Sacred Scraps

We made it!  The weekend was full of laughing, crying, sharing, fellowshipping, loving each other, and worshiping our God!  Our speaker hit us right where are hearts are.  Our ladies shared the shadows of their hearts.  The workshops taught us how each scrap has a place.  And all in all, we learned that nothing is deemed worthless when we hand it over to our precious Father.

Thank you to each lady who helped this weekend.  Hearts were touched because of your faithfulness.  Thank you to each lady who shared their lives with us.  Your stories are God’s stories, and your willingness to share brought Him glory.

Sacred Scraps… we made a beautiful quilt this weekend!!!

Here We Go!!!

David Guzik is a commentator who can be found on blueletterbible.org.  On John 15 he wrote, “The joy of Jesus is not the pleasure of a life of ease; it is the exhilaration of being right with God and consciously walking in His love and care.”  I love that!  You know, as hard as the hard times are, I am never closer to God than when I have to lean on Him!  I can get so caught up in doing it myself when I’m at a green pasture point in my life.

We are just over 24 hours away from our ladies’ retreat!  A few of us are heading to the hotel in a couple of hours, and the rest of the ladies will join us tomorrow and Saturday.  My prayer is that God will bless the weekend, and that He will bless each ladies’ heart.  He is an amazing God, and I can hardly wait to see how He works!  This entire weekend has been lifted up in prayer for months, as well as each lady attending by name.  As a friend of mine texted me this morning: Let’s hang on to Him and each other and live in His joy every step of the way!

Oasis

In just over a week we will be heading to our bi-annual ladies’ retreat.  I’ll spare you the details (you can find them on the retreat portion of the website), but I want to share a little bit about what the retreat has meant to me over the last six months of preparation.

There are hundreds of details surrounding a retreat.  You have to put a leadership team together.  Then each member of the leadership team needs to put their own team together.  There are meetings to schedule, which involves having all of your ducks in a row (not an easy feat).  There are songs to choose, activities to plan, catering to arrange.  There is registration to run, contracts to be negotiated, and welcome packets to create.  We have sound systems to set up, candy bars to arrange, games to plan, and guests to be greeted.  We have prayers to be prayed on behalf of every woman coming, a speaker to take care of, and memories to be captured.  Whew!

The details can take over!  And let me assure you, were it not for the amazing leadership team helping out, the details would be forgotten more often than not (Thank you!).  My prayer since last August, when we first started putting ideas and teams together, has been that God would be glorified.  That this retreat would be a ministry and not an event.  But, to be honest, I have found myself getting caught up in the details and the worries that go along with planning an event this size.  Countless times throughout Scripture we are told to pray in all things.  While I haven’t found an hour to set aside each day to lift this event up in prayer, I have been able to (for the most part) incorporate prayer into a part of who I am with this event.  Can I stop and take a time out?  Not often!  Can I make prayer a part of who I am?  Absolutely!  And when I am able to do this, then it truly can be an Oasis for me

The God of Comfort

Have you ever been right at the heart of grief and had someone tell you that grief is wrong?  That to struggle is to sin?  I know I have!  I know that I have even come across that way when talking to friends of my own who are grieving.  There’s a fine line that can be hard to find when you are trying to offer hope to someone you love who is struggling with heartache.

2 Corinthians 4:7-9 says, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.  We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed…”

We are pretty much guaranteed that we, as Christians, will suffer in this life.  If Christ Himself was persecuted, why should we expect to avoid that pain?  Notice what Paul and his companions were: afflicted in every way, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down.  It sounds pretty bad to me!  Have you ever felt that way?  Have you ever experienced “getting hit from all sides”?  That is part of life this side of heaven!  Life is not easy… but notice what they were not: crushed, driven to despair, forsaken, and destroyed.  Their experiences were full of pain and struggle and persecution.  But it did not crush them.  It did not drive them to despair.  It did not destroy them.  Why?  Because God never forsook them!  No matter the pain, no matter the trials, no matter the heartache, God was right there by their side.  Sometimes Paul was persecuted by his enemies, and sometimes by fellow believers.  God was still right there.  And the simple fact that his God was by His side helped him to acknowledge the pain but not let it lead him to despair.  Why?  How?  ”So we do not lose heart.  Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.  For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look to the things that are unseen.  For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (v. 16-18).