And They Two Shall be One Flesh

This past Monday I was asked to write a guest post for a dear blogging friend who has a great burden for married couples. Michelle from By His Grace and for His Glory has done a month long series on the subject of Marriage and I would like to encourage all of you to visit her blog and to read the other three posts. They were a great blessing and I am sure will greatly bless and encourage you.

I asked Michelle if it was okay to post here what I had written for her and she said that would be great

And They Two Shall be One Flesh

My name is Kathy and I am wife to my wonderful husband Doug. We will soon be celebrating our 23rd wedding Anniversary We have been blessed with eight children ages 20- 2years old. We are a home schooling family and have home schooled for the past 13 years.

My husband and I were saved in 1992. Since then our lives have changed miraculously.

The Lord has done a great work in our marriage so I thought I would share a few things that I have learned along the way.

In the book of Genesis we read that God created Adam and Eve. We read that Eve was taken from Adams rib and Adam states that she is bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh.

Do you know that we are also created for our husbands? God prepared us for the exact man that he has chosen for us

Ephesians Chapter 5:31 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh..

We are no longer single before God but we become one with our spouse.

In Ephesians 5:21-32 the bible compares marriage between a man and a women as a picture of the lord Jesus marrying His Bride the church and the type of relationship that we are to have with our husbands.

When we unite in matrimony, when we say those vows before God we promise that this union is for life.

Ecclesiastes Chapter 5 * 4 When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed. * 5 Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.

When we make a vow before God we are to stand by that vow. Todays view of marriage is “If I do not like how things are going I can just throw in the towel and quit”. This is not Gods plan at all. When I finally realized this in my marriage it was a great turning point.

I thought I would share a little testimony from my life since my daughter said that this might be a blessing to someone out there who might be struggling in their marriage.

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Before my husband and I were saved our marriage was very different. We followed the philosophy of the world. I should say that I did. My husband was from a divorced home and this was something that he had decided that he never wanted for his own life. I on the other hand had come from a home where my parents remained married.

I must say I was young and so foolish. I did not love my husband as I should and I was very selfish. I wanted things my way and I was difficult to please. If my husband and I got into an argument I foolishly thought that the best thing was for us to just separate and get a divorce. The way of thinking by most people in todays world.

After we were saved for a couple of years the Lord really began working in my heart and life and in my husband’s. I started to learn what a God Honoring marriage was suppose to be like and I knew that I had to make some changes in my life.

One afternoon my husband and I had a disagreement. I was upset and my emotions finally took over. I was ready to say those terrible words again “if you do not like it here you can just leave” Instead the Holy Spirit got a hold my heart and I realized what I was about to say. I quickly changed my words to this - “If you do not like it here that is just too bad. The Bible says that you are stuck with me ” My husband just looked at me, I think in shock. This is when I finally realized that I made this commitment and it was for life

As I share this testimony it is in hopes of encouraging anyone who is struggling to see that God has a greater plan and that through His grace we can have a marriage that is heaven here on earth.

In our church we have a yearly couples retreat I love attending these. My husband and I have learned a lot about having a God honoring marriage. I would encourage all of you to take advantage of such retreats it will strengthen your marriage and your home.

Did you know that marriage can be a part of heaven here on earth?

Here are a few things that I have learned that have really been a great blessing to our marriage.

Share terms of endearments, My husband loves to call me his Sweet Gal :)

Love your man- We need to stop looking through dark color glasses and start looking for the good.

Pray for your Husband! ( I daily pray that the Lord will use my husband in a mighty way to bring Glory to His Holy Name!) (I added this one here. I forgot to write this in my post for Michelle:) this one is the most important !

Be his helpmeet- There can be great satisfaction in helping your man :)

Make him his favorite meal.

When he comes home give him a great big hug and a big smooch and tell him how much you missed him
(Just as a side note our children love to see Daddy and Mommy being affectionate with each other)

Listen to him and make him feel important to you.

Talk some love talk. You know, tell him how handsome he is, tell him how strong he is and what a good provider he is. When I look at my husband in this way things really sweeten up in our relationship. How very blessed we are to have that special someone in our lives to share life with.

As I began to allow the Lord to work in my life he also began working in my husbands life.

Through these past 23 years together things have grown sweeter as we grew closer in our walk with the Lord.

