Receiving With Open Hands

Do you ever find it hard to receive?

Sometimes we are more comfortable with giving than receiving.

My word for the year for 2018 was Receive. I want to be open to receiving all that God has for me with grace and mercy and love.

I want to be a conduit from which this great love of God can flow from God through me to His children with no hindrances whatsoever.

Today our pastor preached a powerful sermon.  I will include the link here if you would like to go listen and watch. I guarantee you it is worth your time and investment.

At the end of the sermon he asked us to open our palms before the Lord to give what we need to give back to God from the past and to receive from Him what we need to receive for the new year.

As my husband and I sat beside one another with our palms to the Lord, I wished I had had my phone camera ready to take a picture because my husband put his palm below mine supporting my hand and in essence saying to me that we would receive together in the spirit of one union before God.

Our relationship is not perfect – – it is flawed in many ways and we both make mistakes every day but after many years of marriage we still love one another and still know that God‘s way works the best and His way is when we are in union with each other and our God.

My prayer for you today is that you will open your hands to God and give up the old ways that are not good and receive help from Him to establish new things that are good for 2019.

We have one more day to finish to finish this year strong.

© ALL ART, PHOTOGRAPHS AND TEXT PROPERTY OF ELIZABETH DIANNE UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, 2008-2019

Word for the Year 2019

I am very excited to share my word for the year for 2019. 

The word is wonder. 

It is my desire to see the Lord’s wonder and to wonder about His wonder every day of the new year. That will be my quest.   

© ALL ART, PHOTOGRAPHS AND TEXT PROPERTY OF ELIZABETH DIANNE UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, 2008-2019

Come No Further

The ocean always makes me realize how small I am and how large my God is. 

I love Job 38--

 Here is a portion.........

 “Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb,

 when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness,

 when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place,

 when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt’?

© ALL ART, PHOTOGRAPHS AND TEXT PROPERTY OF ELIZABETH DIANNE UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, 2008-2019

Just For Today

Reading Jonathan Cahn's devotional book, The Book of Mysteries, has truly been one of the highlights of my life.

Every day I look so forward to it and it always includes THE MISSION for the day which is a great biblical challenge.

Yesterday's devo was entitled The Apostasia and was about "the great falling away" before the end of the age.

Ephesians 6:13, Philippians 2:15, 2 Thessalonians 2:3 and 2 Timothy 3:1-4 address this prophecy.

The devotional includes this paragraph--"In the age of departure from the Word, you must hold all the stronger..   You must commit to hold all the more strongly to the Word, the faith, and the stand.  And the more you hold the Word, the more you will find your stasis, the person you were created to be....And you will stand."

The Mission:  Take a command from the New Testament and fully carry it out today.  Commit to live your life all the more by the Word of God.

So, just for today, I will hold on tight to God's Word and commit to live my life all the more by it.  I chose a specific command from the New Testament to live by for the day.  Was I totally successful?  No, but every time I "blew it," I was immediately convicted and asked God to forgive me.

I think this is a great way to grow in His Word and that is what I truly desire.

I hope this is an encouraging word for you and that you truly grow to discover the person you were created to be.  God knows YOU and has a wonderful plan for YOUR life--Live it to the fullest.  God bless you all.

© ALL ART, PHOTOGRAPHS AND TEXT PROPERTY OF ELIZABETH DIANNE UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, 2008-2017.

The painting above was done about a month ago and is in my entry hall.  It is 3 ft by 3 ft.

The Weathered Old Barn

Astranger came by the other day with an offer that set me to thinking.

He wanted to buy the old barn that sits out by the highway.

I told him right off he was crazy.

He was a city type, you could tell by his clothes, his car, his hands, and the way he talked.

He said he was driving by and saw that beautiful barn sitting out in the tall grass and wanted to know if it was for sale.

I told him he had a funny idea of beauty. Sure, it was a handsome building in its day.

But then, there's been a lot of winters pass with their snow and ice and howling wind. The summer sun's beat down on that old barn till all the paint's gone, and the wood has turned silver gray.

Now the old building leans a good deal, looking kind of tired. Yet, that fellow called it beautiful.

That set me to thinking. I walked out to the field and just stood there, gazing at that old barn.

The stranger said he planned to use the lumber to line the walls of his den in a new country home he's building down the road.

He said you couldn't get paint that beautiful. Only years of standing in the weather, bearing the storms and scorching sun, only that can produce beautiful barn wood.

It came to me then. We're a lot like that, you and I.

Only it's on the inside that the beauty grows with us. Sure we turn silver gray too... and lean a bit more than we did when we were young and full of sap.

But the Good Lord knows what He's doing.

And as the years pass, He's busy using the hard wealth of our lives, the dry spells and the stormy seasons, to do a job of beautifying our souls that nothing else can produce.

And to think how often folks holler because they want life easy!

They took the old barn down today and hauled it away to beautify a rich man's house. And I reckon someday you and I'll be hauled off to Heaven to take on whatever chores the Good Lord has for us.

And I suspect we'll be more beautiful then for the seasons we've been through here... and just maybe even add a bit of beauty to our Father's house.

 -- The Weathered Old Barn poem, author unknown

Happy Wednesday, Folks--

© ALL ART, PHOTOGRAPHS AND TEXT PROPERTY OF ELIZABETH DIANNE UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, 2008-2017