory!" Deuteronomy 20:4

Getting to Know You, God

One of my all-time favorite movies is "The King and I," and one of my favorite songs from that movie is called, "Getting To Know You." "Getting to know you, getting to know all about you. Getting to like you. Getting to hope you like me..." Several months ago, my older daughter asked me if we could start doing a family devotional even if Daddy wouldn't join us. This was before he moved out, but things were pretty tense and it was obvious to all of us that he wouldn't be at home much longer. And so I set about figuring out what we should study in our devotional time. And God led me to several studies to help us get to know Him better. If you are going to be walking with God through a difficult valley, it helps if you really know who it is you are walking with.

Our first study was on the Ten Commandments. It was a study we already had available courtesy of my daughter's Sunday school class, and I figured that getting to know God meant getting to know what He expected of us and why. I also felt it was very important for all of us to commit to obedience at a time when we might be easily tempted to stray. This was a very good study and when we were finished, we moved on to the characteristics of God. We studied love, justice, holiness, and mercy and all of these gave us a little more insight into who God is. Now we have moved on to a study of God's names. Each of His names gives us another glimpse into who He really is and helps us to trust Him more. We now know Him as Elohim (God the Creator), El Elyon (God Most High), El Roi (the God who sees), El Shaddai (God Almighty), Adonai (Lord and Master), Jehovah Jireh (God who provides). These names have shown us that He is over everything, sovereign and all-sufficient. We know that He will provide for us.

Last night we started talking about a new name of God - Jehovah Rapha - the God who heals. We have seen through our study of the name El Roi that he sees our pain, and now we see that He is the God that heals our pain. Our study led us to Exodus 15 where we read the story of how God led the people of Israel to the bitter waters of Marah and then used Moses to turn the bitter waters to sweet waters. We don't know why God would lead us to these bitter waters, but we know that He is God Most High. And it is hard to see how these bitter waters could ever be made sweet, but we know that He is the God who provides and the God who heals. It is wonderful to know God by His names!

"The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous runs into it and is safe." Proverbs 18:10

Getting to the Good Stuff

Do you sometimes have to do things that are mundane, tedious or boring? I hate those kinds of things, but sometimes they are necessary before you can get to the good stuff. You know, like you have to practice your scales before you can start playing Scott Joplin on the piano. Or you have to learn all of the rules before you can start playing a new game. Well, I'm a quilter. I love designing a new quilt, and looking at beautiful fabric, and stitching the top together. But there are some boring parts of the process that I don't like so much. I recently finished putting together a quilt top that I've been working on for the last 4 years. I hand appliqued all of the blocks and spent a lot of time picking out the right border fabric. And now I can't wait to quilt it. But first, I have to baste the layers of the quilt together. I hate that part. It takes so much time to lay it all out and make sure everything lines up correctly and that there are no puckers in the backing or lumps in the batting. The process of basting the layers together seems to take forever and I just want to get to the good stuff.



Last night I was working on the basting and thinking about how much I wished I could just skip that part, when I heard God's voice speaking to me. "I know how much you hate what's happening to you right now, but I want you to know it's necessary." What? You mean You wanted my husband to betray me and you wanted our marriage to end in divorce? That doesn't make sense. But then I thought about who God is. If He is Sovreign, and I know that He is, there is nothing that comes into my life without His permission. If He loves me like He says, and I know that He does, I can trust that whatever He allows in my life is for my good. As I have walked through this valley, I have felt God's presence in my life in a deeper way. Even as He brushes the tears from my eyes, He reminds me of all the ways that He has provided for me.



I know that I will not be in this valley forever, and I really want to get to the other side - to the good stuff - but while I'm here, I want to learn the things that God wants to teach me. I want to learn to depend on Him more, to trust Him more, to love Him more. I know that those things are best learned in the valleys of life. One of my favorite songs is called "If You Want Me To" by Ginny Owens. The first verse says, "The pathway is broken and the signs are unclear, and I don't know the reason, why You brought me here. But just because You love me, the way that You do, I'm gonna walk through the valley, If you want me to." I love that. He loves me so much that I can trust Him to be there with me. And if that's where He wants me to be, that's where I want to be too.

"When they walk through the Valley of Weeping it will become a place of springs where pools of blessing and refreshment collect after rains!" Psalm 84:6 (TLB)

Now that's the good stuff!

The beginning

There's so much going on in my life right now. Some of it is not so good and some of it is wonderful. But through it all I know that God is walking beside me on this journey of my life. I'm on my own again after 19 1/2 years of being married, but thankfully I know that I'm never alone.