May you all be blessed as you walk together with your spouse in the newness of life.

God Bless, Kathy

I hope that you will hope on over to Michelle's Blog I am sure you will truly enjoy the other posts.

Trusting in My God!

Psalm 9:9-10
The Lord also will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble.
And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee: for thou, Lord, hast not forsaken them that seek thee.

During my devotions this morning I came upon this passage of scripture that was a great comfort to me.

Last week on Thursday afternoon I received a phone call from my husband telling me that he had just been laid off from his job. As the feeling of panic gripped my heart I tried to say words of comfort to my husband.

As the weekend came the Lord had calmed my soul and reminded me that I was to trust in him.

We have heard a lot on the news about so many people being laid off. We have heard about the recession that we have been going through. We have heard about how the government was going to try to fix all of these problems. But you know I always knew down deep inside that our God is in control.

This is not a new thing for us that we are going through. In 1993 when I was eight months pregnant with my 3rd child my husband was laid off. We were new Christians. Saved not even a year. We did fear and wonder how we would ever be able to go through such a great trial.

God did some miraculous things during that time. We never missed a mortgage payment. We never missed a meal. All of our bills were paid and on the very week that I was due to deliver the Lord provided my husband with a job that put us on the insurance the day he walked into the shop and I gave birth to our beautiful son Collin. All bills paid.

We serve a wonderful God.

It is easy to go back to our flesh and to try to figure out what are we going to do to get through this but this time I want to see what my great God will do to get us through this!

I want to give him all of the Praise!

This week our church is having a revival meeting. I had determined last week even before we knew that my husband had been laid off that I was going to go to every meeting at the night services. It is running from Sunday through Thursday. Having little ones makes this a great challenge but I knew that I needed to be there.

Last night the message really spoke to my heart. It spoke about being separate. The Lord has been speaking to my heart about this for a while now and I really want to please him. I am looking forward to the next few precious evenings of some good preaching and some words from my God.

I think of that song often "Count Your Blessings Name Them One By One" How we have so much to thank our God for!

I want to encourage all of you that are maybe having the same struggles that we are having or maybe some other type of struggle and right now you are going through the valley. Keep your eyes on the Lord! He promises to never leave us or forsake us!

May God richly bless you all! Kathy

Proverbs 3:5&6
Trust in the Lord with all of thine heart; and
learn not unto thine own understanding.
In all of thy ways acknowledge him,
and He shall direct thy Paths!

New Years Resolution!

New Years Resolutions. Its that time of the year.

In January I decided that I wanted to read my Bible through this year and to lose weight!

Well my last post I spoke about my devotional that I have been using. You can read it here if you missed it.

So I will talk about what I am doing to try to lose some weight.

About a year after I had my fifth child I decided that I really wanted to lose weight so I began to pray about it because I knew that it would be so hard to do in my own strength.

The Lord led me to this book "The Weigh Down Diet" I began to read it and it had many things that really made a lot of sense.

I prayed and asked the Lord to help me and I began my weight loss.

Some of the things that the book spoke about was cutting back on my portions. Sounds simple right? It was hard for me. I was brought up to always eat what was on my plate.

Of course if the food tasted really good I did not really want to stop.

After eating this new way for a while it became easier and I lost 20 pounds. I was so excited!

I was feeling so much better but as you can guess I did not only have five children so I shortly became pregnant again. :) Sadly my old eating habits came right back and on came the pounds again.

Three children later now and I have decided that it is time to try to lose the extra weight again.

Here is one of my strategies that I am using. I will post again to share some other things that I am trying to do to help me lose some weight.

I realized that I needed to change my way of eating but one of the things that I had liked about "Weigh down" was that I was still eating my normal food just a lot less of it. Changing the way that I thought about food really made the difference.

In the "Weigh down program" I was taught a little more on how my body worked and how it used the food that I feed it.

God created us to feel hunger, when I needed to be feed. God also created us to know when enough was enough you know that " I am full feeling". Many of us ignore that feeling or we eat so fast that we have over eaten before that feeling of "I have had enough" signals us to stop eating.

By reducing the amount I eat I am also reducing the amount of calories I am consuming, and the amount of fat.

I also am trying to take a small plate to serve my food on. This helps a lot. I feel like my plate is full.

