Shaky Hands

A guest post by Rose H.

I stood up in front of the class and signed Born For This. I made some mistakes, due in large part to the fact that I was really nervous. Normally I'm more confident in front of people. That day my hands were shaking through signs. By the end of my song, I knew I hadn't done a great job.

365.28, a photo by Dyanna Hyde on Flickr.

That day I went home depressed. Was this really going to work? Come on, I've been taking ASL for four months and I still get nervous when I sign. It doesn't matter whether I'm talking to my teacher or an actual deaf person, I tense up and my hands shake. I get scared I'm going to sign something wrong or that they won't understand.

I tried to sort out my conflicting emotions. I wanted to do well, but at the same time I felt like I was failing. It was then that I felt God's gentle whisper (some through my parents and friends), He spoke to my heart. He asked me the why I had taken the class. My mind wondered back to the reasons. I wanted to communicate with the deaf and learn what I thought was one of the most beautiful languages in the world. It hit me that I was doing that. I had been able to communicate with some deaf people. I was learning ASL.

Then I came to another conclusion. God can use shaky hands. For God it doesn't matter that I have poor self-confidence or that I shake while I sign. He just cares that about my heart to reach out to others.
When you think about it, God has never chosen the best qualified. He has always chosen the people who were weak, forgotten by men, the broken-hearted, those with shaky hands.  When we are weak we show God's strength.

In the months since this realization, God has done some amazing things in my life. Not only have I learned a ton of new ASL, but I'm also meeting more deaf people. I'm getting to know them as friends. And sometimes I still shake. Yet the more I let God work with these shaky hands the more people are blessed.

What about you? Are you weak? Broken-hearted? Struggling to make it through the day? 

No matter what you struggle with, God is there with you, ready to take your weakness and turn it into strength. Just trust Him and keep using what you have been given for Him. You'll be amazed at the results. 

My name is Rose H. I live with my amazing family tucked away the country in Texas where I enjoy a myriad of activities. I love singing praise to God, cross-stitching, crocheting, and card making, spending time with family and friends, listening to audio books and reading spiritual books, being out in nature, enjoying a long walk out in the woods behind our house, teaching at a local home school co-op, filmmaking, blogging and sharing my thoughts with others. 

God is at the center of all that I do. I could not live without Him. You can find out more about me from my blog homemadeministry.blogspot.com or forhimsimplethoughts.blogspot.com.

Be Perfect

Your culture (no matter what culture you live in) is constantly telling you that you must be perfect. Perfect hair, perfect weight, perfect popularity…. And as homeschoolers you’ve probably got another set of expectations from your parents or friends. Perfect test scores, perfect spelling bees, perfect college entrance exams…. Did you know that Jesus is telling us to be perfect too?

 “Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

                                                                                   -Matthew 5:48

But this is a different kind of perfection: real perfection. The world will be happy if you only look perfect on the surface, and they don’t care what kind of hell you have to go through to get there. Jesus commands us to be perfect all the way through. As C.S. Lewis put it:

When He said , "Be perfect," He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hard; but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder — in fact, it is impossible. It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

I want to be "an ordinary, decent egg." There are some things I don't think Jesus can iron out of me — if I'm honest I'd say that there are things that I don't want Him to iron out — but that's not what He has offered me. As Olivia posted on Wednesday, "God created for us a new man in true righteousness and holiness" (Ephesians 4:24). A new man. A new perfect man. Not kind-of-perfect, not almost-there.

So how is this supposed to work? We're humans, right? We're flawed, that's in our nature. We can follow a lot of rules and do a pretty good job if given enough time, but perfection is asking a lot. Not only do we not stand much of a chance of ever reaching perfection, but what about the past, what about those less-than-stellar things that we did last year, or last week? My perfectionist tendencies clench and snap under the strain of such high expectations.

But the whole point of what Jesus is saying is that we can't do it! He's not asking us to do the impossible, He's commanding us to be supernatural. It comes down to something that you probably heard in Sunday School, but may never have truly internalized and accepted as true: it’s about Jesus’ perfection, not ours. If we are relying on any part of ourselves to please the Lord, then we’re straying from the path of true righteousness and true beauty. You thought that pleasing your peers was hard? Try pleasing the God of the universe.

There is so much beauty in the way Jesus works on us! Lettie B. Cowman wrote, "We must not be fainthearted because we are consciously poor instruments. The main question is in the mastery of Him who uses the instruments." In 1 Corinthians Paul speaks of us having “treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us." We are supposed to look like clay right now, but God is molding our jars.

If you’re trusting in your own goodness, your own humility, your own hard work, your own gentle spirit, your own generosity or anything else to make you pleasing to God or to iron out your inner ugliness, stop dead right now. We will never measure up by ourselves; dependence on our own goodness, rationality, etc. is like hanging onto a spider’s web to save ourselves from falling. There’s a perfectly sturdy rope within reach—it’s Jesus, and it costs nothing to grab on to it, nothing except laying yourself down as if in death.

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified. 

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?

