Verses to Remind Us, God is Faithful

November 18, 2014 By Heather

“Elijah isn’t reading as well as he could be. You can tell from the break he took over the summer he isn’t confident when he reads out loud. If he can spend 10 to 15 minutes each day reading, he can catch up to his peers.”

Stunned by my genius child’s “lack,” I discovered another consequence from our summer of switching medication for his ADHD. It had taken nearly a month for one medicine to build up in his system which translated into insane month of managing behaviors–reading a book was at the bottom of the list. But it was promising to know if he exercised his abilities he would be stronger in no time–just like our faith or lack of.

Faith is not just a one-time decision to follow Jesus, instead we are called to increase in faith. And when life has you living on the edge or hanging on to the very last frayed thread, it’s hard to exercise our faith, sometimes it’s the last thing we do when we should be exercising it the most. Faith has been described like a muscle and muscles in our body will atrophy if it is not used. If you have ever had a cast on an arm or leg for a few weeks you know what I mean.

So what happens to our faith if our Bibles get dusty and our knees never hit the floor?

Life in the Riggleman household is often full of vibrant chaos. I can say vibrant because I’ve learned to create high structure for my kids with special needs, they thrive when life is routine and they know what happens next. But as a grown chica, I know life doesn’t always go as planned. When I find myself full doubt and surrounded by grey moments, it’s because I slacked off and allowed my muscles of faith to atrophy. Just when I’m waist deep in a mess, I wonder where God is–and what I love about him is he whispers his faithfulness when I’ve forgotten.

You may be going through moments where you’re wondering if God is faithful because of the storm surrounding you. I can promise you this, you may be surrounded by deep waters but he won’t let you drown, whether your grieving from a loved one passing away, the diagnosis of cancer, filing for bankruptcy or divorce. It may be the case of terrible two’s three’s or hormonal teenage years–I promise you God is faithful. Here are verses to pin to remind you of God’s faithfulness. 🙂 Be blessed.

15 Verses to Remind Us of His Faithfulness

He is faithful when we are faithless

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Psalms 91:4 He will cover you with his feathers. He will shelter you with his wings. His faithful promises are your armor and protection.
Psalms 86:15 “But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Hebrews 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
1 Corinthians 1:9 God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
1 Corinthians 10:9 We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents.
1 Corinthians 10:13 No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
2 Thessalonians 3:3 But the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one.
Hebrews 10:23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.
Psalms 40:10 I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart; I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation; I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation.
Proverbs 28:20 A faithful man will abound with blessings, but whoever hastens to be rich will not go unpunished.
Luke 16:10 One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.
1 Corinthians 4:2 Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful.
2 Timothy 2:13 If we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself.
Psalms 36:5 Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.

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Because You Need a Home Team to Lay You at Jesus’ Feet – Brave Moms need a Home Team

October 13, 2014 By Heather

Everybody has a home team: the friends you call when you lock yourself out of your house once again and ask for the copy of keys you’ve given them or the person you talk to when something terrible happens. It’s these people who know what’s wrong with you and love you anyway. These are the ones who will tell you to breathe deep when you insanely snap at your child and these are the people who tell you the bathing suit you’re about to purchase is cellulite suicide. Yes, these are the people who know the medications you’re taking and help you fish snakes out of your beloved closet.

These are your people, your no-matter-what-posse. If you’ve had the same posse for years, BLESS you–if you’re like me–just barely stumbling through the hole you knocked down for friends to enter, this post is for you.

You can’t possibly do life without a home team.

And if you want to be a brave mom–you need a home team.

If you want a home team, you need to get past the phrase, “There’s no crying in baseball,” and embrace the steady stream of tears, imbalanced hormones, and allow your friends to not only gather around your beautiful kitchen table but also grant access to the basement where the REAL you is revealed.

Basement Dwelling isn’t Really Living

There in the inner recesses of your home are cobwebs, stained couches from too many buttery hands on movie night, a wine stain in the corner from one of those rare alone-as-couple moments. Not to mention messes upon messes like dirty windows still in need of curtains, loads of stain filled laundry–not to mention the load you’ve been fluffing for days on end because you plan to fold it soon.