I am really trying to be in tune with my body while I am eating. Listening to that feeling that I am satisfied so I need to stop no matter how much is still on my plate. One thing that the author spoke about was eating what I liked on my plate the most first. So I adopted a motto for my self.

"Eat the Best and Leave the rest "

This has really helped me. If I want dessert after I would try to plan for that leaving myself still a little hungry.

I would really recommend this book it gave me a lot of good insight and ideas.

Now with that said I must also state that aside from this book I do not believe or agree with the author on other issues that she is dealing with.

As with any thing I took the information that was useful and discarded the rest.

In my next post I will share some other things that I am doing to make changes and to help me lose some weight.


God Bless, Kathy

Daily Devotions

("Girl Reading" by Charles Edward Perugini, 1878)

A Dear Friend of mine blessed me this Christmas with a devotional to use to help me read through the entire Bible this year. I am really enjoying this devotion so I thought I would share it with all of you.

A Heart Devoted is the name of the book.

Every day it has a little devotion written to women to encourage us in our daily walk with the Lord.

I love these little devotions. They have really encouraged me. It always seems to be about something I am going through that day and it just comforts my soul. It is a blessing to know that other women have the same struggles. And they share their wisdom on how the Lord has worked in their hearts.

I hope to share some of the things in the week that God speaks to me about.

May God Bless you as you serve Him,
Kathy

Raising Children to Serve the Lord!

My son Jeremiah in the Nursing home being a blessing!

This is my greatest desire to have children that will walk in truth and serve the Lord.

I was reading over at Crystals blog Biblical Womanhood about the older women teaching the younger women and I often ask the Lord when do I become that older women?

My oldest daughter is nineteen and our youngest child is 2 years old so I still feel like I am in the mist of training our children and raising them for the Lord. My husband and I were saved when our oldest two children where 3 years old and 1 years old.

I have thanked the Lord so many times for saving my husband and I while our children were still so young.

So am I an older women? I just turned 45 years old so I feel old some days :) But than I have my struggles and I do not feel worthy of being able to give advise to the precious young wives out there desiring to do what is right.

I prayed about it and I feel that I can at least share some of the lessons that I have learned since I was saved in 1992.

I have been married for 22 years now and the Lord has richly blessed my marriage to my wonderful husband Doug.

So I thought I would start there. I hope that this series can be a blessing and encouragement to some one out there.

Raising our children for the Lord has to start with ourselves. The Lord has really been impressing on my heart that I need to be the example in my Christian life if I desire to see my children serving God. Lately I have felt frustrated because I do not seem to have the quiet time that I need with my savior every day. So this morning the Lord helped me and I was up at 5:00am to do my devotions. Now I am not saying this to make any of you feel that you have to get up at 5:00am to do your devotions I just find that for myself if I do not get up that early I just cannot find a quiet time with no one else up .

With that said I must say that I am not a morning person so getting up at 5:00am is not easy for me but I am praying that the Lord will help me to continue this. I would greatly appreciate your prayers for me in this matter. :)

I can always tell when I have not had my devotions my day seems to go wrong in every area and I just do not have the peace that only comes from walking in the spirit and not in my flesh.

I have learned that I can not train my children for the Lord in my own power. I need Gods intervention.

After my personal relationship with the Lord my relationship with my husband is the next most important thing.

If I desire to have children that will live for the Lord than my relationship with my husband has to be right.

Oh how I struggle with this. I desire so much to have a meek and quiet spirit and to be submissive to my husband in every area of my life. I know that God has commanded me to be in submission to my husband and this is something that he has been working on in my life.

If we do not have the right kind of relationship with our husbands one of respect and honor than our children will not respect the authority in our home.

Also our children need to see that mommy and daddy are happy together and that they have a stable home and a place of love.

I do struggle with this. I love my husband but so often I find myself not talking to him in a respectful tone and I have to ask him to forgive me.

Praise the Lord that he does not give up on me and that he promises to keep working in my life to make me the godly women that he desires me to be.

I have read several books about being a godly wife so I thought I would mention a couple.
The Excellent Wife, and Created to be his helpmeet. I would recommend you to read these books as a help and an encouragement.

God Bless, Kathy

(What adorable little peacocks!)

