My husband and I are trying a new system now. I am being put in money prison lol. At least it kind of feels that way. He is now on a different account by himself that I don't have access to. We had a joint account before. We both agreed I was buying too many needless things on Amazon. Be careful of that website. It's very easy to spend more then you mean to. I have always been allowed $50 a week to spend on fun stuff, like extra clothes we don't really need and posters etc., but sometimes it's hard to say what qualifies as fun stuff verses groceries or things we need.
So now I get $50 cash each week to spend on clothes for me or the girls etc. It's kind of a similar system to what my mom and step-dad have. Before I was getting all the bills paid but now Ben will be doing that.
Joyce Meyer always says in her sermons that the man should be in charge of the finances. I didn't agree with that for a long time, but Paul does refer to women as being the weaker partner. I think he meant weaker because we don't know when to stop spending money, at least that's how it plays out in our modern world. Satan tempts us easier I think, in certain things. Both men and women have their struggles, but buying too much is definitely the women's struggle. I'm sure some women are very self-controlled with that, but I think most of us aren't.
So I'm finally submitting to my husband and letting him control everything in regards to money. He makes it so he should be the one who gets to control it really. The turning point for me when I was willing to let go was actually when he quit smoking and drinking a beer a day a month ago and started buying salad things for us instead of pizza. Then I felt that I could trust him to take care of me and do good things with any extra money he had. :)
My flesh fought this whole thing at first. I pouted a bit, like a spoiled child who doesn't get everything they want. But overall I see that it's good. And I really feel things will be better for us all doing this. Maybe now we can actually save money.
I seem to have a sickness of some sort that if there is extra money I want to spend it on something. I have a hard time letting money just sit around somewhere. I feel it should be used for something. But of course the idea of saving is that it will be used for something eventually, and probably something important.
Up until now my husband's parents have been helping us with a lot of stuff, and God bless them for that. But I have felt bad about it all along. So God willing going forward we will be able to stand on our own and provide for all our own things with our own money. :) Praise God. May God grant us success on this saving journey and may we be able to buy a house finally in 10 months due to all this.
May God bless you all! :)
Saturday, January 14, 2017
Thursday, January 12, 2017
My Testimony
For any who haven't read my testimony feel free to read this. I'm gonna write it out again because I might be sharing it soon at my Community Bible Study. Very exciting. :) It's been about two years since I wrote it out, but I have at least 8 times lol. I suppose I have given my testimony in front of people around 10 times so far in my life. Each time I write it out I think of different things that might help someone or that others might be able to relate to or be encouraged by etc.
I was raised in a very religious family. I say religious because my mom was Christian but my dad was just religious. They were involved in a church called "the Local Church" for a long time, which was very legalistic. The people may have looked good on the outside and said all the right stuff, but it was mostly goodness out of competition or fear I think.
My dad molested me for awhile in my childhood. I could never wrap my mind around how he could be Christian and do that, but he wasn't Christian, he was just religious. I have had a lot of anger at my mom throughout my lifetime about all that, mainly just at the fact that she married my dad. I felt she should have taken more time to really judge his character before marrying him, since obviously he turned out to be a bit crazy. He was analyzed by psychiatrists who said he was "highly intelligent but with a skewed sense of reality." That skewed sense was that he thought it was his job to teach me everything about life, including sexuality. Very skewed indeed.
He went to jail when I was 6 because I told my mom about something he did. She did not know the whole time what was happening. He was only in jail for a short time and our family reunited after he got out, which I also had anger at my mom about as an adult. If it were me, I would have never spoken to him again.
But then when I was 9 my parents divorced, praise God. Although that divorce was a bit hard on me. I started getting into a lot of trouble, shoplifting and drinking and smoking from about 12 to 14. Mainly it was because I felt that I was bad due to what happened to me so I thought I might as well act bad.
When I was 14 my mom and I moved to California from Nebraska to be by her parents. Praise God for that because from then on my grandma was a very strong and very positive influence in my life. She helped me see that I needed to do better and that God had a great plan for my life, despite what happened to me. I felt like she really believed in me, that I could do anything and be anything. So I did. I went on a mission's trip at 14 to India. I joined all the leadership teams at my church. I was in tons of AP classes in high school and a debate club and choir and basketball. I did everything I could do. I love a quote I heard once, "The most reprobate sinners become the most devout saints." I think it's because the energy you put into being bad you then put into doing good and helping others.
