More thoughts on Adoption...

So, I was just realizing how excited I am to fill out forms and put pictures together to make a Life Book for our adoption process. And I began to realize that everyone starts this process with excitement. Everyone. Then, somehow, as time goes on, the excitement fades into doubt and sadness and just a tiredness in the process. I was asking the Lord why this is the way it is, and I was asking Him to keep the excitement in my heart that I have now - even if this process takes years. So, as I prayed and contemplated the situation, He gave me a really simple thought. It was as if He simply said, because people quit believing that it is really going to happen. Then, He took my mind to vacation. You know, the summer vacation that you plan, or the spring break plan that you make. We are planning to go to California this summer and we are stoked!! (That is a Californian word for really excited!) As time goes on, even though it has been months since we made the plan, we get MORE excited because we KNOW that the time is closer now than it was before! It should be the same way with adoption. Because every month we wait, we are one month closer to having our baby! That is truth! But, the enemy comes in to steal from us and we let him! We give him our hope and our trust in the Lord's Sovereignty and we say, that's okay, I'll just become apathetic! NO WAY! I am begging the Lord to protect me from that. I don't want to make it appear easy - every act of war is just that - an act of war. There aren't toy guns and pretend arrows. It is really intense and you have to fight literally for your life. But, I am asking the Lord to help me fight for the CONSTANT excitement in this process. In my mind, 8 to 10 months seems like perfect timing - BUT MY TIMING ISN'T NECESSARILY THE LORD'S TIMING! So, I want to grow more and more excited as each month passes and not let the enemy take anything away from this beautiful and amazing process. Please pray for our family as we begin our journey. Pray that the Lord will get amazing glory from our journey through adoption! And, let me know if you want to see our Life Book! I can't wait until it is finished!

Adoption

Galatians 4:5, "God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children. And because we are his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, prompting us to call out, "Abba, Father".

Ken and I have just begun the process of adopting a precious baby into our family. There are many unknowns. There are many fears - most of which are unfounded. The Lord in all of His sovereignty already has a baby picked out for our family. He alone knows if this sweet one is even conceived, whether it is a boy, or girl. He alone knows what struggles the baby will have already had in this life. I want to have a heart of prayer for this baby’s biological mother (the birthmother, in adoptive language). I want people to realize that the stigma that is usually placed on women who give their babies a fresh start in life through the process of adoption is not accurate. They are depicted as uncaring, unfeeling, and even selfish. Selfishness looks like abortion. Selfishness looks like raising the baby in a crack house, or in the midst of prostitution. Selfishness is not letting someone else raise the baby that grew in your womb for 9 months. That is quite possibly one of the most selfless decisions a woman could make for her child. And it is not rational to think that any woman would have an easy time of delivering a baby only to place it in someone else’s arms. The nurturing instinct of a mother doesn’t just fade away after delivery. These sweet women have to grieve as if they have lost a child to miscarriage. Yes, ultimately they know that life awaits their baby. A good life, with someone that they have chosen. But, the child will grow up calling someone else Momma and Daddy. As we go through this process, I am praying that we will realize all of the ways that we can love this birthmother. Sometimes that might look like drawing near. And sometimes, that might look like backing away - and giving her room to breathe. This is just the start of an amazing journey. I can’t wait to see what lies ahead! The Lord is faithful. The Lord is loving. The Lord is a mighty God!

Ephesians 1:5, "God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son."

Praise His Holy Name!

Today our precious Jared accepted Christ! Please join with me and the angels to sing praise to our sweet God who has adopted Jared as a son! YEAH GOD! Tonight in church, with no prompting by anyone other than the Holy Spirit, my precious son lifted his arms in worship. Oh it was precious indeed! Not only did he not just do what he saw me doing - I hadn't even raised my arms yet, and he leaned over and asked me why I hadn't! Oh thank you Jesus that once we are yours, no matter how old or young, we can hear your voice! What a sweet memory for me to always treasure in my heart. There is no greater thing than to realize that your child wants to love Jesus and praise Him. When I asked him why he wanted to ask Jesus in his heart, his first response was, "because I want to praise Him!" Oh wow!

Yes, Jesus, that we would want you in our lives, not just for direction, or clarity, or for what we get out of it, but just simply because we want to praise you! Let us praise you with childlike faith! Help us to love you with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. Teach us what that even means in our lives. There is so much to be thankful for. Help us to know you in ways that we can't even imagine right now. Help us to praise you in all things. Help us to know how to recognize all that we have to be thankful for!