Having a " Meek and Quiet Spirit"

IPeter 3:4 But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.

A meek and quiet spirit. Something I greatly desire to have in my life but something I still struggle with so much.

The Lord has really been speaking to me lately about having a meek and quiet spirit.

The Lord has blessed my husband and I with eight children.

Lately things here have seemed to be a little strained and when ever I pray about it I feel the Lord telling me that a meek a quiet spirit from me would make a huge difference in our home.

We home school so our days are quite busy and full and there are so many things that can rob me of that sweet spirit.

Still this is my hearts desire. So I am trying to make some changes in my day that would hopefully help me to keep that sweet spirit through out the day.

Of course I can not have a meek and quiet spirit with out the Holy Spirit doing a work in my heart and life. I know that I need to walk in the Spirit and not in my flesh.

One of the things that the Lord has impressed on my heart is that I need to take better care of my dear husband. It is so easy to forget this from day to day with all of the other responsibilities that always seem so pressing.

So what can I do to help me to achieve this great desire of a meek and quiet spirit?

Well I know that one of the most important things that I can do is to spend some time with my Lord. As Mary did sitting at the feet of Jesus.

(Painting by Mary Casset)

With eight children this can be quite a challenge! I have tried having my quiet time with the Lord really early in the morning. I am not a morning person by nature so this is really difficult for me. If I wait until 6:00am in the morning this time already seems to late. My husband is getting up at that time and my little ones begin to emerge out of their rooms.

But I have to ask is my time with the Lord more precious to me that that extra hour of sleep?

My spirit says YES! My flesh still struggles though.

Another way to help me to have a meek and quiet spirit is to determine in my day what are the little issues that arise and cause me to loose that meek and quiet spirit?

There are so many things that can cause me to loose that sweet spirit..

A huge mess in the house,
Getting up to late.
Feeling like I am running behind in my day.

And the list can go on.

I have set up a schedule to try to direct our day so that we can try to accomplish the things that need to get done during the day.

Today I decided to make a little list of things that I really need to get accomplished so I feel like my day is being productive, and to remind myself of little things like doing something sweet for my husband.

I am sure that many of you would have other ideas that help you with having that meek and quiet spirit.

In my devotions I have been reading in I Peter. Peter mentions that having a Meek and Quiet Spirit was so important. That struck me as this was coming from a man who was a bold person.
He knew that having a meek and quiet spirit is of a great price to the Lord.

I know that this is a process in my life that the Lord is working on.

Hopefully someday I will be able to look back on my life and see that finally the Lord allowed me to have that much desired Meek and quiet Spirit!

God Bless, Kathy

Letting Go!

The Lord has greatly blessed my husband and I with eight children to raise for his kingdom and I am so thankful to him for this blessing and answered pray in my life.

This morning in my devotion I was seeking Gods wisdom for some of the struggles we have been having in our home. Raising older children, children that are in their teen years, is new to us and has been quite a struggle and challenge.

Our three older children are ages 19- a precious daughter, 17- a precious son, and 14 another precious son. It is so hard to know how much to hold on and how much to let go.

We have homeschooled our children for the past 13 years and it has truly been a blessing. It has had its struggles but I have been so blessed to have my children around me seeing them grow and to become the wonderful young people that they have become.

Our oldest son is desiring to spread his wings and to get a job and to experience some of life's opportunities. My oldest daughter desires to stay closer to home. My fears are letting go and losing him to the World.

I have sadly watched so many young people in our church choose that path and it frightens me.

This morning in my devotions God led me to the story of Moses and his loving mother. She had to choose to trust God and to let Moses go into the care of the world (the princess of Egypt). As I read on the Bible tells us how God blessed her for her faith and Moses was returned to her arms and she had him for a little while longer.

Those few short years that she held him and taught him about God made a huge impact in his life. Moses did not forget who his people were. God used Moses in a mighty way despite the fact that for the majority of his life he lived among the unsaved world.

How this spoke to my heart this morning. I prayed and asked God to help me to be a good mother and wife. I need to trust God that he will keep my children safe from the things of this world.

Dear Lord help me to have faith and to trust in you in all things. My life verse is in Proverbs 3:5&6- Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding in all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct that path! How I need to remember these sweet words.

May God keep you all. God bless, Kathy