School's In - and I feel like ranting a bit.

So most people get real happy when it's time for kids to go back to school. However, as a home school mom this isn't exactly my emotion attached to starting a new school year. Aaron is in the 6th grade and to think that I have been in this home school mindset for 7 years now makes me wonder just why am I not any better at it, or why don't I enjoy it any more then I do. Why do I still have the same daily frustrations with Aaron. Why why why why why???. Home schooling for me is not a way of life. Now I know many of you home school moms are probably getting ready to throw a tomato at my head right about now for saying what you would consider such blasphemy. Well home schooling is simple the way I chose or better yet the way God has chosen for now, for me to educate my son. Trust me each year I beg Him to allow me to stop and so far the answer has been "No persevere". I do not subscribe to a one way, one mindset of education. O O there it is again "outlandish" statement that no good christian home school mom would ever say, at least not out loud. There is very little I like about homeschooling. But for my current state of ranting allow me to list the things I enjoy then I will get to the good stuff what I don't enjoy.
1. I love the freedom it gives us as a family - days on days off.
2. I like that my son can work at his level and speed.
3. I like that I can let Aaron sleep until 9am if I want so that I have more time with my Jesus.
4. I like that there will be a day that I will look back and just maybe see that I have grown as a person because of it.
5. I like kickin it in PJ's as long as we want.
6. I LOVE the organization of it. I could write lesson plans for days. If the success of my home school life was based on my ability to organize and do lesson plans then O I so have you all beat. But as we know it's the execution of the lesson plans that matter - - UUGGHHH! good grief!

What I do not like:
1. The daily battle that I endure from my son who despises learning.
2. The frustration I get when I just can't help him understand something.
3. That there are days that Aaron finds it better to fight me for 3-5 hours for something simple then to just do the 20min. exercise.
3. I really do not enjoy teaching so therefore it makes the daily life of homeschooling an act of obedience for me.
4. That somehow in this home school world most mom's think there is one way and one way only to do this and apparently they have the answer and everyone else is wrong and they find great pleasure in talking about that. Never does it cross their mind that they are the very source of much division in the christian community. I sit back and if it wasn't so pain staking sad I would be amused. Okay I didn't tell the truth I am still slightly amused. It is sad though that they can't see the division they bring about, all in the name of education.
5. There are actually home school groups out there that if you do not file your own affidavit or belong to certain Christian ISP's you are not welcomed to join their group. And in some cases they won't even allow their kids to associate with your kid. WOW - now they would never say it as blunt as I have but we all know it is very much the truth.

So school is in and I'm in it for yet another year. How I wish I enjoyed it like so many of my friends. But so far that is not my story. At our church we have a home school group. It is very large and we do allow all facets of homeschooling families to join. I actually sit on the leadership board for the time been for the main purpose of doing everything I can to fight against the division that this home school world so produces. We are pioneering a different way of looking at it and prayerfully we are breaking down walls but I can assure you it has come at such a cost and when it comes down to it most really don't see that the division is a problem. I do and I know my Lord does to. So there is my rant after 1 complete week of being back to school. How ever let me say that this first week did go better than I expected and for that I am grateful to the Lord for giving me extra help this week.
I suppose it's possible that some may read this and find it offensive. I pray not. Maybe my delivery is raw but it is 100% how I believe.

Just having this conversation yesterday I couldn't help myself but to post this devotion I found in my inbox. To understand these words is to understand why we all are being sifted, pruned, sandpapered, or whatever word you want to attach to your current situations. I so believe we are in the days that the heavier Hand of God is upon us to bring that clearer knowledge of who is truly His. may we always allow God to examine our own hearts to keep us far far far away from this very tradgedy.

Day By Day By Grace
Bob Hoekstra
August 24, 2009

An "Unpopular" Prophetic Promise of Apostasy

Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron. (1 Timothy 4:1-2)

As we continue to alternate between "precious promises" and "unpopular" promises, we come to a prophetic promise of apostasy. Among those who are actually drifting into apostasy, this promise is certainly "unpopular." Additionally, in a church world that wrongly accepts what sounds positive and rejects what sounds negative (instead of rejecting error and accepting truth), this promise is often met with disinterest or, worse, disdain.

"The faith" is the message of the word of God. It is the divine truth in which we are to place our faith, our trust. It especially includes the good news of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our present promise forewarns that there will be those who fall away from "the faith" as the days press closer and closer to the end of the church era. "In latter times some will depart from the faith." Since this is a departure, they seemed to adhere to the word of God for a season. Then they turned away from it. If they remain active in the church world, their message will no longer reflect the true content of the Scriptures. Peter gave a similar warning. "There were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them" (2 Peter 2:1). As sure as Israel had false prophets, the church would have false teachers.

Paul provided some insights into their path of apostasy. They would be "giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons." Paying attention to concepts that were perpetrated by demonic deception would result in errors in their doctrine. The devil and his army of evil spirits are intent on confusing and distorting the teaching of the word of God. Typically, such errors feed man's fleshly desires to glorify self.

These apostates would also be "speaking lies in hypocrisy." Not only would their teaching be erroneous, their lives would be marked by falsehoods related to pretense. They would add untrue testimony to their inaccurate message. Perhaps the reports of their ministerial prowess would be grossly exaggerated.

They would also be "having their own conscience seared with a hot iron." They would teach errors and live lies until their consciences were no longer convicted of sin. We are forewarned. Such apostates undoubtedly abound in these last days.

