Faith of the Nativity

As I sit here in my chair, off to my left I see my nativity set.   I love my nativity set, it is one that has, carved on each person, the scripture that goes with that person’s part of the Christmas story.  Today, as I looked at it, I was struck with some very powerful and deep thoughts; I feel compelled to share these thoughts and believe there is at least one person out there that needs to hear the message.

As I look at each character I think about the level of faith that each person in this incredible story had to have.  Mary was given word that she would give birth to the Son of God.  I imagine, as the story tells, that she was very afraid.  I mean, she was 15 or 16, a virgin and engaged to be married…now she is pregnant.  Imagine, as the angel came to her and told her what was going to happen, the level of faith she had to have in God that all things would work out perfectly.  Joseph, the man who was engaged to Mary, gets word that his virgin fiancée is pregnant and he is to raise this child as his son.  Think about the faith Joseph had to have in God to endure the ridicule that I am sure he and Mary would face as this story unfolded.  The shepherds were in their fields, watching their animals, just minding their own business when angels appeared to them.  These angels told them of the birth of Jesus and that they were to go to where He was and worship Him.  Imagine, for a moment, the faith that it took these shepherds to leave their home, their livestock and their families to worship a King that angels in the sky told them about.  Think about how crazy they must have looked to the people around them.  Then you have the wisemen.  Yes, they were originally sent, by the king, to get information about this Royal Baby.  Imagine the faith these wisemen had to have to go find this King and realize Who He was, give Him gifts and then bow to Him in worship; their loyalties and bows should have been reserved for the king who sent them to this baby (according to their customs) and they could have been killed for bowing to another, yet they did it anyway.  Then there is Jesus…Yes, I know He is the Son of God and is perfect; surely at some point, though, He may have questioned His Father’s plan to save the world with a baby.  The faith that Jesus had in His Father, God, to come to Earth as a baby, be born in a manger to a virgin.  Every aspect of this incredible story relied on total and complete faith in God.  Imagine if even one person or group of people in this story didn’t have faith that God knew what He was doing. 

As I write this, I think about all of the situations in my personal story; situations where great faith was required from me.  There have been times where faith was required and I certainly waivered and took my focus off of God; times when I didn’t trust that God knew what He was doing in my story.  Then I go back to this incredible faith story of the birth of Jesus; if even one of those people didn’t have faith the story could have ended very differently.  These people lived in a time where they could have been ridiculed and even killed for following God’s plan, yet they just followed.  No one has ever tried to kill me for my faith, yet I struggle to trust God.  As I sit and look at my nativity set and think about this story, I think about the usual things that come with this story…you know, the virgin birth, the wisemen following a star, the angels who appeared to Mary, Joseph and the shepherds.  Today, I realized there was a huge part of the story that I have always overlooked…the faith part! 

So, as I write this, my prayer is to be more like Mary; my prayer is to have the faith of Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the wisemen and even Jesus.  Imagine how our stories would unfold if we had the faith of each  of these people!  So, this Christmas season, as we attend church services and parties, remember to look at the nativity…look really close at each character.  Remember the faith that these amazing people had!  Remember to carry the faith of each of these people into your story! 

MARY

Luke 1:26-35, 38 (MSG)  “In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to the Galilean village of Nazareth to a virgin engaged to be married to a man descended from David.  His name was Joseph, and the virgin’s name, Mary.  Upon entering, Gabriel greeted her: Good morning!  You’re beautiful with God’s beauty, Beautiful inside and out!  God be with you.  She was thoroughly shaken, wondering what was behind a greeting like that.  But the angel assured her, “Mary, you have nothing to fear.  God has a surprise for you: You will become pregnant and give birth to a son and call his name Jesus.  He will be great, be called ‘Son of the Highest.’  The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David; He will rule Jacob’s house forever-no end, ever, to his kingdom.”  Mary said to the angel, “But how?  I’ve never slept with a man.”  The angel answered, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, the power of the Highest hover over you; Therefore, the child you bring to birth will be called Holy, Son of God…And Mary said, Yes, I see it all now: I’m the Lord’s maid, ready to serve.  Let it be with me just and you say.”