But the basement is where the real you resides. It doesn’t take courage to let emotions stream, fears to surface, and the fact you whine while being on your treadmill because you want to be that perfect size. Basement dwelling was home for me because I found it too crowded upstairs. We would entertain guests upstairs, inviting them over for one of Chris’ amazing gourmet dinners, we would talk about the comfortable surface things: kids, marriage, work, faith. Then I would smile, thank them for coming over and before re-entering the basement–peeling off the fake me with my dress clothes.

Here in the basement is where I raged against God over the phone of losing my baby. I could tell you about the months of fertility treatments, bed rest, and the strain it put on my marriage. I could tell you about the fears from comparing myself to other moms while finding myself coming up short–knowing my insides weren’t shiny like her outsides. I could tell you about the tears and anger that flowed freely over the diagnosis of special needs for two of my children. I could tell you about the questions and worries as I identified with many of the reasons why a friend committed suicide. I could tell you about the thousands of sleepless nights as the same string of failures rolloadecked through my mind, show casing each career, friendship, and ministry failure–one by one; all here in the inner recesses of my basement dwelling soul.

And because I didn’t think anyone could be as wounded as me or understand, I dared not let anyone enter.

But I was not meant to be a basement dweller, living life alone and barely scratching the surface and neither were you.

but since the crowd prevented their carrying him close enough to get Jesus’ attention, they climbed up onto the roof, opened a hole in it, and lowered the paralyzed man on his mat down to Jesus.

I learned to stop pretending the day God said to me through Mark, “It’s time to make you well.” He used women whom I had been leading in a Bible study open a hole in my “roof” and lay me down at the feet of Jesus. As a mom–woman, the most courageous thing I ever did was strip myself of “the fake,” laying out all of me at my friend’s feet, asking Jesus make me well.

These days, I don’t bother to check my hair or pick up the dirty plates or socks laying around before answering the door. I give everything I’ve got to my home team–the real me, raw, sometimes struggling, sometimes not– knowing seasons will shift trials to another’s shoulders. In order to brave the crowds and sometimes the darkness in my basement, I will always need a home team.

My home team gets my energy and time because I know at some point I will once again ask for their help to lay me at Jesus’ feet to be made well.

6 Truths I Want to Teach My Kids About Faith

October 1, 2014 By Heather

Being 30 something and surrounded by young college people not only makes me feel old and but makes me realize how critical it is we give our kids a foundation of faith built on God and his Word. As I sat in class, references to faith and Christianity popped up, what shocked me were the references and comments that individuals like myself who base their beliefs on one text like the Bible are, “…closed minded and futile in their thinking.”

WOW.

This generation’s prevalent worldview of postmodern thought includes postmodern values on spiritually, community, experience, and betterment of the world. In order words, this generation is highly skeptical of authority and won’t believe or do something simply because of tradition and they believe faith to be warm, fuzzy and subjective.

A quick web searching on “Teaching Kids About Faith” will pull articles like Parenting Magazine where faith, spirituality, and post modernism are combined to give parents ideas on how to send good thoughts in terms of faith.

Sadness crept into my heart for my classmates because they didn’t know what it meant to be in a relationship with God. They haven’t been introduced to grace or the promises of being imperfectly perfect, yet—radically loved by God. They don’t know the wild, passionate, deep love Jesus has for us—nor have they ever tasted freedom in the form of bread and wine in those precious bittersweet moments of communion. And sadly enough, they’ve never encountered God whispering answers or direction to prayer. Instead, they’ve encountered unchristian behavior and know everything we stand against.

It’s time to change that with my children’s generation.

It made me consider what I really want my kids to know about Faith and here six things I want to teach my kids:

1.The Bible is the Inspired Word of God

According to Barna, less than nine percent of adults believe the Word of God is infallible—meaning God’s word is contains no errors, is completely true and applies to our lives today. I want my kids to know God’s word to be true because God wouldn’t lie, because he is sovereign and wouldn’t put something in His Word unless we needed it. I want my kids to know His Word is living and active, it judges the hearts of men, and acts as a compass. And I want them to understand there is something inappropriate about using secular science to judge the claims of the Bible when we must believe it to be true simply because it is God’s Word.