Then I went to Biola for college, a private Christian school. I kind of had the wind taken out of my sails there. I think I felt less than the other kids who all seemed to come from perfect families. I felt kind of like the black sheep there all four years. I also had lots of anxiety about what people thought of me and my grades. But I did learn a ton about the Bible and God there and I praise God for that. :)
After college I mostly worked at jobs helping kids. I felt like my calling in life was to help other kids have a really happy childhood since I didn't. I have heard "Your greatest ministry comes from your greatest pain." My greatest pain was that most of my young life was not happy at all, so I wanted to create happiness for as many kids as I could. I ran games at summer camps, tried teaching and did lots of tutoring. I tried to encourage as many kids as I could, like my grandma always had encouraged me. :)
At 25 I met a wonderful Christian guy. We got engaged, but when I was 27 he died due to drinking while on to many prescriptions. That started a war inside me kind of against prescription drugs and doctors. That time of grieving over his death was a very, very hard time for me. I never questioned my faith though. I only pressed harder into God in that time and started writing in my new blog a ton. His death made me realize even more how little time we all have, and that I could die any day. I felt all the more that I needed to start doing as much as I could to help others and change the world, as much as I could.
But praise God when I was 28 I met my husband online. I prayed that I would meet him and two weeks later God brought him into my life, via email on plenty of fish.com. :) He is absolutely wonderful! I love him so much! We now have two little girls who are total angels. Also he just quit smoking about a month and praise God for that too! I think it wasn't until I stopped trying to make him quit that he finally did. :)
And about two years ago I started making something I call "Jesus Packets" that have bracelets and muffins that I make and a Bible tract and candy. I think my motivation for those is that if I can't save my dad, maybe I can help to save many others. I think I have made about 2,000 of those so far. :) And hopefully those are making a difference. My goal in life has always been to push away the darkness as much as I can and shine as much light in this world as I can in any way I can, through music or making craft things or my blog writing. Hopefully God has taken every effort I have made and multiplied it's effects like Jesus did with the bread and the fish. And that is the end of my story. May God bless you all. :)
I was raised in a very religious family. I say religious because my mom was Christian but my dad was just religious. They were involved in a church called "the Local Church" for a long time, which was very legalistic. The people may have looked good on the outside and said all the right stuff, but it was mostly goodness out of competition or fear I think.
My dad molested me for awhile in my childhood. I could never wrap my mind around how he could be Christian and do that, but he wasn't Christian, he was just religious. I have had a lot of anger at my mom throughout my lifetime about all that, mainly just at the fact that she married my dad. I felt she should have taken more time to really judge his character before marrying him, since obviously he turned out to be a bit crazy. He was analyzed by psychiatrists who said he was "highly intelligent but with a skewed sense of reality." That skewed sense was that he thought it was his job to teach me everything about life, including sexuality. Very skewed indeed.
He went to jail when I was 6 because I told my mom about something he did. She did not know the whole time what was happening. He was only in jail for a short time and our family reunited after he got out, which I also had anger at my mom about as an adult. If it were me, I would have never spoken to him again.
But then when I was 9 my parents divorced, praise God. Although that divorce was a bit hard on me. I started getting into a lot of trouble, shoplifting and drinking and smoking from about 12 to 14. Mainly it was because I felt that I was bad due to what happened to me so I thought I might as well act bad.
When I was 14 my mom and I moved to California from Nebraska to be by her parents. Praise God for that because from then on my grandma was a very strong and very positive influence in my life. She helped me see that I needed to do better and that God had a great plan for my life, despite what happened to me. I felt like she really believed in me, that I could do anything and be anything. So I did. I went on a mission's trip at 14 to India. I joined all the leadership teams at my church. I was in tons of AP classes in high school and a debate club and choir and basketball. I did everything I could do. I love a quote I heard once, "The most reprobate sinners become the most devout saints." I think it's because the energy you put into being bad you then put into doing good and helping others.
Then I went to Biola for college, a private Christian school. I kind of had the wind taken out of my sails there. I think I felt less than the other kids who all seemed to come from perfect families. I felt kind of like the black sheep there all four years. I also had lots of anxiety about what people thought of me and my grades. But I did learn a ton about the Bible and God there and I praise God for that. :)
After college I mostly worked at jobs helping kids. I felt like my calling in life was to help other kids have a really happy childhood since I didn't. I have heard "Your greatest ministry comes from your greatest pain." My greatest pain was that most of my young life was not happy at all, so I wanted to create happiness for as many kids as I could. I ran games at summer camps, tried teaching and did lots of tutoring. I tried to encourage as many kids as I could, like my grandma always had encouraged me. :)
At 25 I met a wonderful Christian guy. We got engaged, but when I was 27 he died due to drinking while on to many prescriptions. That started a war inside me kind of against prescription drugs and doctors. That time of grieving over his death was a very, very hard time for me. I never questioned my faith though. I only pressed harder into God in that time and started writing in my new blog a ton. His death made me realize even more how little time we all have, and that I could die any day. I felt all the more that I needed to start doing as much as I could to help others and change the world, as much as I could.