Here I am

Gosh where to begin? The business of my summer has been insane but insanely great even in what seems like a very dark valley. I suppose because I can see the very Hand of God doing a radical, difficult work. But the key to that sentence is I see His Hand. There is something about hard times that when you see Jesus in it there is a peace that passes all understanding - WOW that's good, I bet I read that in a really GREAT BOOK ;0)
So almost a month since I last posted let's see if I can recap my last month.
CCEA VBS 2009 - God Odyssey - The Wonders of God
I love VBS I think it's pretty much my favorite thing we do in Children's Ministry. There is SSSOOO much hard work that goes into it and it brings us all to the point of insanity / frustration / and complete utter dependence on God but then to see it happen and watch the kids get it. It's so great. Now I would say contrary to what anyone else has to say, I have the greatest job for VBS. Worship - and we get the kids for 1hour and 15 min. just the worship team part of it. That's right you heard me right. You see we entertain the worker kids that check in 45 min before anyone else and we have a blast. Then we have worship and this year we had 370ish kids. Can you picture 370 kids along with about 150 workers singing songs like Shine - Matt Redman / Today is The Day - Lincoln Brewster and many others just like it. It's insane these kids are singing and dancing and lifting their hands high high high to Jesus praising and worshiping. Seriously it's the best. I've been to a few Worship Workshops over the years for Children's Ministry and all of the challenges that they always are addressing that happen in Children's Worship, none of it has been our issues. God gave about 9 years ago a vision for kids worship and we have grown and flourished in that vision. I am so spoiled to head this ministry up now for that past I don't maybe 7 years, I really can't remember. Sometimes I wonder what I ever did right in my life to deserve this ministry. So anyways VBS was wonderful and lives were changed, souls were saved and God did what only He can do.

CCEA Pure Passion 2009
This was our Churches 2nd annual Purity Conference. Now Bobby and I worked it last year. He heads up the security team for most all events at our Church. And I staff the janitorial workers so I am there to oversee that and to lend a helping hand wherever. This event is for the Youth. Well this year God seemed to think it would pretty hysterical to have me MC the girls part of the weekend. Well I won't get into all the details about that cause it's still weird for me to talk about it but with 15min to spare I went from knowing I would MC the Q&A time to MCing the entire girls event. So big deal you may say - - WELL people think that I am very comfortable in front of a crowd of people with a mic but that couldn't be farther from the truth. What I do in Children's Ministry really is an act of God and those that know my journey know what it took all those years ago to even get me upfront in front of kids to lead worship. I suppose because I have this out loud BIG personality that one would think, ' o she's not shy' - well yea I am in fact I'm so deeply insecure that it keeps me from many things. So I guess I haven't been letting God deal with that ugly sin in my life fast enough because He clearly had this event for my growth. Truth is as much as I was dreading it and was desperate for as much prayer as I could rally up when all was said and done I knew my life was different. I won't even go into the many backwards reasons God had me to do it but the change in my heart for these teenage girls. Okay I'm gonna be real here and you will no doubt think poorly of me but here it goes. Up to this point I pretty much was hands up in front of my face with 99.9% of teenage girls. Sort of wrote them off. I won't go into the reasons for that but that is the cold hard truth of it all. So God calling me to an event like this really didn't make any sense at all. Something happened that weekend in my heart. I was broken and God gave me this extraordinary love for these girls. I saw myself in them and all the yuck from my bad choices in my youth. A messed up desperately needing attention young girl who needed to know she was worth anything. She had a purpose. She was desperately loved by the God of the Universe and He chose her. I found me! in them and the connection happened. I get these girls and it scares me that I feel like I have a purpose with them. So what in the World is My Jesus doing in me?

So I started off talking about a hard season and ended up sharing a couple of the most wonderful gifts that God gave me over the past month. That's funny to me - I suppose the sweet things of Jesus are the key things at the forefront of my mind - as it should be!!!!

A touch of hard stuff - okay I can not go into the circumstances but this is what I have come to understand this month in the hard stuff.
We all live in the consequences of our sins and our families sin and so on and so on just like the Bible says. That's life we can't get away from that. So everything puts these scales up around our heart and it's God's job to break them down during the course of our lives because He has created us to worship Him and we will worship something the question just becomes what?. So I hear people say things like, 'if I were only single', 'if I were only married', 'if i could have a different job' and so on you get the picture. Well this is the deal. God is going to use no matter what is in our lives to break us of the bondage of our sins, and to remove those scales that we have put over our hearts. So fine if you were single sure the issues of that would be ok but let me tell you God would then in fact use whatever is in your life to break you. Do you get what I'm saying. We all need to stop fighting the process of what God is using in our lives to refine us. Stop praying it away and surrender to it and know that if it wasn't health issues, broken friendships, depression, marriage, weight issues, job issues, prodigal children issues, raising kid issues it would be something else and hurt just as much. So what do we do.????stop looking at you - I need to stop looking at me. We need to look to Jesus and work on our relationship with Him and not for the sole purpose of fixing our issues but for the sole purpose of knowing Him. Somewhere in there I can promise you we will find peace and joy in the midst of yuck. It doesn't have to make sense the greater things of God rarely do. But our Lord is taking "THE CHURCH" not just CCEA but "THE CHURCH" through that refining time of separating the wheat and the weeds. The real intent of our hearts are being exposed and we are yelling and screaming through the process but we need to find Jesus to See Jesus and hold on with everything we have. It's gonna be a bumpy road my friends.

So now it's time for me to go get ready for my day. I need to pack as I am heading to the mountains this weekend. I can't wait to see what God is going to do this weekend. I'll share the details of this unexpected getaway with you later. My prayer is
Holy Spirit Come!!!!!

always remember
keep chasing righteousness - it matters!!!!