Author: Marie

Love the Lord! Wife. Mother. Blessed beyond measure. "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope." Jeremiah 29:11

Start ~ Dawn of A New Day

From my sister’s yard.

Here it is the start of a new day. Yesterday’s problems have passed and today’s slate is…wait full? How is this so? It’s a new day and you haven’t even left your bed yet. You just opened your eyes and already your slate is full? How can this be? How indeed. Why did you wake to the morning remembering yesterday’s worries? After all they belong to yesterday, today is a new day. A new dawn. A fresh start, yet your slate is already filled with worries, regrets, stress and you haven’t even gotten out of bed!

Let me hear Your lovingkindness in the morning, for I trust in You. Teach me the way in which I should walk, for I lift up my soul to You.

Psalm 143:8 AMP

And so

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Psalm 51:10

Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.

Isaiah 43:18 NIV

Meditate on God’s truths before you start your day. If there are any residual worries of yesterday, you can know that the enemy is messing with your mind and trying to start out your day in chaos. Don’t let him succeed in taking territory from you that isn’t his to take. Take back that territory and don’t let him steal from you what belongs to you. There is a reason we are told to forget the former things and not dwell on the past, it’s already gone and there isn’t anything we can do about it. We can only look at what is in front of us for today and take care of those things.

Now it’s time to get out of bed and start your day. God bless! ❤

God Bless Our Fathers

As we bring this day to a close, I hope all the dad’s out there had a great day. I must confess that it’s been way too long since I’ve seen my own father. I talk to him on the phone throughout the year but I haven’t made the trip to see him in person. (We talked today and caught up with how everyone was doing.) I suppose it’s because we simply aren’t as close as I was to my mom. But that’s just an excuse and not a very good one for not doing a better job of staying in touch. I never really got to know him growing up as kid, I remember him being in the military and his love of photography. He was an amateur photographer and developed his own film. Sometimes when he was in his makeshift darkroom he would let us watch as he processed the film and made the photographs come to life.

Last week our son told us that he had asked for Sunday off so he could spend Father’s Day with us and you got it, play Risk. (Bummer, I lost.😉) We had a fun day around our house just spending time together as a family. Thinking about today and the lack of my own relationship with my father, I thought about the importance of fathers and the role they play in their children’s lives. Some people have a good relationship with their fathers. Others not so good. The Bible says in Exodus 20:12 Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you. We are to honor our fathers. It doesn’t matter what kind of parent he is or was, God tells us to honor him. A father’s role in a child life will either mold the child into someone good or set the child on a path toward destruction.

Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.

Proverbs 22:6

God promises that teaching our children to walk in righteousness will keep them on that path as they grow older.

And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come in and strike the earth with a curse.

Malachi 4:6

The heart of the father and the child will turn toward each other. Fathers are so important in a child life. They have the power to teach or destroy.

I have taught you in the way of wisdom; I have led you in the right paths. When you walk, your steps will not be hindered, and when you run, you will not stumble.

Proverbs 4:11,12

God teaches wisdom and staying on the right path, fathers are to pass those teachings down to his children so they won’t stumble. In this darken world we need more fathers stepping up to be the dad they were called to be.

God bless our fathers today and every day! 💖 May your days be filled with His wisdom, peace, joy and love!

The Visitor…

She came for a visit needing a break from the bright sun. She found solace in the shade and so rested as her yearling and fawn grazed nearby. As she rested, the yearling and fawn soon took up a resting spot nearby and before long they began grooming themselves, making themselves presentable, after all they were visiting the King’s house. It was simply breathtaking to watch these beautiful creatures interact. As you can see our church is nestled on a beautiful wooded piece of property, so we often have visitors stopping by to rest or scrounge for food. As I watched them, I thought about what we are teaching our children. Children learn from the actions and instructions from their parents or guardians and even others around them. So what are we teaching the next generation?

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Obstacles – What Do You Do?

Look who came to visit!

Meet Fred. (Don’t ask, he needed a name so I gave him one.😅 Not to judge, if he is a she then her name is Freida. Wasn’t about to go outside and check.) So about Fred. He came calling on a Saturday afternoon. My husband was the first to notice him staring at the door like it was going to open so he could continue with his journey. We watched him for a bit to see if he would move on but he just stayed there staring at the door so we went about our business. Our son had come over for a visit and I want to say we played a game of Risk. I’ll go ahead and tell you that it drives my family crazy when I win. They strategize and me, I haven’t a clue as to what I am doing so you can see why it drives them crazy when I win. (By the way for those of you who read the Mother’s Day post, I won at Risk -fair and square. 😉) We checked on Fred during a short break but I guess he got tired of staring at the door and had left. Fred had an obstacle in his way but he managed to find a way around it. Thinking about Fred and his obstacle – a house not doubt- I thought about how we deal with our own obstacles.

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The Cracked Windshield

What started out small began to grow. The small crack grew until it spanned halfway across the windshield and dropped down. It didn’t happen overnight but it happened. Why? Neglect. You know what I mean. You think to yourself, well it’s a small crack, I can take care of it later. Only to realize too late that later never came. Maintenance. Whether a vehicle, a home, or a relationship, they all have one thing in common: maintenance. In order to keep your vehicle running smoothly, you have to take care of it, have routine maintenance, and fix the small issues when they are still small instead of waiting until it becomes a big deal. The same thing applies to maintaining a home or even a relationship. You have to have routine maintenance in order to keep things running smoothly.

Years ago my husband wanted a truck. (Must be a Southern thing. 😉 Or more likely a guy thing.) So we got a truck. It’s been around for quite awhile now and has been in the shop off and on for multiple issues. We fix one thing and everything seems fine but after awhile something else needs to be fixed. We also own another vehicle and it is getting to the age where it too will need additional work.

As I thought about what we needed to save up for in the vehicle maintenance department, I thought about relationships. More accurately, I thought about our relationship with the Lord and how we need to maintain it.

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