Category Archives: Diaries of the Heart

Diaries of the Heart

IT’S ALL ABOUT JESUS

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7229704918_1a96ff5db6_qI was sitting in church this morning and I am ashamed to admit that I didn’t really want to be there.

I was extremely tired as I can image all our family members were. It wasn’t because we had been partying or anything like that, we had spent the last two days processing 9 pigs and 1 cow for our freezers.

So I was sitting there thinking that I would rather be at home in bed and I was also a bit miffed at some things that have been happening in our church.

As I was sitting there stewing over my not wanting to be there and my attitude and all of a sudden I thought, what am I thinking.

Church and worship isn’t about me, or how tired I am or how peeved I am at people. Church and worship is about Jesus and giving our hearts to Him.

It is all about JESUS. Full stop, no commas, just plain about JESUS.

Boy did I need to get over myself and my attitudes.

Jesus is what it is all about, not the petty little things or the big things that annoy us.

IT IS ALL ABOUT JESUS

Revelation 4:8-11  The four living creatures, each having six wings, were full of eyes around and within. And they do not rest day or night, saying: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, Who was and is and is to come!”  Whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, who lives forever and ever,  the twenty-four elders fall down before Him who sits on the throne and worship Him who lives forever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying:  “You are worthy, O Lord, To receive glory and honor and power; For You created all things, And by Your will they exist and were created.”

(and yes I did get over my attitude)

Blessings

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Diaries of the Heart

WHEN THE RUBBER HITS THE ROAD

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I must admit when the rubber hits the road it is easier to write about our Christian journey than to live it.

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When we write about it, we can make it shine, we can imagine that we are almost there. Then the rubber hits the road.

It seems almost as soon as we have written about it we are challenged by that same thing.

The rubber hits the road.

When we talk about how God is blessings us with our finances and helping us make ends meet the ends start getting further apart and work starts to drop off and then we struggle to pay all the bills.

The rubber hits the road.

When we write about how God has brought us to a place where we are happy a place where we are content with our lives, discontentment starts to rear it’s ugly head.

The rubber hits the road.

When we write about our vitality for life and how excited we are with our homeschooling studies for our children. The vitality wanes and we find ourselves tired.

The rubber hits the road.

I am not saying that what I have been writing about has been lies or life isn’t as good as what I have said.  Our life is good, when you look past the everyday struggles that we all seem to face.

When we are challenged, the rubber hits the road, that is part of a good life because we are then challenged to rely on God more and more and less of ourselves.

So if I need to be challenged to rely on God and loose myself (dare I say it) I am willing to be challenged and molded, because I am nothing and God is everything and I want to rely on Him.

When the rubber hits the road, God comes along and scrapes me up and gives me more things to write about and hopefully it will be new things and new challenges.

Hopefully I will have learnt from the last scraping up and I won’t have to be challenged by that again.

Here’s hoping.

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Psalms 145:14 The LORD sustains all who fall And raises up all who are bowed down

 

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Diaries of the Heart

WE ARE ALL THE SAME

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There is something that never ceases to amaze me each week. As I read through different posts I see a similar thread running through them.

We are all the same, we are all going through things, trials, or we have been through trials that bring us to our knees.

We aren’t all suffering from cancer, we all haven’t lost a child or a baby through still birth. Some of us have spouses that are terminally ill, or children with disabilities.  We haven’t all been dealt the same card but we are dealt from the same pack, the pack of life.

We have all felt anger, bitterness, unforgiveness, self-doubt, self-pity. We have probably all asked God the same question “why”.

I remember when our daughter died at 26 weeks gestation and we were at the funeral home and I was holding my daughter for the last time. In my grief I asked God “why”, I wondered if I wasn’t a good enough mother, or I had done something wrong. This was grief real and so very painful.

As the fog of grief gradually lifted, I had no definite answers to my “why” question but I did realise that my thinking was only that, thoughts with no basis.

I am pretty sure that you too have asked the same questions and received no answer.

But as we are all the same when it comes to going through tough times, we have one more thing in common.

The most important thing that we have in common as Christians is our God.  He is the same for you and for me.  He doesn’t answer all our “why” questions here on earth,

We must remember that He is always going to be there for us when we are going through these tough times.

When family members are ill, He is there. When our children are taken from us, He is there. When we are financially broken, He is there.

So through our grief, He is the one who is there, carrying us, caring for us and never leaving us.

As we cling to Him remember – He is our God, He created us, He knows us, and as for all the “why” questions, when we see Him as our God, we won’t really need to know the answers.

So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross,
Till my trophies at last I lay down;
I will cling to the old rugged cross,
And exchange it someday for a crown.

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Diaries of the Heart

WHAT REALLY IS FAMILY

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We were watching a DVD of the Waltons the other day and it was the one when the gypsies were around and spent time camping at the Walton’s house.

John Walton was talking to the gypsy father and they were discussing the fact that the gypsy family would travel all over the place and never had a place to settle down and to call home.

