It seems highly unlikely that a solid, 100 percent Bible-honoring Christian will run for U.S. president in 2016. So what’s a Bible chick to do?

Rewind a couple thousand years to Constantine, who was the first Roman emperor to become a Christian. He saw a vision of his strong, victorious army carrying shields with crosses, and he saw the words “In hoc signo vinces,” which means “In this sign, you will conquer.” After that, Constantine was on the side of the Christians. The spread of Christianity in early Rome became possible because of Constantine.

Unfortunately, Constantine had some faults that were glossed right over by some of his historians. He was not always a man to be admired for living a life that reflected Christian principles – what man ever is? Still, we can look back on that very pivotal time in history and see that God used Constantine for His purposes. At the very least, Constantine put a stop to the persecution of Christians.

As we look at the list of choices for president in 2016, we can think of Constantine and realize that if, for example, Donald Trump were elected, no he doesn’t know a lick of scripture. He’s been married three times. When asked by Christians if he’d ever asked God for forgiveness, Trump was forced to admit that no, he had not. His moral character is a great concern. Still, he stands behind Israel. He says it is an outrage for Christians to be arrested for putting their faith into action at their jobs.

I’m not endorsing the guy, or anyone else. But we need to accept that we are at a point where our nation is full of tolerance of everything except the truth. Our nation is sound asleep to the possibility that Islam could very soon bump Christianity as the main religion here. Our nation is in such spiritual darkness that having a president who is another Constantine – someone who is on the side of Christians and is fully behind the nation of Israel – can be enough.

We females can experience some drama with extended family members. It's a shame, because ladies are the ones who actually care the most about the family, and so because of this we seem to be the ones to get entangled in clashes in relationships or painful interactions. While the guys stare at landscaping or watch football.

A little pre-forgiveness might be in order? As in, you purpose in your heart to forgive certain family members for the aggravation and heartache they are about to cause you, before they cause it.  

Joseph was a pretty good example of reacting graciously to annoying habits of his family members such as: selling him into slavery, telling his father he'd been killed, stuff like that. He messed with his brothers a lil bit after all that, but ultimately he said to them in Genesis 50:20, "But as for you, ye thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good." Which is pretty cool that he could say that. You sold me into slavery, I'm good with that. Our dad thought I was dead. It's all good, brah. I think we can get over ourselves and our family clashes if he could get over that one. And think that ultimately maybe God is allowing that difficult relationship in our life for our own good. To teach us something maybe, or force some spiritual growth on us (ew, spiritual growth, it's always so unpleasant.)

A Sunday School teacher I used to have and love, Mary Jane, had our class memorize the following passage in Ephesians and I bet if you repeat it off and on as you are chopping up onions for your stuffing, you can memorize it too. It is very useful to have this passage running through our minds in all relationships:

"Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger,
all jealousy and slander, and every form of malice.
Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as Jesus Christ has forgiven you."
Ephesians 4:31 and 32

Whatever I was fired up about against someone else, really gets put in perspective and humbles me when I am reminded that: Oh yeah. Think what I've been forgiven for. But it's so much more fun to think about other people's sins and meanness rather than our own. Can't do it, gotta obey God's word.

Jennifer: Welcome back from Qatar, sir. Tell us about the airdrops you did in Iraq, to help the Christians persecuted by ISIS.

Hero Husband Guy: The planners in the Air Force gave us coordinates to fly over and release the bundles. I think there were 14 bundles of water and food. We know it was on top of Sinjar mountain. What is this article you're writing again? Is this going on Facebook?

Jen: Yes honey, all my blogs go on Facebook now. And the airdrops were at night?

Hubs: Right. We had two C-130s and we flew over some point, and at the designated place in the air is when we release the stuff out of the back of the airplane. We fly in from a high altitude, drop down to about 2000 feet above the ground and then slow down to the drop air speed, open the back door. The navigator calls “green light” and a cable cuts a strap. Since we're at a steep angle, the 14 bundles of water and food roll out the back. It probably takes about 16 seconds for it to roll out the back. When it’s all out, the load master says “load clear” and we know we can maneuver to clear the drop area. Then we close the back door and accelerate back up to 18,000 feet back to our base.

Jen: How fast are y'all flying when you drop the supplies?

