12 Days of Holiday Traditions I Love: Day 11 Candlelight Service

As Christmas approaches the anticipation grows. That is what I love about the candlelight service. It focuses our minds and hearts on what exactly we are anticipating. As the 10 virgins awaited the bridegroom in the parable, we reflect on the first coming of Christ and anxiously await his second coming. The gorgeous candles symbolize this and Christ, the light of the world.

That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world. John 1:9

Jesus was born over two thousand years ago into a dark and sinful world. He brough light and hope. This is what we celebrate at Christmas and there is no better way to focus on this than to attend a candle light service on Christmas Eve.

image from crossroadschurchroselake.blogspot.com

And the Rain Comes Down...

The only planting I accomplished Saturday!

It always amazes me how the weekend can fill me up with new ideas for writing! Saturday we had plans to work in our yard. We started our day by going to our daughter's soccer game and then went to the store to buy the things we needed to begin shaping our gardens for the spring (tomorrow's the first day of spring!).  No sooner had we gotten back and I began picking up branches out of the yard with the kids, that it started sprinkling. Stubbornly, I sent the kids inside and began planting one of the shrubs I had bought. It began to hail. I figured it was a day for indoor projects.
Isn't that so much like our real lives? Sometimes, it starts sprinkling and sometimes we get stubborn even though we see the signs that God wants us going in a different direction. And sometimes, God decides to get our attention even if it hurts, and He sends the hail. We must always keep in mind that God knows what He's doing, even if we don't. I love the rain and how God can cleanse all the grass, plants and trees with that rain, giving them color and life and water. This is how the figurative rain in our lives work. After it is over we find that we have been purified and are refreshed with Everlasting Water flowing through us. We must hold strong in faith. One of my favorite songs is Stand in the Rain, by Superchick, which expresses this exact idea. We must stand in faith through the rainstorms and hailstorms in our lives.
Oswald Chambers gives us a beautiful picture of what this type of faith is like:

A life of faith is not a life of one glorious mountaintop experience after another, like soaring on eagles' wings, but is a life of day-in and day-out consistency; a life of walking and not fainting (see Isaiah 40:31). --My Utmost for His Highest, March 19

Our plans are so unlike God's plans. We must give up what we want to accomplish (working in the yard) and conform our will to God's will (coming inside and going through boxes of hand-me-down clothes). We may not know why, but if we know our God, we know that His plans are always better than ours.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." --Jeremiah 29:11

So pack that umbrella with you today, dear sister, and be ready to respond in faith when those storms come!

Dream a Little Dream

From the time I was eight years old, my dream was to go to Africa one day.  I wanted to see the beauty of the land, the people, the animals. I read books about it, watched movies about it, and even made a scrapbook of the animals I would find there. It was my "before I die..." request.
The summer I was nineteen, I stepped foot off of a plane into Kimberley, South Africa. The feeling I felt I can only assume is the feeling of one's dream coming true.  I spent six weeks in South Africa that summer with a missions team working with the people in different countries throughout the country.  Cape Point was forever written in my mind as the most beautiful place on earth.  I left a portion of my heart there (forever). I returned again three years later.

I feel extremely blessed to have attained my life dream when I was only nineteen years old. Many reach the end of their lives without ever having done so. What I have learned about attaining dreams, however, is that they don't stop once you've reached them; they grow. My dream then became a desire to serve in South Africa full time (one that I have not yet attained).
Often, as mothers especially, we feel that we must exchange our dreams for reality. In a sense, we do. Yet, I feel that it is more in pursuit of a bigger dream. "I will not pursue my dream of ____________, because I want to devote my time to raising up my children to follow Christ wholeheartedly, to be well-educated, and to have a strong family environment in which to live, and my dream would not attain that higher goal." Does that mean that we shouldn't dream, or that our dreams don't matter? No. It simply means, as Rudyard Kipling so eloquently put it in his poem If,

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;

then you are able to reach for something much higher than where your dreams could have ever taken you! Dreaming allows us to realize the potential that we have in our lives. The key is to understand that our dreams are so limited and "small-scale" to the plans that God has for us.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11

Don't allow the burdens of the everyday life cause you to lose your dreams. Take hold of those dreams as something that God has wired inside of you for some purpose, for some reason that is yet to be explained. I believe there are several ways in which He equips us for His service - by experiences, by knowledge, and by passions and dreams. So today, DREAM BIG! Just don't make dreams your master, for there is only one that belongs on that seat!

Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4

Not Be Tired by Waiting

This week we are discussing Rudyard Kipling's poem If and how we can apply it to our lives!  Today I want to focus on one line of his poem:

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Waiting on God can be one of the most exhausting times in our life.  It is during these times of waiting that we truly need Christ to fill our cup.  Yet if we can have the right understanding of our situation, we will see that there is purpose in our waiting.  Oswald Chambers shares with us in My Utmost for His Highest,

When God brings a time of waiting, and appears to be unresponsive, don't fill it with busyness, just wait.  The time of waiting may come to teach you the meaning of sanctification - to be set apart from sin and made holy - or it may come after the process of sanctification has begun to teach you what service means. (January 4)

I can recall during one particular time of waiting in my life, I felt broken and abandoned.  I cried out to God daily to reach down and break open the flood gates that were holding back that living flow from Him that I so desperately needed! Looking back I can see the wonders of what He was doing in my life and in my husband's.  He was trying us by fire, so to speak.  It was our time of wandering in the desert so that His Spirit could sanctify us and prepare us for the work He had for us.  What followed?  We entered into youth ministry.

God has so many blessings stored up for you, but like any good parent, He will give them to you when the time is right and only He knows when that is.  He may have plans for you that are bigger than anything you can conceive right now.  He may have an opportunity for you through someone that you haven't even met yet!  If you are single, He may just be preparing you for that "special person" so that your future marriage can be strong and united in Him!  There are so many reasons why God may be silent right now. Yet in His Word, He gives us direction and hope for times like these:

He says, "Be still and know that I am God;" -Psalm 46:10

and

Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me; -Psalm 23:4

Wait patiently today, friend.  God will never abandon you or leave you alone.