I've been tagged!

Which means you get tagged! (Thanks Lind Family)

No really, this is a fun one.

You find your 4th picture in the 4th folder and post it!

This is a picture of the children of Jacksonville First Church of the Nazarene at church camp this summer along with some of our great church workers. They had a wonderful time and came back on fire for the Lord.

I tag...MuseSwings, Renewed Each Morning, Nannas Living the Dream, and So What Can He Eat?

Livin' on the Hallelujah Side

Like a lot of churches ours has gone contemporary. Where once the robed choir stood now a praise and worship team leads the congregation in upbeat, rhythmic songs that rev the spirit into a frenzy of soul-burning worship then slowing down during the offering and communion to make hearts ready to receive the sermon.

Don’t get me wrong, I love contemporary Christian music, it is the mainstay of the Kyzer compound’s listening pleasure. However those old favorites etched into my heart when I was a new believer still call to me time and again. Songs like; Victory in Jesus, He Set Me Free, In the Garden, Amazing Grace, and others set my spirit to flight and fill me with joy, assurance, and the peace that passes all understanding.

Sometimes the worship pastor sprinkles in a few of the old stand bys just for good measure. One of my favorites is Hallelujah Side. I don’t know who wrote it and I’ve not heard it sung in several years except by my croaking voice when no one else is around. I particularly like verse 4 which goes like this:

Here the sun is always shining
here the sky is always bright
'Tis no place for gloomy Christians to abide
For my soul is filled with music and my heart with great delight
And I'm living on the hallelujah side

As a nation we are in troubled times…the bottom has fallen out of the economy, prices for even the basics have gone up significantly, we are in the midst of an election where one thing is certain, ‘change’ is afoot. It is enough for anyone to have a gloomy outlook on the future and life in general.

On a personal level we all experience times of trouble, times of struggle, times of simple melancholy, times when things are not going the way we think they should. As a mother, I am tempted to worry about our oldest son, his wife and family, with their big mortgage and active lives. I am tempted to worry about our youngest serving in the Army.

However, we have to trust and know that God is always in control. He is the same God that set the Israelites free from bondage in Egypt, the same God that was with them when they crossed the Red Sea on dry land, the same God that was in the fiery furnace, in the lions den, the same God that was with David as he stood firm with slingshot in hand and took aim with one stone, the same God in other situations described the Bible over. He never changes. In the face of that reality…how can we NOT be living on the hallelujah side?

Chorus
Oh, glory be to Jesus, let the hallelujahs roll
Help me ring the Savior's praises far and wide
For I've opened up tow'rd heaven all the windows of my soul
And I'm living on the hallelujah side

Let us lift up our hearts and open up the windows of our souls and begin living on the hallelujah side!

Romans 15:13 “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” ~NIV

Hallelujah Side
Once a sinner far from Jesus I was perishing with cold
But the blessed Savior heard me when I cried
Then He threw His robe around me and He led me to His fold
And I'm living on the hallelujah side

Chorus
Oh, glory be to Jesus, let the hallelujahs roll
Help me ring the Savior's praises far and wide
For I've opened up tow'rd heaven all the windows of my soul
And I'm living on the hallelujah side

Tho' the world may sweep around me with her dazzle and her dreams
Yet I envy not her vanities and pride
For my soul looks up to heaven where the golden sunlight gleams
And I'm living on the hallelujah side

Not for all earth's golden millions would I leave this precious place
Tho' the tempter to persuade me oft has tried
For I'm safe in God's pavilion happy in His love and grace
And I'm living on the hallelujah side

Here the sun is always shining here the sky is always bright
'Tis no place for gloomy Christians to abide
For my soul is filled with music and my heart with great delight
And I'm living on the hallelujah side

And upon the streets of glory when we reach the other shore
And have safely crossed the Jordan's rolling tide
You will find me shouting "Glory" just outside my mansion door
Where I'm living on the hallelujah side

2 Sisters Produce C U Next May!

Whew! The farmer’s market season in the city of Cabot has come to an end. Good bye getting up at 4:30 in the morning! Good bye schlepping all the tables, canopy, produce, plants and flowers, scales, baskets, and all!

Culminating with Cabot Fest; the first year for the farmer’s market was a relative success. Vendor participation waned a bit as the season moved from mid-summer to fall and customer participation dropped as the economy tanked and prices for everything skyrocketed. All-in-all, it was definitely worth the hard work of getting it organized, recruiting vendors and marketing it to the public. We will definitely be back next year.

