Faith – Apostolic Momma

Still Alive

I haven’t written anything in over a year. I promise, I’m still alive. Life has just been… life. Nothing spectacular or horrible, just life.

My best friend had a baby. My kids are finishing up the school year. My youngest child will officially become a teenager tomorrow (Lord, help me). My granddaughter will be four in a couple of weeks. We are visiting Ireland in July. My daughter starts driver’s ed this year (Lord, help us all).

Honestly, I feel like I’m in a slump. A rut. Stagnate. I used to be motivated to write all the time. Inspiration would come from everywhere. I truly believe most of my inspiration came from the Holy Ghost. Now, I never feel motivated or inspired to do anything but take a nap. Maybe I’m just getting old, or maybe I’ve tuned God out.

Preaching Still Works

Preaching Still Works Let me tell you something: preaching still works. I don’t care what the world says, I don’t care what culture tries to cancel, …
Preaching Still Works

Rainbow Weather

The other day, my daughter, Kiana, and I were driving to the store to get her some lip balm. The sky was dark, cloudy, and sunny all at once. There was also rain and hail that was coming and going. It was the craziest thing. There is a tradition in our house called “rainbow weather”. Anytime it is rainy with sun breaks, we look for rainbows.

Rainbows are a rather curious thing. They are beautiful but need both rain and sun to form. Living in Washington state, one would think I am used to the rain, but they would be wrong. I don’t hate it as much as I used to, but I still prefer non-rainy days anytime. It’s like that with life, too. I want to see the beautiful promises of God fulfilled in my life, but I don’t want to go through the storms.

Falling in Love with Jesus

The other day, I saw a video that was talking about how God sometimes won’t answer our prayer because we’ve made an idol out of the thing we want. She went on to explain how God often won’t give us what we want if we want it more than Him. So, what we need to do is take our desire off a pedestal and put God back at the top where He belongs. There is a song called “Clear the Stage”, and the lyrics echo the message in the video:

Anything I put before my God is an idol.
Anything I want with all my heart is an idol.
And anything I can’t stop thinking of is an idol.
And anything that I give all my love is an idol.

We had church later, and while I was praying, I felt like the Holy Ghost was telling me I needed to get back to my first love. I used to get so excited to go to church; I loved it so much. I loved God and all the things of God, but lately my love has gotten cold.

Chain of Events

Have you ever had a chain of events happen that led to something unexpected? If the timing of even one thing in that chain was off, the end result would not have happened. It’s so crazy to me when this happens. In fact, it happened to me just yesterday.

Get it for Yourself

I’ve always admired people in church who have never had the desire to leave. I wish I could say I was one of them. You always hear about children who go to church because their parents make them, but nobody ever talks about the parents who stay for their children.

I Lack Nothing

Dear Jesus,

Thank you for the season of Lent to remind us to draw closer to you. I have struggled in my relationship with you. I don’t know if it’s because I never had a close relationship with my father, or what. I have the desire to have a closer walk with you, but I don’t know how to get there. I pray, read my Bible, pay my tithe, and go to church, but it seems like that’s not enough. What more is there? What am I missing?

Pray Specific Prayers

I was reading the other day in Genesis 24 about the story of how Isaac met Rebekah. Isaac’s servant was looking for a wife for Isaac and went to the well in Nahor. He knelt and prayed, “God, when I find the right woman, let all these things come to pass. The woman to whom I say, ‘Let down your pitcher, I pray thee, that I may drink,’ she will say, ‘Drink and I will water thy camels also.’ Let her be the one you have appointed for your servant Isaac, and then I will know you have shown kindness to my master.”

And the next verse says, “And it came to pass before he had even done speaking, that, behold, Rebekah came out.” She just came out of nowhere… quickly! And you know the story, he said, “I pray that you give me something to drink,” and she said, “Drink my Lord and I will draw water for thy camels also.” Verse twenty-one says he was just watching her and held his peace wondering if the Lord had answered his prayer.

Pretty Prayers

A dear sister at church gave all of us ladies a prayer journal during ladies’ prayer last month. It is pink, and she affixed a Bible verse to the front of it: Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not. (Jeremiah 33:3)

The journal got me thinking about prayer. For the longest time, I rarely prayed because I thought I didn’t know how. When I was a child, prayers were something we memorized and repeated such as, “Now I lay me down to sleep…” When in church, we would all bow our heads at the end of service and the pastor would pray while the rest of us were silent. Even the “prayer of salvation” was often a set prayer repeated by the one seeking deliverance.

Don’t Be a Hoarder

I used to love to watch the TV show, Hoarders. It always made me feel better knowing that my house wasn’t nearly as bad as theirs. Most times, you could look at the house from the outside and see that there was likely something wrong on the inside. Their hoard would spill over into their yard and driveway. But sometimes, the house looked good from the outside. The grass was mowed, there was no junk or debris, no cars up on blocks, nothing out of the ordinary. But the inside of the house was a totally different story.