There’s a place in every woman’s life where she deserves a standing ovation.  As a woman He loves, you deserve to know God agrees that you are to be honored, and calls you to center stage in the midst of heavenly applause!

God wants you and I to see the storm below and ride safely above it.  We each have gifts, dreams and our own circle of influence.  Women with destiny in His kingdom are liberated to soar above the world’s distractions as we pour our lives into those callings.  We love because He loved us first.  As we move in our purpose, circling our targets and aiming for victory, we choose the high road of obedience where we stay sheltered and unshackled.  His forgiving, unconditional love teaches us to understand the difference between seeking the His kingdom and seeking it first.  It’s your heart He wants.  It’s my heart.  Giving only a  little of ourselves doesn’t cut it.  If an offering means little to us, what makes us think for a minute that it means anymore to God?  Have you ever seen a half-baked cake?

As we surrender our hearts, the lure of the world’s sinful pull is diminished until it’s gone.  We don’t surrender grudgingly. We don’t do it to gain the favor of others.  We aren’t looking to be like someone else.  We surrender because we want this pure, amazing love offered so freely!  Our surrender is our way to love Him back. We run to Him because we’re sick of living in barrenness.

Put Him first.  Put Jesus first. It doesn’t matter where you’ve been.  It matters where you’re going. You’ll never want to settle for less again.

Taken from Woman With Destiny in the Kingdom of God, by Marsha Lenski, Jebaire Publishing, 2011

In a world of change and confusion, we need Christmas more than ever!  For me it’s the time when Jesus is closest to me, and that closeness itself tells of what time it is on the calendar. I have my faith sweetly and profoundly renewed all over again.  It isn’t the hope for spring that contents my soul, but the clear, crisp starlight of holy December nights filled with the healing power of love.  It’s the knowing that Christmas has always spoken of love and always will that is it’s light, and that our spirits can and will rise above any indignity put before us.

Christmas is almost on top of us before we get over Thanksgiving!  I’ve been resting many sweet thoughts on the joys I’m expecting this Christmas. I wrap packages from day to day and pray over each one and the loved one whose heart I want to touch. Prayer does change things. It does.  In these days and weeks of December we pray once again for peace and the end of civil conflicts that plague our planet, for starving people needing what God wants to pass through our hands, and for nations arguing unresolved issues day after day. We have the world’s answer.  We need to live by that resolve!  The love force in us must be nourished with every beat of our hearts until it overbalances destructive instincts. God’s love force!  How about that hurting, wandering husband, for instance, who returns to the wife who held tightly to God through the pain and loved anyway, and who now welcomes the best Christmas of all as she welcomes her repentent man home?  Yes! That’s love in its sweetest form.  It’s that kind of faith that pleases God and blesses the Savior we celebrate this season.

Somehow, by Divine light, we have got to see ourselves as people God loves, one and all.  May you know the freedom and joy of that kind of love gift at Christmas and always.

Sending blessings. . . .

John and I returned recently from a week long vacation in the hills of Tennessee.  The first week of October turned out to be a week of gorgeous, sun-filled days, and the Tennessee hills were ablaze with color. Temperatures stayed in the low 70s all week long.  We kept our window open at night to feel and enjoy the briskness and freshness of fall. Our secluded cabin had two rockers on the long front porch, and you can probably picture the two of us parked there for hours like the grandpa and grandma that we actually are, watching leaves fall from the trees in the acreage in front of us and the horses graze in the pasture beside us.

The proprietor was a woman we thought to be pretty amazing.  Gisela is a 72 year old German woman whose husband had run a successful business growing rare african violets.  We learned they had bought this property using Gisela’s inheritance, and she was hard at work, seemingly running it alone.  So lonely, she began to visit with us every morning at 7 a.m., when she brought the loaf of bread she had just baked for us. A remarkable story, but so sad.  Her husband now has Parkinson’s disease and dementia, and her family has distanced themselves from the business and the property. One morning Gisela told us about her parents from Germany and how she missed them.  She shared how difficult it is becoming to tend to her husband, the business and this 100 acre property with two cabins she now rents out to help with living expenses.  We told her how beautiful everything was to us and how the comforts and joy we were experiencing meant so much to us.  She began to cry just a little when we commented on her good work, and I asked her if she believed in God and prayer.  I could see she needed a touch from Him.

Gisela told me how disappointed she was in God because she had waited 18 years since her mother’s passing for a sign she said her mother had promised to give her when she got to heaven, and there had never been a sign.  Her heart was badly broken.  I held out my hands and asked if I could pray with her.  Those bruised hands were shaking, but she held them out to me.  I only had a moment, I could tell from her anxiety, and I cried a little, too, asking God to give her a sign of His love for her each day for the rest of her life, so she could be comforted.

Gisela hugged me.  I smiled at her and she went on her way to the next task awaiting her.  She smiled so much more the rest of the week, and gave us three lovely african violet plants to take home with us.

God knows our needs, and He understands loneliness and heartbreak.   Everytime I look at those purple african violets now, I think of our Divine appointment, and say another prayer for Gisela, a woman to whom God tenderly offered destiny in His kingdom one pretty October morning.