Set Me Free

This morning was amazing. God has really opened my eyes through the whole moving process. But that wasn't the amazing part of this morning. The lady who has been sitting in front of us at church accepted Christ today as her Savior! Then seeing this video tonight really made it all seem to fit together. What shackles Christ has set us free from.

Meet Me In The Stairwell

'MEET ME IN THE STAIRWELL'




You say you will never forget where you were when
you heard the news On September 11, 2001.
Neither will I.

I was on the 110th floor in a smoke filled room
with a man who called his wife to say 'Good-Bye.' I
held his fingers steady as he dialed. I gave him the
peace to say, 'Honey, I am not going to make it, but it
is OK..I am ready to go.'

I was with his wife when he called as she fed
breakfast to their children. I held her up as she
tried to understand his words and as she realized
he wasn't coming home that night.

I was in the stairwell of the 23rd floor when a
woman cried out to Me for help. 'I have been
knocking on the door of your heart for 50 years!' I said.
'Of course I will show you the way home - only
believe in Me now.'

I was at the base of the building with the Priest
ministering to the injured and devastated souls.
I took him home to tend to his Flock in Heaven. He
heard my voice and answered.

I was on all four of those planes, in every seat,
with every prayer. I was with the crew as they
were overtaken. I was in the very hearts of the
believers there, comforting and assuring them that their
faith has saved them.

I was in Texas , Virginia , California , Michigan , Afghanistan .
I was standing next to you when you heard the terrible news.
Did you sense Me?

I want you to know that I saw every face. I knew
every name - though not all know Me. Some met Me
for the first time on the 86th floor.

Some sought Me with their last breath.
Some couldn't hear Me calling to them through the
smoke and flames; 'Come to Me... this way... take
my hand.' Some chose, for the final time, to ignore Me.
But, I was there.

I did not place you in the Tower that day. You
may not know why, but I do. However, if you were
there in that explosive moment in time, would you have
reached for Me?

Sept. 11, 2001, was not the end of the journey
for you. But someday your journey will end. And I
will be there for you as well. Seek Me now while I may
be found. Then, at any moment, you know you are
'ready to go.'

I will be in the stairwell of your final moments.


During the next 60 seconds, stop whatever you are
doing, and take this opportunity. (Literally it
is only 1 minute.) All you have to do is the
following:

Stop and think and appreciate God's power
in your life, for doing what you know is pleasing to
Him. If you are not ashamed to do this, follow the
instructions. Jesus said, 'If you are ashamed of Me, I will be
ashamed of you before My Father'

If you are not ashamed, copy and send this message...only
if you believe 'Yes, I love my God. He is my
fountain of Life and My Savior. He Keeps me going day and
night. Without Him, I am no one. But with Him, I can do
everything. Christ is my strength.'

Triumph Through Tragedy

Nick Romano
Sept 7, 1984 - August 25, 2008

Right after I found out about Nick's wreck, a song came to my attention and it reminded me of the story behind the song. The song is the hymn "It is Well With My Soul". It has helped me find some peace in it all. He was a dear friend. Unfortunately, I watched some old video footage of the duet we did together and then our band competitions from 7th grade. So many memories caused tears to flood back in.

The verses were penned by Horatio Spafford after several traumatic events in his life. In 1871 his only son died, shortly followed by his financial ruin through the Great Chicago Fire. In 1873 he had planned to travel with his family to Europe, but was delayed on business. He sent his family on ahead. While crossing the Atlantic, the ship collided with another ship and sank, killing all four of the Spafford girls in the process. His wife Anna survived and sent him the now famous telegram, "Saved alone." Shortly afterwards, as Spafford traveled to meet his grieving wife, he was inspired to write these words as his ship passed near where his daughters had died.

If such tragedy can bring about the words below, may God use Nick to touch many lives and bring peace such as this.

IT IS WELL WITH MY SOUL

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.


It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.


Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blessed assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.


It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.


My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!


It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.


And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.


It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.



- Words by Horatio G. Spafford, 1873
- Music by Philip P. Bliss, 1876

A song for the brokenhearted

"Cry Out to Jesus" by Third Day

To everyone who's lost someone they love
long before it was their time.
You feel like the days you had were not enough
when you said goodbye.

And to all of the people with burdens and pains
keepin' you back from your life.
You believe that there's nothing
and there is no one who can make it right.

There is hope for the helpless, rest for the weary,
and love for the broken hearts.
There is grace and forgiveness, mercy and healing
He'll meet you wherever you are.