But praise God when I was 28 I met my husband online. I prayed that I would meet him and two weeks later God brought him into my life, via email on plenty of fish.com. :) He is absolutely wonderful! I love him so much! We now have two little girls who are total angels. Also he just quit smoking about a month and praise God for that too! I think it wasn't until I stopped trying to make him quit that he finally did. :)
And about two years ago I started making something I call "Jesus Packets" that have bracelets and muffins that I make and a Bible tract and candy. I think my motivation for those is that if I can't save my dad, maybe I can help to save many others. I think I have made about 2,000 of those so far. :) And hopefully those are making a difference. My goal in life has always been to push away the darkness as much as I can and shine as much light in this world as I can in any way I can, through music or making craft things or my blog writing. Hopefully God has taken every effort I have made and multiplied it's effects like Jesus did with the bread and the fish. And that is the end of my story. May God bless you all. :)
Sunday, January 8, 2017
Community Bible Study
I am in a Community Bible Study now on James. Here's something amazing about CBS, there are more than 1,000 CBS Bible study groups in over 39 countries. And it all got started here in the U.S. in New York actually. The study books are written by a team in Colorado Springs. And Rwanda has the most classes per capita than any other country. Pretty awesome! Maybe the movie "Hotel Rwanda" made lots of people want to go to Rwanda as missionaries. I know it almost made me want to. If you haven't seen that movie, check it out. It's pretty intense though.
Here are my thoughts on my homework for this week on James chapter 2:
James 2 talks about favoritism of rich people over poor people. Now it's not so much favoritism with rich people as much as favoritism of the leadership in churches I think. People almost worship their pastor and anyone in leadership. But that is idolatry. And it is not being fair to the rest of the "normal" members of the church. We should respect those in leadership, but not worship them of course. We follow God, not our church leaders. If a leader says something that goes against Scripture we should feel ok with calling them out on it. Leaders can be wrong. They are not perfect and all knowing like God. Don't just take everything your leader says as being absolute truth. Find answers for yourself in the Bible. You don't have to believe everything that your leader believes blindly. Respect them but don't worship them.
James 2:13 says, "Judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful." As in "do to others as you would have them do to you." And also, what goes around comes around. If you are merciful with others, they will be with you. But if you judge others harshly or try to control what they do, they will in turn try to judge you and control you. We reap what we sow. If we sow judgement and harshness with others we will reap that for ourselves.
And then there is this seeming contradiction: Eph. 2:8-9 "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast." And James 2:24 "You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone." This means that before we are saved, our works do not matter. We cannot save ourselves by what we do. We are saved by faith in God only. But after we are saved, much more is expected of us since we have the Holy Spirit living in us. Paul says, "walk in a manner worthy of your calling." If the Holy Spirit is in us, it WILL show. Like Jesus said, a good tree cannot bear bad fruit. If we are truly saved, we will be a good tree and have good fruit.
It's easy to get confused by what James says, but he is talking to people who are already Christian. We don't try to save ourselves by our good deeds. We don't do good things to get God to love us. We do good things BECAUSE God loves us. God's love flows out of us to others. Our good deed are the evidence that we truly have the Holy Spirit living in us; that is what James is saying. Faith without works is dead. As in, if someone is truly saved, they cannot help but want to help others and share the gospel etc. It's not a legalistic directive that James is saying. He is simply saying, your life should show that you are Christian, and if it doesn't, then maybe you aren't.
If you don't truly love people and want to help them, how can you know that you are saved? If you don't truly love God and long to talk to him every minute of the day about everything you go through, how can you really know you are saved? Of course there are stages in our relationship with God. The longer we have known God the more we want to talk to him, just like with a friend. But overall, we should desire to know God more and love others more, if we are really saved.
And those are my thoughts on the book of James so far. I'll write more on James later. May God bless you all!
Here are my thoughts on my homework for this week on James chapter 2:
James 2 talks about favoritism of rich people over poor people. Now it's not so much favoritism with rich people as much as favoritism of the leadership in churches I think. People almost worship their pastor and anyone in leadership. But that is idolatry. And it is not being fair to the rest of the "normal" members of the church. We should respect those in leadership, but not worship them of course. We follow God, not our church leaders. If a leader says something that goes against Scripture we should feel ok with calling them out on it. Leaders can be wrong. They are not perfect and all knowing like God. Don't just take everything your leader says as being absolute truth. Find answers for yourself in the Bible. You don't have to believe everything that your leader believes blindly. Respect them but don't worship them.
