Short Book Meme

Jen has tagged me for the Short Book Meme. This is pretty cool because I love to read, though I mostly read non fiction these days. I'm sorry it has taken me this long to do it.

Name three characters (from books)
1.) You wish were real so that you could meet them.

My answers:

a.) Elsie Dinsmore - from the Elsie Dinsmore series

b.) Marty Davis - from the Love Comes Softly series

c.) Dink - from the Journey series

d.) Ira Pointer - from the Journey series (shhh I snuck a fourth one in there)

2.) You would like to be.

a.) Melanie - from Gone with the Wind (she was always so sweet, and never thought unkindly about anyone)

b.) Elizabeth Bennett - from Pride and Prejudice (she always had a comeback for everything)

c.) Elsie Dinsmore - (she is another character who thought the best of everyone)

3.) Who scare you.

This one was a tough one for me because other than the above books, I'm more of a non fiction reader these days. I can't remember being afraid of a character in any books I have read. I'm sure there were some I was afraid of when I was growing up, I just can't remember them.

Since I can't come up with any character from books, I will list two from two TV programs I watched when I was younger.

a.) Herman Munster from the Munsters - I think he scared me because he was so big, and he looked scary.

b.) Lurch from The Addams Family - he was always so creepy to me.

Hmm, who to tag? I will tag Linda, Christa, and Connie.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HEATHER!

Fourteen years ago today,
God blessed us with a daughter that day,
With pretty brown hair, and chubby cheeks,
She grew too quickly with the coming weeks.

She learned to walk at ten months old,
and loved it when the days were cold.
And then one day she prayed for snow,
The Lord answered as we well know.

Music is her life these days,
Hawk Nelson is her favorite group.
Someday she wants an electric guitar,
For that, she will have to pray hard, hard, hard.

As a newborn, she and I would get up during the night for her feedings, and we'd listen to Michael Card's, Sleep Sound in Jesus CD. I listened to it so much that I wore it out, and no longer have it. Listening to the clips, even today, still make me cry.

We have been blessed to be Heather's parents these past fourteen years. I don't know where the years have gone. When she was a baby, and as a toddler, people would tell me to enjoy it because she would be grown before I knew it. They were right. Although she isn't grown yet, these fourteen years have seemed only a day since they've gone by so fast.

Happy Birthday our sweet Heather, we love you, and are proud of you.

May the Lord bless your special day, and may it be a happy one.

ANNOUNCING - Pictures included

My husband and I are the proud parents of a bouncing, 70 pound, almost 9 yr. old, Oompa Loompa.

Our little Oompa Loompa can be seen in the play, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, details to be posted later.

UPDATE on Recipe Name/Other things

My daughter remembered the name of the crock pot recipe I posted the other day. It's called Cheesy Hash Browns.

I've been telling people recently that we are never busy, and that we are always home. It seems like ever since I said that, we have been on the go. We have been busier these past couple of weeks, than we have been in a long, long time.

Last weekend our youngest daughter auditioned for a role in the play, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Today they had what was labeled a Call Back for the Oompa Loompas', and the squirrels', so we had to take her there this afternoon. We'll find out Thursday evening whether she has got a part.

We have a conference starting tomorrow night at church. The conference will be on Revelation chapters two, and three. The conference lasts until Wednesday evening.

Our oldest daughter turns 14 years old on Friday. On Saturday we have a church barbecue that is held every year to collect money for mission trips to India. Next Sunday is the fifth Sunday of the month, so we will be having a meal after church on the church grounds.

So, if my posting is sporadic that will be the reason, and I am hoping you won't forget about me.

Crock Pot Recipe

Rebecca has asked us to post a recipe today, so here is mine. The only problem with it is - I don't have a name for it. It takes 6 hours in the crockpot on low. It's good for Sunday's because we can come home to a nice hot meal.

Ingredients:

Hash Browns - the little square frozen ones - I buy two boxes and have a few left over

Cheddar Cheese Soup - I use about 4 to 5 cans

Smoked Sausage - cut up, and I use about 2 1/2

Using a crock pot, put the Hash Browns in first, then the Smoked Sausage, then a couple of the cans of Cheddar Cheese soup, and just keep layering it. Put the temperature on low, and then stir it about three hours later. Then, let it cook another three hours (6 hours total).

Sometimes I will cook frozen Broccoli and Three Cheese sauce to go with it. That is easy too. I don't remember who makes it, but it comes in a green bag.

Prayer and The Surpremecy of God

For the past couple of days I've been thinking about prayer. I had alot to unlearn from my past experiences about prayer because I had gotten caught up in the Word of Faith false teachings. In a previous post here, I talked about the false teachings of the name it/claim it, or Word of Faith crowd. One of the things I said was this:

"Aside from the fact that the name it/claim it teaching is false, there are dangers in believing it as well. The danger comes into play when a person believes that God has promised certain things, such as healing, a restored marriage, children who never go astray, financial blessings, and the like. When the healing doesn't come, and a loved one dies, the marriage is still not restored, children rebel, and you are poor, it destroys that person's faith, and they blame themselves for whatever reason. Most of the time they believe they lacked the faith to believe God could do what they think He has promised."

The dangers of this teaching was evident yesterday in a chat room when an atheist asked about this verse:

Matthew 18:19 Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.