Hubs: We slow down to 120 miles an hour when we do the airdrop. We’re flying about 300 miles an hour at high altitude. An airline jet goes 500 miles an hour.  

Jen: So you were wearing nightvision goggles?

Hubs: Yeah, we were. All I saw were a few truck lights and things like that, I didn't see any people. Of course they wanted to make sure we didn’t drop the bundles on top of anybody. That would seriously injure or kill someone. So the drop zone was clear of people that time of night.  

Jen: I know you train for this sort of thing all the time. What was different about this mission?

Hubs: It was the middle of night to an area we were unfamiliar with. The anticlimactic thing is we didn't ever interact with the people on the ground, we didn't ever talk to them. We were talking to people on the radio. We weren’t sure what kind of stuff ISIS was going to throw up at us. Air missiles, or if they even cared what we were doing. ISIS could have gotten what we dropped for all I know.  

Jen: Everyone really appreciates your service to our nation, babe.

Hubs: I don't think they're doing any more air drops now, but plenty of husbands are still over there.

"Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities." 1 Timothy 5:23. 

I have searched the whole Bible seeking God's heart on the issue of alcohol. I don't think God is going to strike anyone down for sipping a little pinot noir on a Friday evening on her front porch with her husband by the soft light of a citronella candle and some vintage Sting music while sharing a plate of cheese and crackers and enjoying some pleasant marital conversation.

Just hypothetically saying. 

But what does that look like to the world? What does it communicate to the neighbors? What does it say when we put alcohol in our grocery cart in public? Or park our car in a liquor store parking lot? What does it say to our children to see that beverage in the house, to smell it on our breath, or for people in our community to see us drinking at a restaurant? 

Ultimately it can say that we Christians are no different from the world. 

So Timothy my man? We hear you that a little sip of something might be all right. Jesus said at the Last Supper that the wine represented His blood shed for us so there's that. If you read carefully though, the word "wine" is not used there, only "fruit of the vine." We'll leave it up to theologians to duke out whether the reference could mean something like juice. And yes Jesus turned water to wine at that wedding, but y'all I'm convinced He was highly annoyed with his mother over that. He did it not because He was up for some bubbly (pop a cork, dudes! par-tay), but no, it was out of reluctant obedience to His mother.

We need to exercise caution and realize the Bible says mannnnny times that strong drink is dangerous and is associated with a life of worthlessness. The beverages are called "spirits" for a reason, people. Even mild drunkenness removes the awareness of The Spirit, the Holy Spirit from us for a while -- scary thought. Removing the Holy Spirit from a believer is like taking a compass away from a sailor. It's taking a pilot's instruments away mid-flight. It's taking away my sheet music when I'm doing a very bad job of trying to play the EZ beginner version of Linus and Lucy on the piano. It all adds up to cacophony and disaster.

Have you ever done or said anything you regretted when you had been drinking alcohol? Has drinking ever come back to bite you? God thought it might: "Look not upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth..." Proverbs 23:31. Advertisements and magazines sure can make drinking seem relaxing and fun, and even seem like a reward for our hard work, but the Bible says that in the end it comes back to bite and sting.

Song of Solomon says, "Eat, drink and imbibe deeply" to the romantic married couple. This book of the Bible is very poetic and the drinking might just be an allegory, although it does specifically mention wine. Taken literally, I believe it could be saying alcohol is a romance within marriage thing that God is okay with and has His blessing.

This brings us to another issue with drinking though. If we don't limit alcohol to an occasional romantic part of our marriage, and we drink socially with friends, what kind of people are we going to be hanging with? Are these relationships edifying for us, or are these essentially just drinking buddies? I knoweth not. I simply pose the question to all of us: "Are these my people?" As in: Are These? My People? We should ask ourselves that and feel really warm and fuzzy inside about the answer.

As the Proverbs warn us, we are all susceptible to overdoing it and slipping into drunkenness or even addiction, which is with certainty going to make our flesh vulnerable and, as a not so happy side effect, will make God quite wroth. Sewwww many times in the Bible, the people who tended to gravitate toward strong drink were the ones getting defeated left and right by the alert and sharp posse. The drinkers are the ones getting taken advantage of and made fools out of. You just get this vibe -- you get this vibel from the Bible -- that alcohol is generally inconsistent with being a strong Godly chick. In listing the attributes of a Godly woman, the Bible lists among them the word "sober." The scriptures say for us believers to not have a "party spirit."