Cry out to Jesus. Cry out to Jesus.

For the marriage that's struggling just to hang on
They lost all of their faith in love.
and they've done all they can to make it right again
still it's not enough.

For the ones who can't break the addictions and chains
you try to give up but you come back again.
Just remember that you're not alone
in your shame and your suffering.

There is hope for the helpless, rest for the weary,
and love for the broken hearts.
There is grace and forgiveness, mercy and healing
He'll meet you wherever you are.

Cry out to Jesus.

When you're lonely and it feels like the whole world is falling on you
you just reach out, you just cry out to Jesus

Cry to Jesus.

To the widow who suffers from being alone,
wipin' the tears from her eyes.
For the children around the world without a home,
say a prayer tonight.

There is hope for the helpless, rest for the weary,
and love for the broken hearts.
There is grace and forgiveness, mercy and healing
that meets you wherever you are.
There is hope for the helpless, rest for the weary,
and love for the broken hearts.
There is grace and forgiveness, mercy and healing
that meets you wherever you are.

Cry out to Jesus. Cry out to Jesus.

Cry out to Jesus. Cry out to Jesus.

Follow Love

As a youth minister's wife, my main job is to be my husband's partner, his supporter, his friend. My job is to encourage him when times get tough; when God's will is being done, but the road gets rough. When I married Ryan this song became one of my favorite songs. And today, the lyrics express what is happening in my life right now. Those of you who know please do not mention yet. When the timing is right, Ryan and I will let everyone know. There are a few precious people that need to hear it from our mouths. And no, its not about an addition to our family.

FOLLOW LOVE by FFH

I'm gonna miss the simple town full of memories
I'm gonna miss just hanging out with all my friends
The rainy days and summer nights
Skipping stones by the river side
But i know.. its time to go

So heres goodbye heres so long
I must go and follow love
I feel my heart moving on
I must go and follow love
Carry on while I'm gone
This is what i've been dreaming of
I miss you so
But i must go, go and follow love

I've got a heart thats full of dreams
and a little bit of crazy
I can feel it pulling me to somewhere i have never been
I'm packing up and leaving home
To travel into the great unknown
Its time, i have to go

So heres goodbye heres so long
I must go and follow love
I feel my heart moving on
I must go and follow love
Carry on while I'm gone
This is what i've been dreaming of
I miss you so
But i must go, go and follow love

Were not guarranted tomorrow
So we must just keep on living for today
and make the most of every moment
every step along the way...oh

So heres goodbye heres so long
I must go and follow love
I feel my heart moving on
I must go and follow love
Carry on while I'm gone
This is what i've been dreaming of
I miss you so
But i must go, go and follow love

I must go, go and follow love

Growing Old in the Word

Amazing how life can kind of creep up on you! I can tell I am getting older. My baby cousins are growing up and the first is going off to college in August. The youth in my husband's youth group are calling songs from my high school days as an "Oldie". And last but not least, I think I am losing my mind!

Enough of all of these rants. I know I go into them a lot. Today I want to share something that has been on my mind for years. There are people who want to "start their day off the holy way" and have devotions and read the Bible in the mornings. They say it makes their day brighter. Then there are those who want time with God to be the last thing they do before they go to bed.

Well, me. I can't do either. If its first thing in the morning, I am exhausted! Its overwhelming how much God reveals to you or can reveal to you during time with Him. Sometimes it so much it can physically exhaust you! That's happened to me recently.

If its the last thing I do before I go to bed I wind up awake until 3am just with things racing in my head that has been revealed to me or a song of praise will pop into my head and I will want to spend more and more time worshiping God and spending time in His word and won't be able to sleep.

My solution. Bit by bit all through the day. I'll read a verse before I take my shower in the morning. Then read a few chapters at lunch or during my breaks at work. My main Bible study has been around 8-9 at night or when Ryan has his meetings at church. This has caused me to become a 9:30 in the bed person! But it is better than staying up all night! So here I am....growing old! Before you know it I will come home from work and go straight to bed and then wake up at 4am!

God's protection

When I was little, I used to think heat lightning was when God got angry. When the lightning hit the ground he was furious! Well, tonight driving hom from my father's day cookout at my grandfather's house I saw heat lightning and it matched my mood. I hope God became angry tonight. But I wish he was as furious as I have become in the last hours.

Why such hostility?! Tonight I had a 9 year old boy's life in my hands. And we were both in God's. I'm so thankful my family and I are alive tonight. Especially my cousin, my husband, and our friend Michael who were all outside to witness the events.

