please pray for pinny

A friend of mine from college has a beautiful niece named Pinny.
Pinny needs your prayers.
Please check out this blog and join me in prayer for this sweet baby and her parents.

Thank you.

"…The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective" (James 5:16).

Easter Greetings

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter season celebrating the death and resurrection of our Lord.

We cannot even begin to fathom the importance of the events that took place during that special weekend.

Because Jesus died for our sins on the cross, if we believe in Him and ask Him into our lives . . .

. . . we will live forever with Him in Heaven.

What a wonderful gift!!

Please don't let life go on another minute without receiving the gift of eternal life that Jesus has given to you.

Ask Him to forgive your sins and enter in.  It is the most important thing you could ever do.

God loves you enough that He sent His Son to die for you.

Happy Easter!!

xox

cheryl

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

John 3:16 

favorites on friday

My favorite this Friday is this Friday . . . Good Friday.
Today we remember the greatest gift of all:
"I owed a debt I could not pay,
He paid a debt He did not owe."

wonderful way to teach the Easter story

Today, I bought some Resurrection Eggs from Hobby Lobby for half off. 
That is only $8.00.

If you have never heard of Resurrection Eggs before, they are a wonderful tool to help teach your children about the Easter story.

They come with a story booklet that gives a scripture passage and little story for each egg.

Some examples of what the eggs contain are . . .

a donkey that Jesus rode into town on,

a crown of thorns,

a cross,

and of course, nothing to represent the empty tomb.

Luke and I went through each egg today and he was so riveted the entire time . . . excited to see what was in the next egg and what it represented.

I highly recommend these eggs!

You can get them here for $12.99 ($4 cheaper than Amazon)if you do not have a Hobby Lobby nearby.

You can also get them at your local Christian Book Store or church bookstore. (I think WalMart also sells them.)

CAN

I just had to share this with you.

Choosing to SEE

I just returned home from a ladies salad supper at the kids' school.
Everyone brought a delicious salad to share.
The speaker was Steven Curtis Chapman's wife, Mary Beth.
Wow.

My heart is full.
 

She spoke about her loss (of her little daughter, Maria) and her faith in God (the Healer).

She spoke about her struggles with clinical depression.

She spoke about her marriage to Steven Curtis and her passion for international adoption.

After the Chapmans tragically lost their daughter, Steven and their son, Caleb, began fervently praying, "God, we know you're in this, but we're so confused and hurt.  You've got to show us something tangible so we can know Maria's with You! Please, we need to SEE You in this, please let us SEE!"

Well . . . look what Steven found on their little art table.

A flower that Maria had drawn and what do you think it said on the other side??  . . . "SEE".

Wow.

The funny thing is that Maria was in preschool and hadn't written words like that . . . just I love you and names.


And the flower . . . it had six petals (one for each family member) and only one petal was colored in . . . Maria's favorite color, blue.


Mary Beth clings to that drawing and message and she is confident that her little Maria is safe with Jesus.

I love how God works.

Each one of us received a copy of her book, Choosing to SEE and I am so excited to start reading it.

"He has torn us to pieces

but He will heal us;

He has injured us

but He will bind up our wounds."

Hosea 6:1

Shine

One of my favorite blogs, Joy's Hope, posted this video today and I wanted to share it with you.
The kids and I enjoyed watching it several times.
I love the music and the message, and of course, the Lite Brites.
:)
Enjoy.
p.s. click on the lower right button to see it full screen . . . oh, and you may need some tissues nearby (sniff, sniff)

Always Pray and Never Give Up

Yesterday, my 10-year-old son, Jake, had a baseball game.
He pitched great, but he was not happy at all with his hitting. 
Actually, he was downright sad, mad, and depressed about it . . .

When I was putting him to bed, he looked at me and said,

"Mom, the thing that bothers me the most was that I was praying so hard that God would let me hit the ball really well and He never answered me."

Silence . . .

I explained to him that God heard his prayer, but for some reason was not wanting to let that happen.

We didn't have our usual book to read that night since we had already finished it, so I pulled a random book off the bottom shelf of his bookcase.  At first, he said he didn't want me to read it, but I opened it anyway.  It was a book  of stories that went along with parables in the Bible that my mom had given to Jake. I was curious to see what it was like.

I started reading.

I turned to a story about a girl who had been praying for something and God just didn't seem to be answering her. 

(um . . .hello!)

Jake was very interested now . . .

I continued reading about how this little girl waited and waited and kept on praying until God finally did answer her prayer.  He answered her prayer in a way that was different than how she had everything planned out, but it turned out to be for the best and she was very happy.

The parable that it paralleled was the "Parable of the Persistent Widow" (I didn't remember ever reading about this, so I looked it up)  It is found in Luke 18.  (verses 1 -8) A persistent person is someone who never gives up.  The woman in this parable had a problem that she wanted a mean and selfish judge to solve for her.  She kept on asking him about this problem until the judge got so tired of the woman bothering him that he did what she wanted.  If a selfish judge would help someone just to get rid of the person, how much more will God help his own children? 

God wants us to keep talking to Him about the things that worry and bother us. 

He cares about us very much and He never gets tired of hearing from us.

These verses tell us not to give up hope. 

We should keep believing and keep praying. 

It is wonderful to know that all of our prayers are being heard.  Our good Lord is always listening.

 

Always.

He will do what is best when the time is right.

Jake felt better just knowing that God wanted me to read that book to him at the right moment.  His cute freckled face was smiling just knowing that God was speaking to him at that moment and all was well. 
He was asleep within minutes.

Here is the book that I read to him . . . It was written by James Dobson and his daughter, Danae.

Attributes of God

The other night, Jake was working on an interesting assignment for school.

He had to come up with as many attributes of God as he could.

I was delighted to see how much Jake enjoyed this task. I could see that he was actually worshipping God as he was thinking of these different attributes.

He sat at the kitchen table so happily working. He kept singing Christian songs that he always hears on the radio (K-Love) and at church because they reminded him of more attributes. I think he did a lovely job.

:)

Here are some closer shots so you can actually read some of them.