JOSEPH

Matthew 1:20-25 (MSG)  “While he was trying to figure a way out, he had a dream.  God’s angel spoke in the dream: “Joseph, son of David, don’t hesitate to get married.  Mary’s pregnancy is Spirit-conceived.  God’s Holy Spirit has made her pregnant.  She will bring a son to birth, and when she does, you, Joseph, will name him Jesus-‘God saves’-because he will save his people from their sins.”  This would bring the prophet’s embryonic sermon to full term: Watch for this-a virgin will get pregnant and bear a son; They will name him Immanuel (Hebrew for “God is with us”).  Then Joseph woke up.  He did exactly what God’s angel commanded in the dream: He married Mary.  But he did not consummate the marriage until she had the baby.  He named the baby Jesus.”

 SHEPHERDS

Luke 2:15-18 (MSG)  “As the angel choir withdrew into heaven, the sheepherders talked it over.  “Let’s get over to Bethlehem as fast as we can and see for ourselves what God has revealed to us.”  They left, running, and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger.  Seeing was believing.  They told everyone they met what the angels had said about this child.  All who heard the sheepherders were impressed.”

WISEMEN

Matthew 2:9-12 (MSG)  “Instructed by the king, they set off.  Then the star appeared again, the same star they had seen in the eastern skies.  It led them on until it hovered over the place of the child.  They could hardly contain themselves: They were in the right place!  They had arrived at the right time!  They entered the house and saw the child in the arms of Mary, his mother.  Overcome, they kneeled and worshipped him.  Then they opened their luggage and presented gifts: gold, frankincense, myrrh.  In a dream, they were warned not to report back to Herod.  So they worked out another route, left the territory without being seen, and returned to their own country.”

THE BIRTH OF JESUS

John 1:14 (MSG)  “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.  We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish.”

Hold Up The Light

Sunday night our church had an incredible worship service and I truly believe that lives were changed; I know mine was.  The following is what I feel was spoken to my heart and spirit during this service.

I am sure most of us recall the stories of the Bible that captured the lives of the Israelites in the wilderness!  We read, in the Bible, the story of them being freed from slavery in Egypt, their escape through a DRY Red Sea, and being fed manna from heaven.  I have read and heard these stories my entire life and never received a revelation from these stories until Sunday night! 

Let’s just review: After the Israelites were freed from Egypt they instantly started complaining because the traveling was hard; they told Moses that God brought them out just for them to die.  After they walked on DRY LAND through the Red Sea, they once again complained that God brought them out to die.  Even as God dropped manna from heaven…they doubted God’s plan.  Now that we have that reviewed I can tell you what was spoken so clearly to me Sunday night and what I “saw”.