And I also want them to know it is not to be used as weapon against things they don’t understand, nor is it used to condemn or judge but it is to be used as a living, breathing, active compass of Christ centered living. A way to love others through relationship with Jesus.

2. Faith will Help You in the Real World

When the world is pushing messages like, do what feels good, sleep your way to the top, you don’t need to be married to be a couple. I don’t want my kids to think faith is just a part of the latest trend in thought. I want them to God’s message is true today like it was 2000 years ago and like it will be tomorrow or on the other side of the world. The foundation of faith I’m teaching my kids is relevant and will still be applicable when they navigate the real world through personal choices, work, career, and relationships. Whenever they question what to do, I want them to get on their knees in prayer and/or dive into God’s Word.

3. Faith is more than just rules—it’s a relationship

With many doctrines, belief systems, and symbolic traditions encompassed under the word, “Christianity, it paints God to be an unrelenting task master full with a list of legalistic rules. I want my kids to know faith isn’t about rules, I want them to experience God’s love and what it’s like to have a relationship with Jesus. Being loved by Christ motivates me to want to do what God asks through his Word, to live life for Christ and it’s what will motivate them to pursue God’s heart.

4. Faith is an action

Faith isn’t just a warm, fuzzy feeling—faith means being Christ’s hands and feet in action. I don’t want my children to become disillusioned with the church or the years Jesus spent in ministry by feeding and clothing the poor. Jesus spent more time in relationship with society’s rejects than he did with his fellow peers at the synagogue.
I to teach my kids about “feeding his lambs,” I want my kids to be other’s centered instead of self-centered.

5. Faith means there is a future and a purpose for you

In a world where parents teach their kids to be anything they want—I want my children to know the true meaning of Jeremiah 29:11-13 and Psalm 139. I want my children to know they were created for a purpose, born with unique talents and destined to fulfill a purpose no one else can do. I want them to seek God’s face to establish their future. I want them to intimately understand Ephesians 2:10 of being God’s masterpiece.

6. Faith is keeping your eyes on Jesus

Today’s fad will be swept up in yesterday’s news but God is the same as he was yesterday as he will be tomorrow. I want my kids to keep their eyes on Jesus no matter how crazy and anti-Jesus this world becomes. This means I have to lead by example, putting my faith and relationship with Jesus in action. When something bad happens, I say, “Jesus, please help whoever’s been hurt in that accident,” or share how radically he loves me at the dinner table with a wildly far fetched—yet answered prayer. I want them to keep their eyes on him, no matter what.

Fighting for your child’s faith can be a tough and sometimes daunting battle, it’s easy to fear they will get lost or question our ability to lead or teach. But if you love Jesus and teach them to love Him, you and your children will one day meet Him face to face and hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Don’t forget to include Jesus in the Recipe

September 8, 2014 By Heather

After our mandatory quiet time was over, I shuffled around the kitchen in a daze adding ingredients to our bread maker for french bread. Flour, a bit of sugar, warm water, one farm fresh egg, a pinch of salt and a little oil; no sooner than I hit the start button I knew I had forgotten the most important ingredient. You know the one that makes the magic happen, the key ingredient that makes the dough rise and acts as a catalyst binding every ingredient together–creating soft, fluffy, warm dough and when it’s baked, it gives away to golden, crisp goodness.

Yeast, I left out the yeast.

French bread isn’t its namesake without being light and fluffy–all because of one simple ingredient. As I dumped the required amount in, I sucked in my breath thinking:

Our days are dense, bitter, and hard when we forget to include Jesus.

And how often have I forgotten him lately?

Life isn’t made of picture perfect moments, snapshots of success, perfectly placed furniture with clean and well dressed kids. Real life is full of little moments, like bits of grainy sand. Each grain small and insignificant but piled together creates a beach–a beautiful place to dwell. But these grainy moments can rub our soul raw when we try to go through real life on our own.

