The Encounter by Stephen Arterburn

The Encounter by Stephen Arterburn

A great story that you can’t put down! I just read this within 2 hours. It is a great uplifting book, which should hit the heart strings of all ~ especially mothers. It is a story of forgiveness on many levels, from forgiving others to forgiving ourselves. It is good to know that God forgives us! God has a plan for our lives and we just have to sit and watch it unfold. This is a story based on a wealthy man trying to learn of his mother leaving him and overcoming the truth. I love how this book tells a story that couldn’t be told on film. This story leaves you on the edge of your seat! I would highly recommend you reading this book!

This book was provided by Thomas Nelson publishing and the book sneeze program in return for a honest review of this book.

2 Lessons learned lately…

1 – When you strive to be the best and to walk in God’s path, there WILL be testing that happens! You will have a week or two of total stress to where you wonder when you will break. Then once you make it through, you sit and take a breath and look back, you wonder: Did I stay the course? Did I stay the shining light for God through the stress? Did I stay the mom and the wife I should had? Did I let my stress get the best of me? Did I vent too much or did I talk to God about it?

2- Are you teaching your kids to pray?

When my baby was an infant, I started our morning prayer outloud in the car while we were driving out of the subdivision. In the beginning I was just out of my comfort zone praying outloud. Now that my baby is a talking toddler, he is learning our morning prayer. Every day is different. I want him to learn that we can talk to Jesus and ask for protection and thank God for things like such a beautiful morning and our sleep last night. This has been a great learning experience for both of us, and I am so thankful that I started this! He will remind me of people to pray for or just to get excited when he realizes that we are praying for him!

Who are you?

    I have read in 2 different locations today about how God refines us. Through trials and hardships, God is refining us to be so much more! He refines us to be compassionate, sincere, lovable, and a better person than before. So if you are in a troubled time, let God refine you and become so much more for Him!

     The book I am reading gives you a picture of a lioness. Just when looking at her paw with the nails not in attack mode you see the comforting soft paw that loves on her babies. When defending her children, self, and area that paw changes into something powerful. It gives a glimpse on how we should be. We are the loving mom, wife, daughter, and sister. And when faced with a challenge we should be strong and ready to take on whatever we need to take on to keep our world safe.

Psalm 144: 12 calls us daughters to be like palace corner stones or pillars, which mean strength and support, a leader. Do you consider yourself strength? Support? A leader those around you? Are you ready to run the race God has set before you?

    Are you like a lioness that is aware of her surroundings, caring to those around her and ready to pounce on danger? Are you fearless? Do you start your day saying you will be attentive and productive or are you distracted, busy, and disconnected to your surroundings?

Wake up!

America is becoming desensitized to tragedy and violence. It is everywhere we turn: the news, movies, tv shows, video games, etc. Our kids are thinking nothing of shooting each other and why not, we allow them to play the video games that are desensitizing our youth.

We see so much tragedy around us, but honestly do we stop and actually shed a tear when we see 100s of family losing family members overseas in other countries or when we see starving babies on TV? We all need to WAKE UP and see what is going on around us and pray for people and ask God "How can I help? How can I make a difference?" I bet we would be surprised if we actually would wake up and ask!

God commanded us to love one another. We are to care for widows, orphans, and the poor. Do you have special widow that you have adopted to care for? An orphan? A poor family that you help? It is time to wake up and make a difference!

We need to wake up and take note of what is desensitizing us and make note and make a change!

Doing Good or Harm? Too busy for God?

"It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him." Genesis 2:18

Are we actually bringing good to our husband or harm?

As women, we can bring good to our husband, children, friends, co-workers, world… are we bringing good to those around us with our actions? Words? Do we bring encouragement?

Romans 13: 11-14 talks about waking up and not getting exhausted and distracted by day to day activities, but realizing God’s time is at hand. What have you done for God today? Are you stuck in your day to day rut?