The gypsy father said that home to them wasn’t about a building or a place, but it was about family, about the people around them.

This definitely got me thinking, home isn’t about the building we live in.  Home isn’t the size of our house or how many bedrooms we have.

Home isn’t about how many acres we live on or how many bathrooms we have.

Home is about the people around us, the people we love.

A house is built of brick and stone a home is built of love alone.

3003280674_9a2e2181d1_q (1)So don’t put the value of your home on the building but on the people around you that you love, that is family.

Blessings xxx

 

 

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Diaries of the Heart

GREAT IS THY FAITHFULNESS

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Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father;
there is no shadow of turning with thee;
thou changest not, thy compassions, they fail not;
as thou hast been thou forever will be.
Refrain:
Great is thy faithfulness! Great is thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see;
all I have needed thy hand hath provided;
great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

Summer and winter and springtime and harvest,
sun, moon and stars in their courses above
join with all nature in manifold witness
to thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.    Refrain

Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth
thy own dear presence to cheer and to guide;
strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,
blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!     Refrain

This hymn has been going around in my head for a couple of days now.

I just think that God’s faithfulness is great, that he cares for us in all seasons of our lives, that He is watching over us at all times.

God blessed our children this past week with Encouragement Awards at the Eisteddfod we attended. These awards are funds to help with their music tuition. This was such a blessings as we have been behind with their music fees this year.

We couldn’t believe it, and we were so excited and thankful. I was sitting there as they were getting ready to announce the awards thinking “Oh Lord it would be wonderful it one of the children won one”, but I didn’t think it would happen.  Not because I didn’t think God could do it but because there were so many other children who played so well and were deserving of an award.

So when they both won one, it was wonderful.

As our oldest daughter said God blessed the children for their diligence in practicing and in turn that blessed us as a family.

When everyone had settled down, I had time to think about how blessed we are and how God is faithful to supply all our needs.

Great is His faithfulness

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Diaries of the Heart

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM ANNIE

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You might notice by now that I like musicals and especially western based ones. Annie Get Your Gun was one I saw when I was just a youngster and then I found it again when I was older and we had our own children.

This story is about Frank Butler, Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.

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Annie is a sharp shooting, poor tomboy who with her younger siblings travel around shooting birds and selling them to boarding houses.

It is at one of these boarding houses that she gets offered a shooting match with Frank Butler who believes himself to be the best shot in the whole world.  Annie is enamoured with Frank from the moment she sets eyes on him.  Frank is rather big headed and can’t believe a girl can beat him.

Annie wins the contest and they invite her into the show to be the girl who hands Frank his guns and she does do a few shooting tricks as well.

Eventually her and Frank become closer and the management at the show get her to do a really big trick to help boost attendances which shows how good she is and of course Frank is upset and he leaves and joins up with Pawnee Bills Wild West Show – the opposition.

Eventually after a European tour Annie and the crew come back to New York and are invited to a big banquet with Pawnee Bill’s group. Both shows are broke and are relying on each other having enough money to pay all the bills and join the two shows together – to merge.

If you’ve seen the show this is where Frank and Annie see each other after months apart and declare their love for each other. This of course leads to another big argument about who is a better shot and leads into the song I Can Do Anything Better Than You.

If you don’t know the song it is a tit for tat about who can sing sweeter, who can bake better, basically if Frank says he can do it Annie says she can do it better.

NOW this is where we start to learn something.

Annie thinks she is better and probably she is a better shot, but she hasn’t worked out her role, her God given role.

They have a big bust up and then Annie challenges Frank to a shoot out to finally settle who is the best. She gives her $100,000 worth of medals as a bet and it is on.

They meet to have their shoot out and her adopted Indian Father mucks up the sights on Annie’s guns so that they don’t shoot right and of course she misses.

He knows that to win Frank Butler, Annie can’t win the match. Annie finally realises what is going on and concedes defeat and her and Frank float off into the sunset, happily together.

Sometimes we women are better at doing things than our husbands and that is okay, that isn’t the problem. It is how we handle these situations that are the issue.

We are not second best but God has created us especially to be helpmeets for our husbands, to use the giftings that only He has given us to honour our husbands and to be their support.

Marriage relationships aren’t about competing, they are about merging two people together in love and being there for each other, supporting each other within the order that God has placed us.

Genesis 2:18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

Ephesians 5:22
Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.

1 Peter 3:1
Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives.

 

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Diaries of the Heart

NOW YOU ARE 10

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To my dearest daughter,

Today you turned 10, what a wonderful age, although it can be difficult.  You are caught between being a little girl and being a young lady.

I think of you as a young lady, because little girls don’t do all the ironing, and sweep the floor, and make us wonderful cups of teas.

Little girls don’t manage the chickens and hang up washing on their own clothes line. But although I think of you as a young lady, there is still a little girl in there, who likes to giggle and run around outside and get dirty. A little girl who likes to cuddle her Dad and get razed up by him.

You are growing up so fast and are such a big help, what would I do without you?? I never want to know.