So, my heart is rejoicing and I cannot stop thinking of things to be thankful for. What a sweet God we serve. He knows what we need before we even ask Him. That is so amazing, and so true. He even knows our wants and sometimes provides for those as well. What a good and giving God we serve! I really think I am the most blessed woman in the whole world! Truly, what more could I want. Truly I live in a place of abundance! Thank you my sweet God.

Welcome Jude Alexander Simmons

Jude's Here! What a precious boy he is! He is so sweet and little! He weighed 7lbs. 9 ozs., and was 19 and a half inches long. We are doing really well at home. I can't wait to see how much he weighs today! We are going to our first weight checkup. He is a really content baby, and his brothers and sister adore him! They all love to hold him and just look at him. We are adjusting really well and we are so glad to be home and finding our "normal". Today was the first day that we actually feel like we are on a semi-schedule. The first few nights have been spent making adjustments and finding what works for his sleep patterns, and mine :) We are really excited about Christmas and just being a quiet family Christmas. We will be able to just relax and love on each other while being so thankful to our God for sending us His Son into the world in such lowly circumstances. What an amazing God, and what an amazing plan! Enjoy your loved ones this Christmas and know that God put you in exactly the family He knew you needed and needed you! Love you all,

Christy

Thoughts on Ezekiel...

So Ezekiel begins by telling that he was sitting by a river with the exiles and the Lord God began to give him visions. In Chapter 2 he gets his official call from the Lord. He is being sent to the Israelites – the rebellious nation. The Lord tells him that whether or not they receive the words, he is to go and tell them the messages from God. Then, in chapter 3 it gets really interesting. God tells him to eat the scroll that is before him and he opened it and ate it. It was sweet in his mouth – as sweet as honey. Then, the Lord tells him that He will harden Ezekiel’s heart so that it is like the people of Israel’s and yet, He commands him to go and speak His words to them – no matter their reaction. He just has to be faithful. Verse 10 strikes me as the Lord says to him, “Son of man, let all my words sink deep into your own heart first. Listen to them carefully for yourself. Then go to your people in exile and say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says!’ Do this whether they listen to you or not.
Alright Ezekiel, I am calling you. I am telling you that I am going to put my words in your mouth, and you are responsible to tell this rebellious nation, no matter what they respond with. But FIRST, I want you to hear these words. Let them sink – DEEP IN YOUR HEART. Then you can go to others. What an amazing lesson for the people of our day. How often are we ready to go to someone with a rebuke or a reproof and yet, have we really ingested the words for ourselves first? Galatians 6 exhorts us to go to our brothers when we see them in sin, but it also gives us a warning. Look at this, “Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Each one should test his own actions. The, he can take pride in himself WITHOUT COMPARING HIMSELF TO SOMEBODY ELSE, for each one should carry his own load.”
Verse 12 says that the Spirit then lifted him up and he heard a rumbling sound. It is the coolest thing to realize that he pauses and literally says, “May the glory of the Lord be praised in this place!” He is so in awe of the presence of our God that he has to stop and just say, “praise the Lord!” in the middle of telling the story. Wow! How awesome is our God? His worth and beauty we are completely inept to understand! So, then he finishes telling the story that the Spirit carried him away “in bitterness and turmoil, but the Lord’s hold on me was strong.” He says, ‘I didn’t want to do it. I was kicking and screaming, but the Lord’s hand held me fast, and I couldn’t get away.’ I love that! He doesn’t have a great attitude, or a soft heart. The Lord told him that he was going to harden his heart like that of the people. So, it was with a hardened heart that he went to the people as God has told him. I love that! Talk about being willing to take on things that are uncomfortable for God. The Spirit carried him to the Kebar River again and he was overwhelmed and sat among them for seven days. Can you imagine everything he saw and felt and heard in that seven days? I cannot fathom it.