These grainy moments sneak up on us, just when we think we can do life without him, expectations, tantrums, and shattered glass drag us down while perfection breaks our back in the midst of it.

Life–like that beach is much like making dough, we need to add Jesus to the daily mix.

We need his presence, his grace, his warmth. Without him, life is dense, flat, and tasteless. Without him, our messy beautiful world of marriage, motherhood, career, and life doesn’t make sense, there is no peace and we can’t catch a breath.

When we are spent beyond weariness, add Jesus–he becomes our strength to muddle through.

When the clutter, the laundry pile, and bills threaten to topple over on us, whisper his name and he becomes the anchor.

When we forget homework, can’t find our keys, and yell at the kids, stop and close your eyes, picture him standing there with you. Jesus becomes our redemption during a rough morning.

When the crankiness and bickering of kids threaten to push us beyond our limits add Jesus and he becomes the source of patience and wisdom.

When our phones and Facebook messages are silent and loneliness tells us we are unwanted, turn to Jesus and he becomes our soul saving friend.

My life is like that right now, full of homework, searching for a solid identity, refining my writing, wondering how to reach my reader’s hearts as my head and heart pound out the moments of when I can steal away to hear his voice above real life–to sense his soothing presence as I stand on bits of sand.

If your life is dry, dense, or bitter, ask yourself if you’ve added the most important ingredient.

God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at the break of day. Psalm 46:5

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{Let’s Talk Prayer} – Day 3: How can I pray for my family?

August 6, 2014 By Heather

Day 3 – How can I pray for my family?

Today’s conversation of the 7 Day Prayer Challenge is kicked off with a question I asked Jules,

Since children have a way of filling our hearts, how can we pray for our families?

Click here for Day 1 or Day 2.

Jules- When I became a mom, I had no idea how much it would drive my prayer life. At every stage, I’ve found myself crying out to the Lord for patience, wisdom, direction, and intervention over things I can’t control. My mama-prayers have swelled up early in the morning, in the midst of nap time, or deep in the night. Motherhood motivates me to pray!

Since children have a way of filling our hearts, how can we pray for our families?

Heather – Motherhood does change us, it challenges us and sometimes we think we are in over our heads. In the trenches of motherhood, God taught me he hears my cries, my groans, and my “Oh no’s!”

Key Verse: Isaiah 30:19 says, “How gracious He will be when you cry for help! As soon as He hears, He will answer you.”

What happens when your baby arouses from her slumber and starts to cry? We rush to pick her up, interpret her needs and soothe her. Even though your baby can’t express herself clearly, you care intensely for her. That’s a picture of God’s concern for you, His child, when you pray to Him.

God cares about the everyday ordinary moments of mothering. He cares about all you do, everything from working a part time evening job, to folding socks, and yes—he cares about all the little cares your kids lay upon your heart to pray. When we pray, it grows our faith and energizes us and gives God a chance to move in our families.

So do not hesitate to come to God with your problems and concerns. He loves you more than you understand and wants you to ask Him for help. Take a moment right now to talk with Him and thank Him for hearing you.

Let’s pause and pray right now, let’s “TALK.”

Thank Him – Thank him for creating a way to talk to him.
Acknowledge Him – Invite him into your worries and concerns, ask him to reveal his glory and authority in your family life.
Lift up others – Lift up each child, ask for victory over a certain character flaw.
Kneel before God – Kneel for God and surrender your family to him. Ask God to move in their lives and to let his light shine through them.

Let’s Pray.

Father God, thank you for creating a way to talk to you. It seems so simple but so profound. Help me to continually bring my worries, concerns, and dreams to you. Show me how to mother my kids from their best days to their worst. I lift up my kids to you ask that you work abundantly in their lives. I pray we all become a reflection of you in this world. Amen.

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Verses to Remind Us, God is Faithful

15 Verses to Remind Us of His Faithfulness

Mama Needs A Time Out

Daily Getaway’s for The Mom’s Soul

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM:

Barnes & Noble Christianbook.com