Most people reading this know about what all we have been through with Felicity’s health and know what a fight we have had.  For us, receiving word that she was going deaf felt like a punch in the gut.  I am not gonna lie and say that I didn’t doubt God.  I definitely have had moments where I just threw my hands up, crying and asked God “Are you serious?  Haven’t you seen what all she has already endured?  Why her?  Why can’t she just be left alone?”  Overall, in my heart, I knew there was a plan and a purpose, but I was so angry at the fact that she was having to face yet another issue.  Felicity already feels so “abnormal” because of previous and current health stuff and now this was just one more thing to make her feel “abnormal”.  It made me so angry that I just wanted to scream.  In fact, I had several heated conversations with God about this.  Dale and I said we would take our cues from Felicity about how to help her and what she needed from us to be able to deal with this new challenge; that didn’t mean that I couldn’t be a little, ok a lot, ticked off about it.  In my heart I knew that God did not put this on Felicity because He is a perfect God and is totally incapable of giving His children bad things; I KNEW this was from the enemy and I was determined that he wouldn’t win.  Sunday, during worship something in my head and heart began to overwhelm me.  I began to weep and my anger turned into sheer determination to let the enemy know that he was losing.  I was reminded that that enemy tried to kill Felicity in 2004, but she lived because she had not fulfilled her purpose yet!  I was reminded about 2010 when she was so sick and malnourished, living on death’s door, that the Lord brought us to the exact doctor we needed that saved her life and told us what was making her sick.  I literally saw myself standing with the Israelites in the wilderness complaining, right alongside the Israelites.  I was standing there asking God why He saved Felicity from all she had been through over the last 8 years only to bring her to another “wilderness”.  Then I felt as if a hand went over my mouth telling me to “stop, wait and listen”.  So, I stood there in the middle of worship and I stopped singing and I just listened; I focused on every word being sung and every word spoken.  I cannot even tell you what song was being sung, but I can tell you what happened to my heart…my heart shifted.  I wasn’t in the wilderness anymore, I was watching Felicity in a field in Africa doing what she KNOWS God has called her to do.  She still had Celiac Disease and yes, she was deaf, but she was still fulfilling her calling.  She was touching the lives of parents and children, both deaf and hearing.  They were thanking God for her and she was praying blessing over every patient.  Suddenly, I saw everything we had seen her go through and remembered the time when she told us that she had seen angels.  Then I felt the hand lift off of my mouth and I started crying while I almost shouted whatever song it was that we were singing.  I felt the Holy Spirit speak so very clearly to me that the angels she saw are angels that are still completely surrounding her.  That God used everything that has happened with her health as a tool for us to minister to others and has made her such an amazingly strong young woman of God.  I thought back to every person we had spoken to or shared Felicity’s story with that told us how much it ministered to them.  I knew, during the service, that Felicity was working in the kids area and I "saw" her in with the angels around her.  The vision of her in Africa…the angels were around her.  Going through all of the tests for her hearing…the angels were around her.  I was reminded that her having Celiac Disease didn’t mean she couldn’t do things…it meant she did things different.  We always told Felicity that she was just like the other teens her age, she just had to do some things a bit different.  Being deaf, whether partially or fully, didn’t mean she couldn’t do things…it meant she would do things differently.  Yes, we have friends who are deaf and I have seen them do “normal” life, but it wasn’t until this moment that I finally “got it”.  I no longer was seeing this as a sad time, but rather another challenge for us and we had to determine if we would let the enemy win with his attack or if we were going to allow God to use it as a ministry tool.  I then saw and felt the angels that were surrounding Felicity as they came to surround Dale and I.  We weren’t alone in this process…the same angels that protected Felicity with every attempt to snuff out her life, were the same angels that would protect Felicity and us as we fight through this next challenge.  With the angels surrounding us, there is no fear because any hit that comes our way…the angels take the hit on our behalf.  Our  job is to go through the challenge and show God’s light through it to those we come into contact with.  People will be placed in our path ON PURPOSE…specifically for US to minister too!  So the jobs during this challenge are as follows…God: fight the battle, Angels: protect us from flying arrows, US: keep holding the light up high to point to the One fighting the battle!  Immediately, I felt peace!

The point of this blog is not to weird people out about what I saw or what I feel the Holy Spirit spoke to me.  The point of this blog is to remind others that we will ALL face challenges; we have even faced them in the past.  In order for us to be facing challenges NOW, it means that we overcame the challenges from our past!  That means…we won!  The purpose of this blog is to encourage anyone facing any challenge right now to not focus on the challenge, but rather to focus on holding up your light to shine on the One who WILL fight the battle and WILL win the battle on your behalf!  After all, we are ALL surrounded by angels who are protecting us from the flying arrows so all we have to do is hold up the light!  Holding up the light is worshipping God even though we are in the heat of the battle, after all, God is fighting it anyway!  What about when the challenge is over?!  Well, we are still standing, which means we are still holding the light, which means we are still worshipping God!  Often times, we wait to hold up the light and worship God until AFTER we see that the battle is over and won.  True trust and faith KNOWS that God is fighting and KNOWS that He will win so we may as well start the celebration during the battle…after all…we are gonna win anyway!

EXTRAORDINARY YOU!

"God has had His eye on you since the beginning of time to do something so extraordinary through your life that even the angels would stand back in wonder and long to do what you were created to do!"

There are so many ways I can go about writing what is on my heart about this quote and I have struggled to find the right one.  So, I am just going to start and see where it leads.  (To be clear, this quote is not actual scripture, it is a quote from a devotional.  However, there is scripture that talks about these points.)