What sort of person would God choose to do things like this? He didn’t say that Ezekiel had a hard heart. When He spoke to Ezekiel, He said that he would harden his heart. That means that Ezekiel’s heart was soft. He was willing. He was ready to take the message, or God would not have chosen him. How hard it is to imagine that he went off in bitterness and anger and turmoil? What would that have been like for him? What would it feel like to have a hard heart that you didn’t spend time creating? How difficult would it be to be striving with the Lord when in reality he wanted to do God’s will all along. We harden our hearts to the Lord by telling Him no when He asks us to do things, or by not entering into painful places with Him because we have more fear than faith. But, what if we didn’t have a hard heart, and all of a sudden, the Lord shows up and says, I am going to harden your heart so that you can be a witness to these people. Overwhelmed for seven days seems pretty short to me. I think I might have been overwhelmed for a month! I can’t imagine what that would have made him feel like. The separation from the Lord. The knowledge that the Lord is Sovereign, and yet, the inability to respond to the Lord with a sweetness of spirit. Instead, it is a bitterness of spirit that he has to operate in. It is in turmoil that he was dealing with the Lord. After those overwhelming days, the Lord shows up again and speaks to him finally with the message. The message is not an easy pill to swallow. Read Ezekiel 3:16-21.
“After seven days the Lord gave me a message. He said, “Son of man, I have appointed you as a watchman for Israel. Whenever you receive a message from me, warn people immediately. If I warn the wicked, saying, ‘You are under the penalty of death’, but you fail to deliver the warning, they will die in their sins. And I will hold you responsible for their deaths. If you warn them and they refuse to repent and keep on sinning, they will die in their sins. But you will have saved yourself because you obeyed me. If righteous people turn away from their righteous behavior and ignore the obstacles I put in their way, they will die. And if you do not warn them, they will die in their sins. None of their righteous acts will be remembered, and I will hold you responsible for their deaths. But, if you warn righteous people not to sin, and they listen to you and do not sin, they will live and you will have saved yourself too.” Then the Lord took hold of me and said, “Get up and go out in to the valley, and I will speak to you there.” So I got up and went, and there I saw the glory of the Lord, just as I had seen in my first vision by the Kebar River. And I fell face down on the ground.”
Talk about responsibility. The Lord gives out responsibility in accordance with our faithfulness. He told Ezekiel that HE would be responsible for people’s death if he didn’t warn them as he was told! He was appointed a watchman for the people of Israel. God was basically telling him, “I gave you eyes to see so that you could warn them, and if you don’t use the gifts I have given, their death – in eternity will be on your head.” Wow. I wonder how the Lord would use us if we would have a willing Spirit. I wonder what things He wants to let us share in if we would only have hearts willing to do what He requires. I am not saying that I want to be responsible for other people’s salvation, but I am saying that aren’t we already? Hasn’t He already commanded us to go and spread the gospel? Hasn’t He commissioned each one of us with a calling that will both build up the body of believers and at the same time lead people to Christ? 1 Corinthians 14:26 says, “Well, my brothers and sisters, let’s summarize. When you meet together, one will sing, another will teach, another will tell some special revelation God has given, one will speak in tongues, and another will interpret what is said. But everything that is done must strengthen all of you.” God Himself has placed us in what body of believers He desires, and the Spirit has chosen which gifts to give us. It is our responsibility to work as unto the Lord in the body, and out of the body of believers. We are to share our gifts with the lost AND THE SAVED. We were not given gifts for ourselves alone. We were not given abilities to build ourselves up – but the whole church. Isn’t it time that we embraced the things that God wants for us? Every good and perfect gift comes from the Father of lights. He gives us so many riches that we stomp on the ground under our feet. Oh to have a willing Spirit like Ezekiel that doesn’t run away from the responsibilities that the Lord desires to give! I want to have a willing heart and mind. I want to have a heart that says “Yes” to God – and that when Satan goes to accuse me before God’s throne, He is so certain of my reaction that He would let me be like Job – just to show that my heart is faithful to Him above all things. Oh, Lord teach us how to have a spirit that is not weak. Help us to be strong in You alone! Help us to have a heart that fears your Name! Lord that we could say with the Psalmist in 119 that says, “I will hasten and not delay to obey your commands.” And Though I constantly take my life in my hands, I will not forget your law… My heart is set on keeping your decrees until the very end!” Help us Lord, pour your mercy down on us!

DAZED AND CONFUSED?

So much of our confusion, our “depression” and our condemnation (which makes us feel worthless) comes from forgetting the basic things of the Word of God. The good news is that we are not alone in this forgetfulness. Obviously the Galatians and the Ephesians forgot these same things.