Romans 8:28-31

We are all eggs, and God is going to teach us how to fly. Don't get frustrated with your egg-iness. Maybe you don't look like a bird to yourself or to others, but that's how God sees you. A dear friend of mine told me just yesterday, "Satan keeps track of our sins, God keeps track of our potential." How wonderful to know that we might look like eggs, but in Christ we're nightingales. We're perfect, and it's none of our doing.

How are you like an egg right now? How are you learning to fly on Jesus' wings?

Egg, a photo by MinimalistPhotography101.com on Flickr.
The Potter's Hands, a photo by bingbing on Flickr.

Cry Out!

"There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and
delightful than that of a continual conversation with God."
~Brother Lawrence

crista moriah photography

It is so important to develop a close relationship with our Savior.  He must become so broken hearted when we {sometimes, not even meaning to} distance ourselves from Him with our silence.  The other day, Jesus opened my eyes to what His heart must feel like when that happens and we do not have a regular prayer life with Him.  I wrote a letter about it, sort of like a heart to heart from God to us...

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My Child,

It's been quite awhile since I've heard from you.

My heart has grown very lonely from the lack of our conversations. 

Please cry out to me.  Your lips have been silent too long.  I need to hear from you!

Where have you been?  The stretch between us has grown so far.  Our hearts need to be reunited!  We must share every little thing with each other once again. You casting your burdens on Me, knowing that I will take them without hesitation. You sharing your hopes and dreams; Myself smiling, looking ahead at the future and deciding what is the wisest thing for you.

I miss you.  I want to be close to you.  I love you.  Cry out to me...soon! 

Love,

Your Father in Heaven

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The key to having a good prayer life is being disciplined about it. 

It seems as though when I try to have time with Him, things come up. Satan will not waste any opportunites to distract us from prayer, reading the Word, or anything that will benefit us spiritually.

Francois Fenelon once said, "Time spent in prayer is never wasted." How true are these words! Commit to praying for 10 minutes a day to begin with, then add a little more each day. Simple, right?

Sometimes, it's easy to view prayer as "just another thing to do" or a chore, but instead it should be an intimate part of our relationship with Jesus.  We should view our prayer time as precious moments to spend pouring out all of our hopes, dreams, and fears to His compassionate ears.  He cares.  He loves us dearly and longs for a close relationship with us!  As Jesus says to us in the Love Letter to us, "Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you..." {James 4:8} 

Once we start pouring our hearts out to Him, it creates a feeling of joyous freedom in our souls--

It causes us to draw near to God--it strengthens us!

crista moriah photography

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I believe it is important to pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ as well.

So many times I have been encouraged by a friend saying that they are praying for me. 

It always seems to lift your spirits knowing someone cares about you.

"The greatest gift we can give to others is our prayers."

~Unknown

If there is anything you would like to share with me, please do not hesitate to drop a comment at the bottom of this post--I would love to be able to pray for you. :)

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Stay strong, dear sisters!  Let us strive to cry out to Him each and every day!

Don't Dream. Do.

Image credit BaronBrian on Flickr

I don't know about you, but the coming of the new year is usually a sad time for me. As others discuss the year that has gone and all the things they did and the wonderful memories they made, I realize just how little I've done with the precious gift of life given to me.
The thing is, when people talk about living life to the fullest, they often mean physical feats; skydiving, perhaps, pocketing money to travel Europe, or embarking on a new business venture.

That's all well and good, but it isn't exactly practical or possible for some of us to do those things. I'm just a lowly highschooler! My parents don't have the money for a big trip, or anything so exciting, so what can I do but sit around and wait till I'm old enough to do something with my life?

By the time 2011 came around, I'd had enough of it. Maybe I couldn't visit London. Maybe I couldn't go to Harvard. Maybe I had a chronic illness that prevented me from doing things. Maybe I couldn't serve God the way I wanted to, by leaving all my earthly possessions behind and suffering the harsh winters of Mongolia as a missionary.

But I could--and always can--serve God the way He wants me to.

So in 2011, I pushed myself to the limit making the most of my precious little time on earth. I read the Bible cover-to-cover. I spent many sweet hours in prayer for the afflicted, the oppressed, and the lost. I devoted myself more than ever to my studies and attacked math problems with vigor (although not with a paper shredder, as I would have liked to).

But the most important things I did were not physical actions. They were matters of the heart. I severed my attachment to the material things of this world. I let go of the past. I presented my troubles to God. I realized that my present trials serve not to hinder but to prepare me for my future by instilling the qualities--the perseverance, the patience, the trust, the empathy--that I will need later in life. I submitted, even in the midst of agony, to whatever may be in God's will.

And in things like these, I took up my cross and followed Him.

The biggest things in life are often the simplest. So even if you aren't yet in a position to work your dream job, or to become a mother and raise children, or whatever your passion may be, remember that each passing moment is an opportunity to ready yourself for the future--either spiritually, mentally, or physically. And the longer you have to wait, the more prepared you will be--if you take advantage of your time to prepare.

No matter how impossible that passion of yours seems, either financially or physically or otherwise, if God wants it to, it will happen. No matter how far-fetched it sounds that I could serve in Mongolia in my current condition, if that's what He tells me He wants, He will give me the strength to serve. And if that's not what He wants? He must have something even better planned.

Life is an occupation of unknown duration. Don't waste it dreaming. Live it doing.