He said that he had had an aunt who had cancer, and that many Christians had prayed for her, yet she died anyway. One person in the chat room said, regarding this verse, that you have to have faith to believe. I'm not positive, but I think I had heard him say another time that he had been a Christian at one time, and that he was raised in a Christian home. He was very nice in what he said, and had many questions, yet it seemed to me like he was angry at God for not answering the prayers of those who prayed by healing his aunt.

This morning I finally began to understand something regarding this verse, and prayer itself. You would think I'd have known this already, but 13 or so years of believing falsehood doesn't go down without a fight.

I know that we pray because God commands us to, because there are too many verses to post, I won't post them here. I used to think that when we prayed for something, it changed the course of events. Since becoming Calvinistic in my theology, I found out quickly that what I believed was false, but I could never figure out the reason why we prayed, other than God commanded us too. I also could never understand how we were to pray with faith.

While reading A. W. Pink's Attributes of God, Chapter 4, on the Supremecy of God this morning, I began to understand. Here are the paragraphs that helped me understand:

"The absolute and universal supremacy of God is plainly and positively affirmed in many scriptures. "Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory and the majesty: for all in the heaven and all in the earth is Thine; Thine is the Kingdom, O Lord, and Thou art exalted as Head above all. . . .And Thou reignest over all" (1 Chronicles 29:11, 12)—note reignest now, not "will do so in the Millennium." "O Lord God of our fathers, art not Thou, God in heaven? and rulest not Thou over all the kingdoms of the heathen? and in Thine hand is there not power and might, so that none (not even the Devil himself) is able to withstand Thee?" (2 Chronicles 20:6). Before Him presidents and popes, kings and emperors, are less than grasshoppers.

"But He is in one mind, and who can turn Him? and what His soul desireth, even that He doeth" (Job 23:13). Ah, my reader, the God of Scripture is no make-believe monarch, no mere imaginary sovereign, but King of kings, and Lord of lords. "I know that Thou canst do everything, and that no thought of Thine can be hindered" (Job 42:3, margin), or, as another translator, "no purpose of Thine can be frustrated." All that He has designed He does. All that He has decreed, He performs. "But our God is in the heavens: He hath done whatsoever He hath pleased" (Psalm 115.3); and why has He? Because "there is no wisdom, nor understanding, nor counsel against the Lord" (Proverbs 21:30)."

NO purpose of His can be frustrated. What that tells me, along with many verses about His decrees, is that He has decreed all things, and my prayer does not cause God to do something He had not planned to do already. What prayer does is humble us because it shows us how utterly dependent we are upon Him for every single thing. When we don't pray, and I have been guilty of not praying many times, we are telling God that we can handle things on our own. We'll pray if we need His help. What I say with my lack of prayer when I don't pray is that I don't need His help, I don't need Him right then, when the truth is I desperately need Him every moment.

When we pray, we CAN pray with faith, believing that He WILL answer, not that He will answer us in the way WE want Him too. We are to conform our will to His, He doesn't conform His will to ours. He is God, and we are not. When we pray in faith, believing that we will receive an answer, we can trust Him for whatever the outcome is.

And the verse the atheist quoted:

Matthew 18:19 Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.

WILL be answered, and they will receive whatever they ask IF they are praying for God's will to be done. His will is going to be done in whatever situation we are praying for.

And that my friends, gives me great hope and comfort.

The Foreknowledge of God - Part Two

These past six days have been very busy days. Usually things are pretty slow around here, and we do the same things each day, none of which are time consuming. That is, until this last week.
Our son and daughter in law are expecting a baby in September, and they were here on Thursday night. They came with news of the sex of the baby, videos, and ultrasounds, which were all pretty exciting. We are going to have a granddaughter.

Saturday was hectic, and one of the last things we did was to take our younger daughter to audition for the play, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. She's 8 yrs. old, and this is the first time she has ever auditioned for anything like that. She had the lead role in a Christmas play in our old church almost two years ago, and after having others tell us we should check into it, we finally did. We find out Thursday evening if she got a part or not.

Our hectic days prevented me from posting anything, which I missed. It also prevented me from reading any of the blogs I usually read, and I have really missed that. I'm still too tired to concentrate a lot.

Continuing on with A. W. Pink's, The Attributes of God, from Chapter 4 I read this the other day:

"Scripture affirms that God, in His high sovereignty, singled out certain ones to be recipients of His distinguishing favors (Acts 13:48), and therefore He determined to bestow upon them the gift of faith. False theology makes God’s foreknowledge of our believing the cause of His election to salvation; whereas, God’s election is the cause, and our believing in Christ is the effect."

"Now the word "foreknowledge" as it is used in the New Testament is less ambiguous than in its simple form "to know." If every passage in which it occurs is carefully studied, it will be discovered that it is a moot point whether it ever has reference to the mere perception of events which are yet to take place. The fact is that "foreknowledge" is never used in Scripture in connection with events or actions; instead, it always has reference to persons. It is persons God is said to "foreknow," not the actions of those persons. In proof of this we shall now quote each passage where this expression is found."

He goes on to quote these verses:

Acts 2:23 "this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men."

Romans 8:29-30 "For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified."

Romans 11:12 "Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean!"

1 Peter 1:2 "according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood:

May grace and peace be multiplied to you."

"God foreknows what will be because He has decreed what shall be."

I fought foreknowledge, and unconditional election for many years. I was one of those who said I could never serve a God like that. But God knocked my theology right down the tubes, and I am so glad that He did. Because it's in times of tragedy, like what happened at Virginia Tech, and times of trials, that it's such a comfort to me.

I think that's about all of my thoughts for now. I'm still trying to recover from the busy week we had.