Look at Galatians with me:

Paul has just finished reminding the Galatians that he is not after their approval, but God’s alone. He is rebuking them for turning away from the good news so quickly regarding Christ. Look at these few verses in Galatians 1:6-7, “I am shocked that you are turning away so soon from God, who called you to himself through the loving mercy of Christ. You are following a different way that pretends to be the Good News 7 but is not the Good News at all. You are being fooled by those who deliberately twist the truth concerning Christ.”
Then he begins his discourse in Galatians 2 that hits the specifics of the things they have forgotten and the new things that they are embracing. The cool thing is that he first brags on the leadership who didn’t demand that Titus follow the “law” – and then he fronts out the “so-called” Christians that brought in the new teaching. Trying to take away the freedom that Christ brought – or should I say bought. Read this with me:
Galatians 2:4-5, “Even that question came up only because of some so-called Christians there—false ones, really —who were secretly brought in. They sneaked in to spy on us and take away the freedom we have in Christ Jesus. They wanted to enslave us and force us to follow their Jewish regulations. 5 But we refused to give in to them for a single moment. We wanted to preserve the truth of the gospel message for you.”
He then goes on to say how he and Peter and Barnabas had a strong disagreement because of the way that they had been led astray by other teachers who emphasized the law over God’s grace. I will just type out the next few verses where Paul gets very specific about what made him so angry with all of this teaching.
Galatians 2:16-21, “Yet we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law. And we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we have obeyed the law. For no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law.” 17 But suppose we seek to be made right with God through faith in Christ and then we are found guilty because we have abandoned the law. Would that mean Christ has led us into sin? Absolutely not! 18 Rather, I am a sinner if I rebuild the old system of law I already tore down. 19 For when I tried to keep the law, it condemned me. So I died to the law—I stopped trying to meet all its requirements—so that I might live for God. 20 My old self has been crucified with Christ. ] It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die.”
Did you see that? If keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was NO NEED for Christ to DIE!!! Woah. Think on that. Really stop and ponder what Paul is saying there.

Now, look at Galatians 3:1-5, “Oh, foolish Galatians! Who has cast an evil spell on you? For the meaning of Jesus Christ’s death was made as clear to you as if you had seen a picture of his death on the cross. 2 Let me ask you this one question: Did you receive the Holy Spirit by obeying the law of Moses? Of course not! You received the Spirit because you believed the message you heard about Christ. 3 How foolish can you be? After starting your Christian lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort? 4 Have you experienced so much for nothing? Surely it was not in vain, was it? 5 I ask you again, does God give you the Holy Spirit and work miracles among you because you obey the law? Of course not! It is because you believe the message you heard about Christ.”
Okay, so hop over with me to Ephesians if you want to see that this was not an uncommon struggle. I will not quote all of Ephesians to you, though the Word of God is really the only thing that will impart life to you… But, let me just quote this one thing.
Ephesians 2:8-10, “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. 9 Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. 10 For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago”.
You can’t take credit for this… Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done. We are HIS MASTERPIECE! Do you think that He messed up in calling you? If you can’t mess up His calling, and His work, then why do you think any of the rest of it depends on you? It would be as if we hung the Mona Lisa in our living room and then we tried to take some credit for how beautiful the work is (or how flawed, whatever your opinion of Ms. Mona). That is ridiculous. It was never our work. We simply display it for others to see. We are way too self-focused and the enemy knows this and uses it against us. This is how he gets to us. We take our eyes off of the author and perfector of our faith and we put them on ourselves, and our works. This is always a route to failure and depression. Because we are the Israelites. We are hopelessly lost without help from our Jesus. That is why He came! So, we need to remember that God did not call us to walk this thing out on our own, in our own power or strength, but in Him – and in Christ alone.
Finally, I am pondering 1 Corinthians 12 and our gifts. It says here that he created us so we can do the good things HE PLANNED for us long ago. And, that leads directly into the giftings that He has given us as His children. We are each to operate as the part of the body that He made us to be. We are not to get caught up in other people’s callings, because He has clearly made each one of us with a different calling, but the same Spirit. So, though, I will not explore that throroughly, it is something that I cannot help but mention. Because if we are called to be the hands and we are trying to be the feet, we are walking upside down! That doesn’t bring glory to our God, but attention to ourselves – not to mention that we will not be doing any of that in His power, but all of our own, so we will only look rather silly, not to mention feel completely incompetent to do what He is calling us to do.

Alright, I know that was random, but it does give a good image. :)