I am truly going to miss the people I met over the summer. Visiting with families out enjoying time together in the fresh air; getting to know sisters, mothers and daughters, grandparents and grandchildren. The mother’s and babies shopping for fresh vegetables to make baby food for the week. Swapping recipes with everyone and sharing stories of faith and memories of gardening, cooking, and more. Not to mention, spending every Saturday morning with my own big sister, Deb, and sometimes with my little sister, Barbie. Yes, participating in the community has made my life richer and fuller.

Have a great fall/winter and we will see you again the first Saturday in May 2009!

We can still praise Him even when hanging upside down and holding on for dear life!

Psalm 100

1) Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands,
2) Serve the Lord with gladness: come before His presence with singing.
3) Know ye that the Lord, He is God: it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves: we are the sheep of His pasture.
4) Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise: be thankful unto Him, and bless His name.
5) For the Lord is good: His mercy is everlasting: and His truth endureth to all generations.
~KJV

Honey, The Cows Won't Let Me Sleep!

The other afternoon I was taking the dogs out for a little break and I noticed a big truck and trailer drive into the pasture. Later the same truck drove out with a load of cows. I didn’t give it much thought until that night when I couldn’t sleep for the bellowing. What I thought was a load of cows for the sale barn turned out to be a load of calves being taken to another pasture for weaning.

If you’ve ever lived on a cattle ranch/farm you might know the sound I’m talking about. It is a sorrowful groan that begins in the belly intensifying as it travels up through the cow and out the mouth splitting the stillness of the night, echoing through the pasture, bouncing off barns, fence posts, and trees. It is the deep mournful calling of a mother for her missing baby.

Not able to sleep, I grabbed my Bible and a cup of coffee. I love the writings of Paul and have been reading a bit in Ephesians as our Wednesday night Bible study is about the armor of God from chapter 6. However, this is what I happened to read.

Ephesians 4:21-32 “If indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: 22) that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, 23) and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, 24) and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness. 25) Therefore, putting away lying, ‘Let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor,’ for we are members of one another. 26) ‘Be angry, and do not sin.’ Do not let the sun go down on your wrath, 27)nor give place to the devil 28)Let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good that he may have something to give him who has need. 29) Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers. 30) And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31) Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice 32) and be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. ~NKJ

Did you see it? Verse 30? “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” Right in the middle of the how to live section….do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. Now if you read just this partial list you know that it is humanly impossible to live the way Paul describes in the book of Ephesians. But here he warns us…do it and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.

When we are sincere in our love for and devotion to the Lord, when we are renewed in Spirit each day, through prayer, through reading and meditating upon His Word…seeking His will, His way…the Holy Spirit aides us in right living…it is our second nature for our first nature is truly the sin-nature of man brought upon us by Adam and Eve. It is what we wrestle with. Eph. 6:12 “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age.” ~NKJ

If we do not gird ourselves for the day, each and every day, we leave ourselves susceptible and the sin nature, our carnal man, will take control before we even know it. If left unchecked…we will be right back to where we began, not walking with Him, not talking to Him, not telling others of Him, and we grieve the Spirit. Galatians 5:25 “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.” ~NIV

When we move away from Him, He calls to us much like those cows calling for their babies. Unlike the calves we are no more than a step away, one tear, one groan, one whisper, one bended-knee away; one step is all it takes.

Is he calling you to come back to Him?

Come home, come home,
You who are weary, come home;
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, O sinner, come home!
Softly and Tenderly lyrics by Will L. Thompson

*photo credit - taken from Flicker

You Are My Strong Tower (Kutless)

A Soldier's Mother's Plea

Sleep evades.
Tumultuous thoughts invade.
A young son prepares for war.
And the rain begins to pour.
A mother’s heart wrestles in unrest.
Will God listen to her behest?
To keep him safe in heart, body, and soul,
Has always been her prayerful goal.

He serves our country with pride.
Oh, God, please be his guide.
Keep him close and make him aware,
You are always there.
In times of struggle and distress,
Put your hand upon him, relieve the stress.
Keep his mind sharp and give Your direction.
Surround him, Father, with Divine protection.

His adoption was a gift from above,
A testimony of Your love.
Yet Eighteen years flew by so fast.
Dear God, please don’t let this hug be our last.
The tour of duty is only a year.
Still, Lord, I can’t help but shed a tear.
No longer a boy; not quite a man.
How far away is Iraq and Afghanistan?

Send him, Father, if You must.
In You I place all my trust.
In my weakness I see Your strength.
For Your love goes beyond any length.
As peace replaces fret,
Assurance that You will not forget,
Your child in a faraway land.
He is safe and secure in the palm of your hand.