One morning this past week I woke up and read my devotion and this quote was in the middle of the devotional.  It struck me so hard that I couldn’t even focus on the scripture that went with it.  The first thing that struck me is “God has had His eye on you since the beginning of time…”  Notice that it doesn’t say “He has had His eye on you since you were conceived or since you were born.”  It says “Since the beginning of time.”  Wow!  God knew, before your parents were even thought of, what you were going to be and what you were going to do.  He has had a plan and a purpose for your life since the beginning of time!  That means that while He was creating the World He was thinking about YOU!  He was saying to Himself, about me, “Just wait until Heather comes along, angels, you are not even going to believe what I have in mind for her life.”  Seriously…God was thinking of me, He was thinking of YOU, even then!

As if that is not enough, the next part says “to do something so extraordinary through your life…”  God didn’t plan your life to be something ho-hum or run of the mill; He planned your life to be extraordinary!  And really…since God is such an extraordinary God…should we expect anything less?!  God doesn’t want us to just do something to get by or for people to glance our way or even to blend into the background while others take/get the credit.  NO, He planned for us to be extraordinary.  What does that mean?  Let’s look at that word, extraordinary: very unusual or remarkable; unusually great; uncommon; exceptional.  Seriously…that’s what that word means.  So, when God was creating the World, He was planning our lives and He was planning for us to be remarkable, unusually great, and exceptional!  He has had that in mind for us since the beginning of time!  I know a lot of times we all feel like we are so far from that and sometimes even feel we could never come close to meeting that expectation.  However, if God didn’t know we could reach that or become that, I bet He wouldn’t have planned that for us!  Since the beginning of time, before we existed even as a seed, God planned that we were going to be great!  One thing that strikes me about this is that we often don’t feel that way about ourselves when we look at our own lives, but God didn’t say we would be great to ourselves…He just said we would be great!  What we do, what we say or how we act may not seem great or extraordinary to us, but to someone in our world…we are indeed extraordinary.  Example: My daughter has a heart and passion to work with children.  I think she is awesome at it and many others have commented on her amazing gift with children.  But, if you ask her, she doesn’t think that she is doing anything extraordinary, she just knows she is doing what God called her to do!  (She knows she has been called to work with children.)  Now, listen to that again: “She doesn’t think she is doing anything extraordinary, she just knows she is doing what God called her to do.”  Exactly!  When we do what God has called us to do…we are, in fact, doing the extraordinary.  And each person’s extraordinary is different.  Example: I am in no way gifted with children.  I love them; I love to spend time with them, but in smaller doses!  However, ask me to organize pretty much anything and I am all over that and I can do it well!  That is my specific gifting.  That is something, I am told, that I do extraordinary.  I, like my daughter, don’t think it is anything special or extraordinary; I just know it is what I was created to do, so I do it!  THAT is what makes it extraordinary.  So, before we continue…take a minute and think about what God has called you to do or what God has placed a passion in you to do.  You got it?!  Do you know what that thing is?!  Now, do you do it?  Do you do it without even thinking about it simply because it is just who you are?!  THAT, my friend, is extraordinary!  That is what “God has had His eye on you since the beginning of time to do…”

Now for the next part.  “Even the angels would stand back in wonder and long to do what you were created to do!”  WOW!  Even the angels know that we are extraordinary; even without God telling them so.  The angels don’t have to be told that we were created to do great things; they simply look at us doing the very things we were created to do and they KNOW we are extraordinary!  In fact, they know we are so extraordinary that they actually long to do what we get to do!  Have you ever looked at someone and thought “Man would I love to do that!”?  Tell the truth…we all have done that at some point in our lives.  We look at a missionary who is spreading the gospel in some third world country and think about how great they are and how proud God must be of them.  Did you know that God is proud of you?!  Somewhere, there is someone who is looking at YOU and thinking that you are great and that God sure must be proud of you!  This quote even says that the angels look at us and think that!  One big point that I get from this section of the quote is that we often look at our own lives and we don’t see anything great; when we look at someone else’s life we see all kinds of greatness and wish we could be like them.  Reality is, you already are like them; maybe not in the sense that you are doing what they are doing, but you are like them in that you are doing what God has created you to do…therefore, what you are doing is great!

