Easter 2015

Time Hop has been killing me!! Look at these babies!!:

Easter Continued

 Yesterday was such a great day with family. I woke up so so thankful that Adam was going to get to be beside me at church and that we were going to be able to spend the morning and day together as a family AND with extended family. Our cup was full.

 Church was amazing. I love the place we have been attendning. The preacher, knows believes and lives truth. You can tell He is so passionate about what He says and study studies the word for each sermon. The music was so so great. I enjoy that it is the same type of worship that we are used to and so it's just easy and feels free to worship. It was all so Jesus centered and people centered and I just enjoyed being a spectator at church with my family.

 For lunch we went to my grandparents house. I just adore my grandparents so much. Easter was always a super hard holiday for me in Ohio and just getting to be with my grandparents for Easter was so wonderful. I don't know how many more of those we will have together. I don't know how many times I heard my wheel chair ridden, grandmother who is struggling physically say that she was thankful. At least a handful, many two. What an example she is...

 After lunch the girls were treated to yet another Easter Egg hunt which just "blessed everyone's heart" as my grand mom would say.

Last night we were able to go to the Fisher's house and be with all of Adam's family that lives in Memphis. All the cousins got to play together and the sisters enjoyed catching up and seeing Marmie and Papadaddy again. We missed them while they were in Indo. 

 In the midst of these wonderful blessings and moments there were so hard moments as well. I thought a lot yesterday about Living Hope and how I missed the people that I considered my "family" there. I long for the "community" I felt there. I thought about the first day the church officially started in 2009 and how exciting it was for everyone.

 I have no idea what is "next" for Adam and I. But I know that following Christ has many blessings and comes with many hardships as well. I know and have never doubted that He absolutely by His word called us out of Living Hope Church and I will rest in that. I will grieve it like I should but I will rest in that and trust that whatever He has next for us, that it will be "immeasurably more." Ephesians 4:20

 I will rest. I will take every day to do as God has called us to do and rest. Yes rest physically, mentally but also just rest in Him. That He knows what He is doing, that He has good plans for us (jer 29:11)and that He promises to work all things together for our good. (Rom 8:28) I will rest in the promise that "Those who wait on the Lord will gain brand new strength." (Isaiah 26:8)

 I want to finish this season of waiting and resting on the Lord and be able to say that only by God's grace, it was not a season of complaining, or anxiousness but a season of quietness and trust in the Lord. (Isaiah 30:15)

 I am thankful to the Lord for all my many many blessings. Just like my Mimi may I chose to see and capture and dwell on the abundant blessings Christ has given to me. If Christ were all I had, He would be enough.

Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage to heaven.  As they pass through the Valley of Weeping, it will become a place of refreshing springs; The autumn rain will clothe it with blessings. They go from strength to strength, (increasing in victorious power) till each of them appears before God in heaven.

Psalm 84:5-7

He's Alive! Happy Easter!

He was despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care. Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down.
Isaiah 53:3-4

⁵ You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.

⁶ Though he was God,
    he did not think of equality with God
    as something to cling to.
⁷ Instead, he gave up his divine privileges;
    he took the humble position of a slave
    and was born as a human being.
When he appeared in human form,
⁸     he humbled himself in obedience to God
    and died a criminal’s death on a cross.

⁹ Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor
    and gave him the name above all other names,
¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹ and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

Phil 2:5-11


Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die."
John 11:25-26



And Jesus Christ our Lord was shown to be the Son of God when God powerfully raised him from the dead by means of the Holy Spirit. Through Christ, God has given us the privilege and authority to tell Gentiles everywhere what God has done for them, so that they will believe and obey him, bringing glory to his name. 
 Romans 1:4-5 



Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.  
 Romans 6:8-11


I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.  Philippians 3:10-12 

So incredibly thankful for God and Jesus' incredible sacrifice. What else is there to say. Without Him I wouldn't even be alive. He has given me everything and rescued me from the domain of darkness and transferred me to His kingdom of LIGHT! 
 

I will hopefully post more tomorrow but today in church this verse was presented and I just love it for so so many reasons so I'll end this post with it and HAPPY EASTER!

 ...The Light shines on in the darkness, for the darkness has never overpowered it. 

John 1:5

Easter Fun!

We know Easter really has nothing to do with eggs and hunts but we love the fun activities associated with Easter and we love the friends we share the fun with! We are excited to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the grave tomorrow! And I am so very excited that we will be celebrating the whole day together as a family and with extended family. What a HUGE blessing!!

He's ALIVE!

 HAPPY EASTER!

This was the best shot I got of us today at church :) It was windy and well my real view of success in a family picture these days is getting us all in the picture! ha!

 The girls had their 4th egg hunt after church. Yes forth. We don't do Easter Baskets before church because Adam is already gone to church and I am rushing trying to get out the door and after we got home form church and they had a million eggs i.e. candy and treats I just couldn't give them their baskets too and so I guess that might come later this week! I don't even know!

 Church today was so great; it's our church's third anniversary and it is so awesome to me that the Lord has allowed us to share in all of that journey. I was thinking about all of the stories of people that have come to our church in the three years we have been here and just thinking about these things makes my heart so so happy and glad we moved here.

 A family from our church invited us over for lunch and we just had the best time eating, talking, and laughing with them. I was so thankful; this is the first Easter that I was not really sad I was not with family, not that I don't miss them and didn't today but I wasn't overwhelmingly sad. It's a very good thing for me.

 One of the passages shared at church today was 1 Corinthians 15:12-20 which says, "But tell me this—since we preach that Christ rose from the dead, why are some of you saying there will be no resurrection of the dead?.....

For if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your faith is useless....

And we apostles would all be lying about God—for we have said that God raised Christ from the grave. But that can’t be true if there is no resurrection of the dead. And if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised. 

 And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins. In that case, all who have died believing in Christ are lost! And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world.

 But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. He is the first of a great harvest of all who have died."

 Praise the Lord. I know what I live for is no meaningless because my Savior rose from the dead.

 I cannot help but think of the old hymn..."He lives. He lives. Christ Jesus lives in Me....You ask me how I know He lives...He lives within my heart." This is how I know He lives...I have a relationship with Him.

It's all unbelievable that He would die for me want to have a relationship with me and then that He would literally raise from the dead but Praise God, it's true!