From bed to knees and knees to bed,
Thank You, Lord, for calming the chaos in my head.
As night turns into dawn,
I stretch and yawn.
Emotions drain.
Still the rain…
Tumultuous thoughts evade.
Sleep invades.

In ten years will you have made a difference?

Out of the Mouths of Babes...

Wednesday’s mid-week family time and dinner was very entertaining. This week after reading “I Am Granna” the boys decided they wanted to try to write something themselves. Hunter settled down at the computer to peck out all seven years of his life’s story…we had a bit of contention as there is only one computer down stairs and two boys.

The recently-turned-five Gage, quickly gave up as he exclaimed, “Oh well, I’ll draw a story because I can’t write words, heck, I can’t even read words!” As most pre-kindergarten drawings are difficult to interpret I asked him to tell me the story and I would write it down. Here is what Gage had to say…

One day, God was on an adventure with His friends. Then His friends decided to pack up their things and go pick some apples. Later a mean man came by and said, “There’s no such thing as God.” The mean man thought he was talking to Joseph but he was talking to the REAL GOD!

Then Joseph came around and the mean man said, “You are not Joseph. I just talked to Joseph.” “Oh, yes I am!” said Joseph, “You were talking to God.” The mean man got mad and left.

Then God had another adventure with his two friends Joseph and Golden Size. But soon Golden Size had to go so he packed up his football to go to school but the mean man told him, “There is no such thing as football…or cars!”

Golden Size told the mean man there was and that he should not be mean any more and he should tell Jesus he was sorry. And so he did…but he wasn’t talking to the REAL JESUS he was talking to the fake Jesus!

And then…the mean man went and got another friend named, Socki. And they were very mean all the time.

At this point in the story, Richard walked through the door and the boy’s focused their attention on Daddy, but I could not get the story out of my mind.

How amazing to me that God is so real in Gage’s mind and heart that just like him and his buddies Gage could see God on an adventure with his friends. It did strike me a bit odd that in this story, as in Genesis, God’s friends left to go pick some “apples” and then the mean man showed up.

Throughout the three minute story the mean man was always there right along with God and the friends. It reminded me of the fact that while we strive to hang out with God, to go on an adventure with God, the carnal man is always there trying to detour us – or derail us.

The first thing out of the mean man’s mouth was, “There is no God.” Now, tell me, who does that remind you of? Our culture will try and tell us that God is some abstract idea, that the Bible is just a bunch of stories told to show people how to be good to each other. The talking heads of our society can tell us all they want…they can in fact believe there is no God, but it doesn’t make it so…the proof is in the Word and the WORD is ALIVE and GOD is REAL! John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” It is in the pages of this all-time best seller that our relationship with the REAL GOD begins, and flourishes.

In the story when Joseph told the mean man that he was in fact, Joseph, and that the mean man had been talking to God…he got mad and left. There are many things I could say here the least of which is how often people become mad, or hostile even, when they come face to face with God. Jobs have been lost, friends and families torn, all for the sake of following the Lord. Have you ever witnessed to someone and they got mad and walked away? Have you ever had someone tell you they didn’t want to hear “preaching” when in fact you were just trying to relate how God had helped you over the humps and bumps of life?

In God’s second adventure in the story, He and His friends, Joseph and Golden Size are doing something as every-day-normal as playing football and going to school and the mean man tries to tell them even that is not real. How often have you been in this place in your life? Everything is going good, you are serving, growing, making a difference… you know God is there with you in the every-day, day-to-day things. Then something comes along and tells you it’s not real; perhaps a tragedy or a minor storm that seems a typhoon when looking at it so close. We are duped by the “it’s not real” syndrome and we begin to pull away. We make decisions with our own judgment and before long…we begin to question the entire relationship or we think God has gone on an adventure with someone else.

In Psalms 13:1 the writer asks, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?”

But Proverbs 3:5 -7 reminds us “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. (6) in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. (7) Don not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil.”

Golden Size could not be fooled…he knew exactly what needed to happen. The mean man needed to say he was sorry to Jesus for being so mean…just like we need to confess our sins and receive the gift of salvation and the companionship of the Holy Spirit.

Romans 10:9, 10 “That if you confess with your mouth “Jesus is Lord,” and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (10) For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.”

Acts 2:38 “Peter replied, ‘repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.’”

Now, here’s the sticky part…the part that really caught my attention…the mean man confesses to the fake Jesus? The fake Jesus! Is there such a thing? How many times do we have the wrong idea of who Jesus is, of who God is?