This is honestly my weak area. I am a creature of routine and breaking out of my routine is really hard for me. After reading a different version of this chapter, it really hit home that I need to stop and listen and watch for God in my daily activities and break out of my routine to watch God working and to see what I can do for Him!

Lioness Arising

I just began reading the book Lioness Arising Wake Up and Change Your World by Lisa Bevere. I am just getting to the 2^nd chapter and already realizing this will be an easy book to read. It centers around Numbers 23:19-24. "These people rise up like a lioness, like a majestic lion rousing itself."

"If ever there comes a time when the women of the world come together purely and simply for the benefit of mankind, it will be a force such as the world has never known. ~ Matthew Arnold"

The 2^nd chapter begins with this quote. It really hits home when I read it. Us as women hear the saying "She is a force to be reckoned with." But if we stop to think, if all of us women would come together for the good, we really could change our world. We let ourselves believe lies that we aren’t good enough, we aren’t pretty enough, we aren’t strong enough, or we aren’t capable to do certain tasks, when really we are good enough!

We need to strive to be the loyal, trustworthy, caring people we are meant to be. Try to think of others and lend a helping hand. It is so easy to get caught up in the busyness of life. We need to step back as a woman and see how much just our attitude and actions are the main things that effect our husband, children, and the people around us. So my goal for today & future is try to encourage those around me, try to be dependable to my word so people will know they can rely on me, speak only positive, and trust God through my weakness.

Who is watching your life?

We never know when during our day to day same routine when we have people that watch to see how we live our life. Even as simply as telling someone you are going on a diet and trying this “diet plan” do you have a few people that secretly watch your life. It is when a certain one calls out of the blue to ask how long you have been doing “this plan” and actually says, well I will keep watching you and see how it goes. It makes you want to say – oh you have been watching me?

I know there are times in life we go through battles – ones that maybe only a few people know about or ones that the world knows about – that you have people watching your life. It is our choice daily to wake up and live for our Creator and do our very best and in those times pray we can be an example for HIM and let our light shine!

God Given Friends

A friend and I sat and laughed through tears this morning. In 8 months we have become the best of friends. We met at our church Christmas party. God guided our steps and probably laughed at us as He watched his handiwork. She was complaining to her husband that she did NOT want to go to the party with him. I tried to get my husband to sit at another table b/c "I didn’t know that couple." Now today, we know without a doubt God guided our lives and steps so we would meet on that night! We each are learning things to strengthen our faith and using our past experiences to help each other. Thank you Lord for all my friends you have carefully picked and guided my way, and thank you for guiding my steps that December night.

What comes out your of mouth?

I woke up this morning with a song of praise in my mind! It is great to wake up praising God! It is so cool when my friend emailed me that she woke up with the SAME song coming from her mouth! There were 2 people praising God with the same song! I really believe listening to praise music really penetrates our soul and the words of our mouth are examples of what is in our heart!

When you stump your toe – What words come out of your mouth?

Here is the verse on my daily devotion this morning:
"No foul language is to come from your mouth, but only what is good for building up someone in need."Ephesians 4:29

Do you know someone that always tries to speak words of only positive things? I have a sweet elderly man that I am friends with that tries to live up to this verse daily. Even if he has the most horrible food given to him, he finds a way not to be negative. What a great way to be.

I do believe as a wife she would never speak negatively of our husbands. Now as humans that is hard to do. It is always easy to blow off steams to friends. I believe as wives we should always try to respect and appreciate our husbands even when they get on our last nerves. If we keep a positive word in our mouth about them and pray for them often, I believe our relationship with our husband would be better. (A goal of mine!)

So here’s to an ongoing goal to try to not to let negative words enter my conversations….

May God give me strength and guidance!

Our Steady Constant in life

I have recently gotten into reading Amish fiction. I love getting away in their world to see how simple God really intended our life to be. We need to strive to keep life simple and rely on God’s words for answers. This world is going crazy around us, but God is our steady constant.