Both greenville and spartanburg county deputies were involved and all I will say is it involved a crazy man with a gun waving it around and half the time it was pointed in the direction of a member of my family. A sack of stolen guns. Stupid county line regulations and confusion about which deputy was supposed to deal with what. And a shots were fired. Then because the guns were found in one county and the man ran into the other they just said "Call us if you see him." when there is a missing gun somewhere between two houses of the events and now I'm afraid my little cousins or some kid in the neighborhood will run through the woods (what we call the "Swamp") and find it!

God blessed us all tonight by keeping us safe! I was in charge of my 9 year old cousin eating outside because the kitchen and dinning rooms were cramped with people. My husband and his friend Michael was outside too when the shots were fired. I had my cousin and I stay put. The guy didn't see us, but if we had moved out of the corner of his eyes that loaded gun would have probably went off in our direction. Having that responsibilty over someone so small and young really has changed me tonight.

Then we come home to two cop cars and an ambulance at the pool of our apartment complex. Apparently robberies at the pool and a break-in in an apartment below us occurred before we arrived.

"For He orders His angels to protect you whereever you go." -Psalm 91:11

I really believe God had his angels protecting my family tonight. None of these events were just coincidences. He has a perfect plan. He changed my life tonight. I've been taking too much for granted. I've been a very sheltered kid until now. My husband, who has had a gun pulled to his head before, is helping me through this. God has blessed me with such a protective man! His first instinct was to protect his family and the second was calling 911 once we were safe!

And a special thanks to Aaron for teaching my hubby well! TO RUN! lol.

Blessings and Fathers

Growing up, my grandpa always made me laugh. He's always been the family clown while still maintaining that strength that made you want to run into his arms for safety. Every time I used to say "what" he would always reply with "in the world's come over you." Now, most of you probably that has no meaning. But now adays every time I hear someone ask "What?" I always think of my grandpa.

With Father's Day coming up. I decided to write a little about our Heavenly Father. And how God is like that with us. He blesses us. He teaches us. He is there fore us. He gives us little things that remind us of his goodness. Whenever I am feeling discouraged, something happens and I am reminded of his goodness. I just want to share a song that has meant a lot to me as of late.

"Before It Was Said" - FFH

Every day I sit and pray to God above
To watch over me and my family
But every day I seem to pray the same old thing
In the same old way, and I start to think

That maybe I should change
And find something better to say
But I've learned to believe
You always hear me when I pray

So I get down on my knees
'Cause I'm stronger than these
Voices inside of my head
They try to deceive me
And make me believe
That I would be better instead
To take my requests and put them to rest
But You're already one step ahead
You knew just what I would say
Before it was said

Every night I lie awake wondering
If You're listening to every heartbeat
You've told me that You know the deepest part of me
And You'll watch over me and my family

So I guess I shouldn't change
'Cause You hear every word that I say
And I knew You are here
When I come to You this way

So I guess I shouldn't change
'Cause You hear every word that I say
And I knew You were here
When I knelt down today

Til Death Do Us Part...

God spared my life last night. Ryan and I were traveling to my parent's house and out of no where this van beside us started switching lanes with no turn signal. She had pulled up beside us talking on her cell, decided to move the the left hand lane and didn't pay attention that there was a passenger window right next to her when she did.

We were in the left lane. The only choices were swerve into oncoming traffic, have her hit and spin us into oncoming traffic, or Ryan's choice slamming on the brakes and the horn!

Honestly, he said if I hadn't been in the car he wouldn't have taken that chance. But she was about to smash into my side of the car. OK, so I've been in one wreck thats basically scarred me for life about other drivers. A lady was yelling at her kids in the back seat one Halloween night and ran a stop sign. She hit me in the passenger side of my old 2 door Ranger, spun me around and hit me in the drivers side. Then, park wasn't park anymore so when the car stopped and I put the gear to park it hit a house! Thankfully it was just a roll. The man whose house I hit ran out and had to pry the door open to get me out. I thought the car was on fire because of the air bags. Needless to say I had plenty of chemical burns from those airbags and a lot of bruises the next day!

The Infinite God. But Infinity on Earth?

I will return to my senior seminar class for a few minutes today. I have been reading through one of the books about Infinity. Our class attempted to write a paper and publish it stating that Cantor, Zeno, and others were wrong about infinity. The runner's paradox, for one, where if a runner starts out at point 0 and tries to get to point 1 and only travels half the distance between the two points each time, he will never reach his destination. In other words he travels halfway the first time and reaches 1/2. He travels half of the remaining distance the next time and gets to 1/2 + 1/4. The next 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8, etc. But in reality there comes a point where the fraction is so close it doesn't matter. They were leaning towards the beginning of the calculus concept of limits; however, Calculus just had not been discovered yet.