Isaiah 55:8, 9 “‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.’ declares the Lord. (9) ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’”

How often do we “put God in a box?” Taking Him out only when we want to read off our laundry list of things we want Him to do for us, our friends, and our family? How often do we actually meditate on His Word, on just exactly what He has already done for us? How often do we just sit in amazement and awe, with a thankful heart…just to magnify His name…without the list?

I don’t know about you but I sometimes, honestly, most times, have a hard time wrapping my mind around just who God is and ALL God is. I think we are blessed to have glimpses of Him in our every day life.

1Cor. 13:12 “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”

What about unbelievers, the unsaved? How many of them are putting their trust in the fake Jesus? Trusting in careers, money, friends, false religions, etc. and they go about their lives thinking all is good.

What about the pious religiosity that runs rampant in churches the world over?

Just as the mean man in Gage’s story; when we pretend to confess, when we pretend to be a Christian…the regeneration in our soul is never begun…the relationship is not real. Before you know it…more mean friends move in to the place where the REAL JESUS, the REAL Holy Spirit, should be and you just get meaner and meaner as unconfessed sin upon unconfessed sin builds a residue that cakes the heart and steals life... for all eternity. You might not be mean on the outside. You might not be mean to others…but the damage and the destination is still the same.

Consider right here and now…do you have a REAL relationship with the REAL GOD, the REAL JESUS, the REAL HOLY SPIRIT or are you just going through the motions?

I Am Granna - They Call Me Granna

When I was younger I used to make fun of those people who had ask me about my grandchildren bumper stickers on their cars and people who wore pictures of their grandchildren on t-shirts. Oh, and let’s not forget the world’s greatest grandma or grandpa t-shirts…then I became one.

Oh the joy I felt when Richard and Cheri told me they were expecting. I was on the road in Minneapolis, Minnesota and the call came around 10:30. I had just returned to the room exhausted from a grueling day of being on my feet at a trade show all day and entertaining prospective clients all evening. I was used to them calling me regularly and after the ‘how did the day go and were you able to get some shopping in?’ pleasantries they simply asked if I could look around to find a unique baby crib or cradle. People in the adjoining rooms must have thought I won the lottery or was crazy. I was on my feet, jumping up and down, clapping my hands and laughing hysterically. Funny how all that fatigue left immediately in the face of overwhelming happiness.

My daughter-in-law deserves more kudos than I can ever give her. She has always been conscientious of making sure that I don’t feel left out beginning with the wedding preparations and with the baby - she went above and beyond. One afternoon I received a call asking if I had lunch plans and if I wanted to meet her at the doctor’s office to hear the baby’s heart beat. Not only did I hear the baby’s heart beat, I saw my grandson for the first time…and I saw the look on my son’s face as he ran his fingers through his hair and said with awe and amazement, “I’m having a son, I’m having a son.”

The delivery was semi-scheduled and held yet another surprise… I was honored to be in the room with the two of them and Cheri’s mother as Hunter made his debut. It was the most remarkable, astounding, miraculous event I have ever witnessed. I’m not sure what the best part of the experience was; seeing him as he was born or seeing the look on their faces as they became parents for the first time. It mattered not it was the wee hours of the morning and we were running on caffeine and excitement or that no one had had any sleep except the grandfathers in the waiting room.

Two years later, Gage was born and that experience was just for the two of them…they had shared Hunter’s birth with all and they wanted this for themselves. Who could blame them? And so we waited. Two little boys – active, compassionate, witty, charming, intelligent – the perfect addition to any family.

I was lucky, until the first part of this year their house was next door in a pasture converted into a yard for scampering little boys and a dog named Spot. I could see them anytime I wanted, anytime I was not on the road that is. I loved getting out of my car and hearing them call, “Granna, come ‘ere, look at this…I wanna show you sump’n.”

However, they purchased a home in town and moved in February. It is only eight miles away but it was one of the reasons I decided to ‘retire’ early. I would have to schedule time to be with them. Both of the boys are involved in sports and church activities, of course there is school. Time is at a premium and I don’t want to miss a thing!

Today is Wednesday and we are a couple of months into a new family tradition, the boys ride the school bus (which their great-aunt drives) to my house. I help with homework, we play, they watch videos on my MySpace page or Hunter reads the most recent blog and we have a large family dinner before we head out to our respective churches for mid-week services. Ahhh…a grandsons fix…four o’clock can’t come fast enough!

I have been Granna for seven years, and while I have never been the babysitting, taking field trips, kind of grandmother, I am learning. I still do not have bumper stickers on my car or wear the grandparent t-shirts but I can understand those who do. There is no better feeling than that unconditional love, no sweeter sounding word… “Granna” I can almost hear them now…

“I thank my God upon every remembrance of you.” Phil. 1:3~NIV