There are definitely a heap more things you will need to know before you are grown and I want you to know that your father and I will do our best to teach you.

We are trying to teach the young lady in you to be modest, and thankful, and caring, and loving, and mostly those characteristics are there, they are in making mode, slowly growing stronger each day.

We want you to know and understand that being a wife and mother is the greatest role that God has given you and that is is okay to be this.

We don’t want you to listen to what the world says you should be doing, we want you to spend the next 10 years or however long it is before you are married focusing on your relationship with God.

We pray for you and your future husband, we pray that his parents are bringing him up in the knowledge and love of the Lord. We pray that he will be a Godly young man, capable to lead his family and capable of keeping you in line, with love.

You see my daughter, us women need keeping in line at times, and if you take after me, you will definitely have traits that need to be tamed. You need to watch your attitudes and your moods.

I want to apologise to you for the days when I am grumpy and not very patient. I want you to understand that I am sorry and that I love you no matter what you do or how you are.

There is nothing you can ever do to stop that love.

So as you now head to being eleven know that God has a great plan for you. He created you and He knows all about you and will always be there for you.

Your father and I love you very much. xxxxxx

 

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Diaries of the Heart

DON’T FORGET TO CHECK THE DICTIONARY

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I was going to write a post about loosing my “mojo” and for me that meant my motivation.

I have heard the word mojo bantered around about the place but this morning I thought I had better check that I was using a word that wasn’t inappropriate.

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Well guess what??? It was.

I was a bit shocked to think that I had been using this word, without really realising what it meant.

Just type in “Meaning of Mojo” in the search engine and it will come up with enough meanings to put you off, well it did me.

Then this got me thinking of how innocently we use words and phrases that we hear without really thinking about it.

We become accustomed to what the world says that we hear these easy to use terms and they start to roll off our own tongues. They sound so trendy.

So instead of just using some catchy phrases to attract you all to my blog posts I am definitely going to check them out first.

I definitely don’t want you to think that I have lost my magic charm or sex appeal (mojo).

Blessings

 

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Diaries of the Heart

WHO DO YOU EXALT

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Have you had friends let you down??? Have you had people in authority let you down??? Have church leaders let you down???

I can say that as a family we have experienced all 3 of the above, and when it does happen it leaves us feeling like the floor has opened up under us and we are hanging by a thread.

Now is the problem with the ones who we feel have let us down, or is our problem with us.

I think the problem is with us.

My husband’s favourite saying is:

“We can only rely on God, man will let us down, but God never will”.

And one of my daughters sayings:

“it is our expectations that lead to our disappointment”.

So you see the problem isn’t the people who let us down, but the problem is our expecting to be able to rely on them or our expectations of them.

We expect people we admire to be people to admire, but we forget that just like us they are human and they sin.

Romans 3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.

Did you read that?? It said ALL, not some, but ALL have sinned and we ALL come short of the glory of God.

We have had Church leaders, who we admired and expected great things from, fall from grace. It hasn’t just destroyed them, but taken a bit of the congregation with them, but again we have forgotten that they are human and Romans 3:23 stands for them as well.

We have put them in a place that no one other than God deserves to be put. We sometimes forget that God is God and not man.

There have been posts put up lately about issues happening in the Christian world and the falling from grace by certain people and I feel the anger and frustration of fellow Christians regarding these matters.

I get it, I really understand the issues and the frustrations but once again I come to Romans 3:23 and stand next to those who have fallen and state again that I am just like them. I and them and all of us have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

So let’s take our eyes off those who have fallen and stop putting these people in places they shouldn’t be put and keep our eyes on the one who should only be put in that place.

JESUS

Mankind will always let us down but JESUS never will, he is the only one to be exalted to a higher place.

Philippians 2:9-11 “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father

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Diaries of the Heart

SOME DAYS ARE DIAMONDS

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My husband asked me to check on the pigs the other morning as he wanted to get on with sowing our wheat and oat crop so that he could get it finished before the rain was due.

I trotted off down the paddock and the pigs were all where they were meant to be and the sow due to have piglets hadn’t so all was well in their piggy world.

On my walk back the to the paddock to see my husband I was just filled with joy. It was a diamond type of day.

You know the song :

Some days are diamonds, some days are stone

Well this was definitely a diamond day.

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The sun was shining, there was a cold breeze but it didn’t cool my joy. You know the type of day, when things start out good and everyone is happy.

Our 9 year old daughter had gotten out of bed and done her school work and practiced her piano before breakfast, and she was happy. She even offered me breakfast in bed, but I don’t like crumbs in the bed so said no thank you :-).

What a day to be alive, what a beautiful sunny diamond type of day. On these days I feel so blessed and just burst with this. I catg inside.

Not all days are like diamonds, sometimes we can have quite stony types of days, but  the diamond days so make up for the stony and of course there are plenty of scriptures that encourage us to give thanks even on the rough days.

Ephesians 5:20 Giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Thessalonians 5:18 Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Psalm 107:1 Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever

This one is particularly good…

Colossians 3:15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.

 

 

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