A question I am wrestling with these days.....It stirs within me frequently. I love how God works in me this way....pricking a certain question at my heart until I fully give it my attention and work through it....This one really has me thinking...of late, the Lord has been asking me if I really understand what it means to be His child. As His child, we are His sons.

"If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” – Galatians 3:29

Do we realize the magnitude of that covenant? And if so, do we operate our daily lives in that regard? When we walk each day...do we make decisions and respond as children of the Most High.....or do we still react as we did when we were still slaves?

Where does this hit you? In what areas does this affect your life? How is being a child of the Holy One change the way you deal with things........Job? Social obligations? Financial decisions? Children? Caregivers for other family members? Or.......in the quiet places within you....the attitudes of your heart.

When facing stressful situations...dealing with others...making decisions that are difficult....upon examination of my heart, do i position myself as His child and move in that? Or do I operate from the vantage of the flesh? How often do I forget that I am HIS!!!! I am an HEIR OF GOD!! We can walk with confidence because He calls us His! Praise you Father! We have a daddy in heaven who LOVES us. LOVES. Forever, unconditional, all encompassing love.

Love that so greatly exceeds our ability to comprehend.

And yet, I reject that so many times. I choose to believe what the world offers instead of what He places tenderly before me. Father, forgive me when I fail to respond as your child...to take hold of that which you have sacrificed for me. May I seek you as my Daddy...one in whom I can trust, confide, abide. May I respond to others today in a way that glorifies you and reveals more of you. May this awful flesh give way to the Spirit that is within. May I be a living sacrifice, Lord. Praise you for all you have done within. Praise you for who you created each of us to be. May we walk in confidence, knowing it is You who purposed each of us for this exact season, this exact time in your Kingdom! We are your children. Teach us more about that. Show us more of You.

Sorry for the length of this post...I think sometimes I don't exactly know how to say what my heart is holding...and there are times when the writing teaches me more than I could have learned otherwise. I pray that the Holy Spirit would go before me in this...that my spirit would testify with yours in this...to explain and fill in the gaps where my feeble words fail. I am often hesitant to post things of this sort simply because I am not sure they will be relevant to anyone but me. However, we serve an awesome God (isn't He?!) and I trust Him for each word that was written. Be blessed today. Be loved by a Father who loves you immeasurably.

Kris

I love this picture...I had to post it. So innocent. Hands extending a simple gift of love. What you cannot know about this picture is that the fragrance of those flowers was wonderful, sweet, soothing. (It's lavender). They were a gift from my precious daughter to me one morning last week. I took a pic. I know, I'm a mommy...those sweet hands holding a gift of love to me. She was telling me she loved me with those fragrant lavender buds. Oh the joy in my heart when i see the beauty within my daughter's heart!
Praise you Father for Meredith and the beauty within her. I love how you created her, and I praise you for all you have made her to be. Protect the innocence, protect the heart that hears you. May she walk with you all the days of her life!

question that the lord gave me yesterday, here it is -

Do I follow the Lord, or do I find myself wanting God to follow me - my desires, my ambitions?

new blog

Well, I have decided to create a second blog. my first blog, http://www.dalowes.blogspot.com/ is going to become my outlet for keeping people updated on our family and our life. yes, for those of you laughing, I'm going to do better at keeping it updated. Really, there are moments in my life when i need to write down what the Lord is working on in my life....and I need to have separate spaces for the funny stuff my kids do, and the things of the Spirit.

I read a lot of stuff from Sam Soleyn. www.soleyn.com - for those who want to check it out. I recently was reading about the things regarding our transformation from being dominated by our soul to being led by the Spirit. In one of the things i read, it was talking about how we often are called to leave something, but we assume that because the Lord asked us to leave, he automatically had a place for us to ARRIVE. And, in my flesh, i have often believed that if he called me out of one thing, there would be a place for me to be in another. How interesting that God does not think the way we do (do I hear an AMEN in the crowd?!) - and that sometimes, when we are called to leave an area, that He intends to use the time between leaving and arriving to accomplish His purposes. Hummmm.

The visual I got when I read this, initially, was physical. As in, when i leave my house, I've left. But just because I back out of the driveway doesn't mean that I'm immediately at the grocery store. I think the Lord is like this too. We often step out of one thing, usually a comfort thing, and we expect God to automatically have another comfort thing waiting for us. Our flesh is continually a comfort-seeking missile....looking for the closest thing that will keep us "safe". I don't think God is in the business of keeping us "safe" in the regard we initially view the word. I think God is continuously burning the FAKE out of us. The stuff which is not of Him. Gee....that doesn't exactly sound comfortable. And I think the reason why this has hit so hard today is because this is where I have been lately.

Trying to stay comfortable.

Oh Lord, forgive me when I only want you on my terms. Forgive me when I want things to be easy and tend to look the other way instead of dealing with issues that are hard. May my heart continue to press on, may my Spirit continue to discern things that my soul cannot understand...yet bring them forth from my Spirit into my soul, and allow them to become Truth in my life.