What I really pulled from this quote is this:  While God was creating His Universe, He was thinking about you and me!  God was thinking about the extraordinary things that we would do throughout our lives!  He was planning each extraordinary detail in such a way that when the angels looked down on us, they would long to be like us.  This doesn’t mean we are supposed to look at those around us and long to be like them.  The point of this, I believe, is that the angels already have everything; yet God created each one of us with so much care and purpose that even the angels look at us and are amazed!  If the angels look us in that way, shouldn’t we then see ourselves that way?  We need to quit comparing our lives to those around us and, instead, compare our lives to the plan and purpose that God planned for us “since the beginning of time”.  Don’t sell yourself short! If you are doing exactly what God created you to do…you are indeed extraordinary! 

Read the quote again, with everything I have just said in mind.  Let this soak into your very being!  Next time you doubt yourself or even doubt what God is doing in your life…remember this quote!  Remember that YOU ARE EXTRAORDINARY!

“God has had His eye on you since the beginning of time to do something so extraordinary through your life that even the angels would stand back in wonder and long to do what you were created to do!”

My thoughts on gift/card giving for Valentine's Day and other holidays...could save you & your loved one money and stress

For years now, my husband and I have had a tradition that may sound a little odd to some and practical to others; today, I am going to share our “little secret”!

Several years ago, we realized that we would hand each other a card for some special occasion, set it on the table for several days, then throw it away (we don’t keep that stuff because it stresses us out to have boxes of those things just collecting dust).  What a total waste of $3-5 for Valentine’s Day, Birthdays, Anniversaries, etc.  Besides, we much prefer just being together.  So, for these holidays, we go to the store, select a card we would give each other if we could pick ANY CARD in the store, hand it to the other to read, and place it back on the shelf.  No money spent, no clutter, and no guilt for throwing it away.  After a bit of doing this we realized that we were also spending money on gifts for each other and over time, we just didn’t know what to do with these things.  So we began doing a couple of things differently for gifts: 1) IF we are going to buy a gift, we wait until the day after the holiday and purchase it on sale!  Sound tacky?!  I cannot even begin to tell you how much money we have saved by doing this.  To me, I don’t care if the gift comes on Valentine’s day, what is important to me is that he took the time to select something to show how much he loves me (I kind of find the saving money part pretty hot anyway!lol)  Now, before some of you go a little crazy on me about this…we DO NOT do this for our anniversary!  These we take VERY seriously and plan a special weekend or night “away” at a nice hotel in town and try to do something we haven’t done together before (one year we went for massages)!  We don’t mind spending money at a nicer hotel, because we have saved money by not buying cards and by purchasing gifts 50%-75% off and because our hotel is typically in the same town we live…we don’t spend money on travel!  2)  If we decide not to purchase a gift for each other, I may cook him his favorite meal or he may pick a movie he knows is MY favorite for us to watch. 

The idea for this may seem like we are cheap or don’t love each other, but it is really quite the opposite; we love each other so much that it is more important to us to save money to help our finances…then we are less stressed…what a great gift, right?!  PLUS, we have always felt that we should show each other, in special ways, how much we love each other EVERYDAY rather than wait for these special holidays that society has dictated as the day we must give lavish gifts to our loves. 

Yes, this thought process started out of necessity because we were struggling financially, but it stuck after a while and now we love the challenge of trying to find the PERFECT gift and seeing how much we can save while buying that perfect gift!  It’s like a little treasure hunt and has become a fun little thing.  Does this mean that Dale never buys me flowers?  No, he buys me flowers occasionally, but he RARELY buys them on a specific day of symbolism but rather on a random “nothing” day. On the rare occasion that he does get me something ON the actual day…it is a great surprise because we never do it so we aren’t expecting it!   Do I give him special gifts or cook his favorite meal?  Yes I do, again, RARELY on these special days but rather on the random “nothing” days.

Do I disagree with people giving gifts during special times?  NOT AT ALL!  But, when you are on a tight budget and can’t afford a gift on these special days…let yourself off the hook!  The world will NOT end if you don’t give a gift ON that specific day or if you don’t give a gift at all!  If you and your loved one are on the same page with gift/card giving then it actually takes pressure off and relieves a lot of stress that doesn’t belong in a relationship anyway!