James 2:13 says, "Judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful." As in "do to others as you would have them do to you." And also, what goes around comes around. If you are merciful with others, they will be with you. But if you judge others harshly or try to control what they do, they will in turn try to judge you and control you. We reap what we sow. If we sow judgement and harshness with others we will reap that for ourselves.
And then there is this seeming contradiction: Eph. 2:8-9 "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast." And James 2:24 "You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone." This means that before we are saved, our works do not matter. We cannot save ourselves by what we do. We are saved by faith in God only. But after we are saved, much more is expected of us since we have the Holy Spirit living in us. Paul says, "walk in a manner worthy of your calling." If the Holy Spirit is in us, it WILL show. Like Jesus said, a good tree cannot bear bad fruit. If we are truly saved, we will be a good tree and have good fruit.
It's easy to get confused by what James says, but he is talking to people who are already Christian. We don't try to save ourselves by our good deeds. We don't do good things to get God to love us. We do good things BECAUSE God loves us. God's love flows out of us to others. Our good deed are the evidence that we truly have the Holy Spirit living in us; that is what James is saying. Faith without works is dead. As in, if someone is truly saved, they cannot help but want to help others and share the gospel etc. It's not a legalistic directive that James is saying. He is simply saying, your life should show that you are Christian, and if it doesn't, then maybe you aren't.
If you don't truly love people and want to help them, how can you know that you are saved? If you don't truly love God and long to talk to him every minute of the day about everything you go through, how can you really know you are saved? Of course there are stages in our relationship with God. The longer we have known God the more we want to talk to him, just like with a friend. But overall, we should desire to know God more and love others more, if we are really saved.
And those are my thoughts on the book of James so far. I'll write more on James later. May God bless you all!
Evolution and Homosexuality
Every time I hear someone talk about the earth being billions of years old I want to punch them. Mainly because that goes against what the Bible says, and they are paying no regard to that.
I'm watching Kratt's Creatures on Amazon with the girls and they are saying how sharks lived millions of years before humans arrived. And I realized something, possibly why evolutionists want to say animals were here long before us, is because they want to say this planet belongs more to the animals than to us, because they were here first. I think Evolutionists are actually very anti-human, which is ironic since they are human. But also to say we came from monkeys is a pretty low view of humans. That is to say we are basically just evolved animals. That takes away any soul we have or eternal value. I have heard that Hitler was actually an avid follower of the teachings of evolution and that's partly what led to him to slaughter millions of Jews.
Evolution was just the beginning. First schools got away with getting kids to agree that the Bible was wrong on how old the earth was. And now they are getting kids to disagree with the fact that marriage is supposed to be between a man and woman. Now schools are infiltrating the minds of children even more then evolution and teaching them that being gay is ok. I have heard they are incorporating that into sex ed now, teaching about homosexuality. But they should keep in mind Mt. 18:6 when they teach about that, "If anyone causes one of these little ones--those who believe in me--to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea." To teach completely anti-biblical concepts like evolution and homosexuality could and is causing young children to stumble and not believe in the Bible and God. That is very serious.
Who knows what ideologies they will try to teach our kids next in public schools. God help us. :(
I'm watching Kratt's Creatures on Amazon with the girls and they are saying how sharks lived millions of years before humans arrived. And I realized something, possibly why evolutionists want to say animals were here long before us, is because they want to say this planet belongs more to the animals than to us, because they were here first. I think Evolutionists are actually very anti-human, which is ironic since they are human. But also to say we came from monkeys is a pretty low view of humans. That is to say we are basically just evolved animals. That takes away any soul we have or eternal value. I have heard that Hitler was actually an avid follower of the teachings of evolution and that's partly what led to him to slaughter millions of Jews.
Evolution was just the beginning. First schools got away with getting kids to agree that the Bible was wrong on how old the earth was. And now they are getting kids to disagree with the fact that marriage is supposed to be between a man and woman. Now schools are infiltrating the minds of children even more then evolution and teaching them that being gay is ok. I have heard they are incorporating that into sex ed now, teaching about homosexuality. But they should keep in mind Mt. 18:6 when they teach about that, "If anyone causes one of these little ones--those who believe in me--to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea." To teach completely anti-biblical concepts like evolution and homosexuality could and is causing young children to stumble and not believe in the Bible and God. That is very serious.
Who knows what ideologies they will try to teach our kids next in public schools. God help us. :(
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