Now I will take this to another level. God is infinite. He has no beginning and no end. Mathematics was created by man to symbolize and give some standard to reality. Does infinity have any real concept in our world? Like the runner, who will indeed reach the point of destination in reality. Or is our view on infinity in mathematic and logical senses just a way of referencing how big God and his creation is? Can I minds just not comprehend it or are we taking some concept of how God has no beginning or end and trying to put Heavenly aspects and concepts into worldly and earthly theories that just cannot co-exist?

Ok. So thats my ramble for today. I know it probably goes over some of your heads. But it should. I believe there are many things God has hidden from us because it is just too big and too great for us to comprehend. Possibly why every mathematician who has ever spent their life working on solving infinity has ended up in a mental institution!

My Song

Let this be my heart's song for today

"I am not skilled to understand What God has willed, what God has planned I only know at His right hand Stands one who is my Savior I take Him at His word and deed Christ died to save me; this I read And in my heart I find a need Of Him to be my savior" - "My Savior, My God" by Aaron Shust

Disobedience

I recently found StevenFurtick.com, a blog from a guy who is 110% working for God's glory. I clicked through some links and found myself at the podcasts for Elevation Church in Charlotte, NC. So today at work I listened through some 3 or 4 different services. Almost every one of them God did something to my heart while sitting at work processing PLX and RCX Files; however, one specific sermon caught my attention. It was a sermon by guest speaker Clayton King. Clayton King has always seemed to amaze me with his testimony. I love hearing him preach because of how uncomfortable I feel and how convicted I seem to become. God used him today to chip away at me.

One specific quote though has stuck with me.

“Why do we always have to pray about doing stuff the scripture already tells us to do. Why don’t we just plan to obey and if God doesn’t want us to go, God is more than sovereign enough to close the door before we get there. You ever think about that theology. Why are we wasting time praying about stuff. If you have to pray about something you know God has already called you to do, then your prayer is actually an act of disobedience.” – Clayton King

I mean, imagine how many times God has wanted to give us something and do something great through us and we spend so much time praying about it that God doesn't bless us through allowing us to be used. With me, I've said I was taking a leap of faith recently when all I was doing was sitting and praying about it and making plans rather than just stepping out and doing what I felt God calling me to do. I sent this quote to Ryan today and He felt compelled to quit his paying jobs and go straight into a ministry without promise of a paycheck, etc. We feel the call for him to go into full-time ministry, but the opportunities have yet to come full circle.

Lord, My God, forgive me for the worry when you are in control of it all! Forgive me for not doing when I spent my time planning and strategizing. Sometimes my administrative spiritual gift gets in the way of me going where God has called.

Habbakkuk

Have you ever finished watching the evening news with all the violence and injustice in the world and in frustration asked, why isn’t God doing something? Why do the wicked and the dishonest people prosper? Why are they elected to the White House? Well, that is not a new feeling. A prophet named Habakkuk felt that way around 620 B.C. and wrote a book about it.

Habakkuk’s name means to “embrace” or “wrestle”

If God is good, then why is there evil in the world? And if there has to be evil, then why do the evil prosper? What is God doing in the world?

While Habakkuk begins by wondering or worrying about the world around him and God’s seeming indifference, he ends by worshiping God.

Habakkuk progresses from questioning God to trusting God.

In His Word...the beginnings

At the Sunday school picnic, Miss Smith stacked a pile of apples on one end of a table with a sign saying, "Take only one apple, please - God is watching." On the other end of the table was a pile of cookies on which a second grader had placed a sign saying, "Take all the cookies you want - God is watching the apples."
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“I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.” Exodus 20:5
What are you trying to prove? Whose attention do you want to get? If it’s anybody’s but God’s, then look out. He’s a jealous God. Yes, jealous. That means you belong to Him, and it makes Him jealous when you act like you belong to someone else. You try so hard to impress people and worry about how you will be accepted. And God is jealous. “If only you spent that much time trying to impress Me,” he whispers. You’re too busy trying to impress someone else. Be it that you are trying to learn the right moves, have the right brand and style of clothing, etc. What can you do to impress God? What can you do to keep Him from getting jealous? Do you go places without Him? Use His name in vain? Forget you belong to Him? Don’t make God jealous.