You'll notice what I am not taking into consideration in this discussion of alcohol. Someone might think along the lines of one or more of the following: 

1. My uncle's heavy drinking has ruined his family and frankly the guy gives me the creeps, so I'm never going to drink.
   
2. My sister who teaches Sunday School says it's okay to drink, so I drink. 
   
3. My pastor says only low-life bums drink, so I'm never going to drink and as a bonus I'll be frosty cold to my husband if he even thinks about cracking open a beer while he watches the game on ESPN. 
   
4. Southern Living Magazine says cool people tail-gate and talk sophisticated bartender lingo, so I drink. 
   
5. Some triumphant chick who writes blogs got me all confused, and now I don't know if I'm thinkin or I'm drinkin.
   

No, no, no. Other people can give us clues or warning signs. But I believe we each need to base all of our beliefs and therefore our behavior 100 percent on what we find in the Bible. All wisdom is found right there in that Book. "What does God want my life to look like?" needs to be the genuine cry of our hearts. Some issues like adultery and stealing are pretty dang consistent in the Bible as being no-no's. I hope to inspire you to search the Bible and come to your own conclusions about alcohol, which might be different from mine and that's totally cool. 

Here is my rather unofficial yet Biblically based conclusion on alcohol, for myself personally:

A glass of wine could be all right with God every now and then, maybe, possibly, sort of, as a special romantic treat in private with my hubs. However, alcohol is like Oreos. If I never eat the first Oreo, I'll never eat 16 of them.

“Hey I know. I think I’ll be a writerrrrrr!”

About a year ago, I believe God told me to write for Him. Since then, I’ve learned a few things. If you think God is telling you to embark on a new Christian ministry, there are three things you might want to keep in mind:

1.       No one cares.
2.       People really seriously just do not care.
3.       Something is wrong if you care that they don’t care.

I thought I had to do stuff, but I really don’t. I have to write and sit back and see what God wants to do with it. As my Mom says, I’m just sprinkling seeds and He’ll make them grow.

Recently, National Guard Magazine published a column from me encouraging military wives to stay strong in the face of deployments. When I saw it in print, I thought of Obi Wan Kenobi when he put the thought into the heads of the Storm Troopers, “Move along, these aren’t the droids you’re looking for. Move along.” I was impressed that no one at that magazine said, “Hold up. This column is all Jesus-i-fied. We can’t go there.” No one said that. They were happy to publish it. I think God wanted them to. Can’t stop Him.

My Dad once told me that when you plant a plant, the first year it sleeps. The second year it creeps. And the third year it leaps. Maybe that’s what is happening with my writing. Or not. Is it about my writing ministry's becoming great? No, it’s about doing my tiny little part to be used for God’s purposes. Yes, all along my writing has been about Him, but that's not what God said. He said, "I want you to write for me." I've been writing About Him but not necessarily For Him. 

Until now, my ministry has been for me. I had my own purposes in mind. I had my own expectations. I rather hoped I might soar to greatness. I was on a bit of an ego trip, and in Latin the word "ego" is the first person pronoun "I." As in, "Tuh-huh, ain't I somethin." Insert big toothless grin with a thumb's up and baseball cap turned backwards.

Those thoughts were not the same as God's. So my thoughts were enslaving me and robbing me of a lot of peace and joy, to the point where I thought about deleting my blog. I asked God for a breakthrough. He showed me Proverbs 16:3 which says, "Commit thy works to the Lord, and your thoughts will be established." That word "established" means fixed, strong, not wavering. I hadn't committed my writing work to the Lord. No wonder my thoughts were a big ol' discouraging mess.

Through that passage of scripture, God helped me to see that, if I want to be free of miserable thoughts, which -- if you think about it -- are what create a miserable reality, then any expectations of my own about my work needed to be gone. Our purposes for ministry might be something like:

• Bring 65,000 people and their brother to Christ and my Twitter every ding dong day, 
  
• Show the world how irresistibly clever and brilliant a Bible chick can be, and 
  
• Oh snap! Write a best seller. (Just hypothetically saying.)
  

God's purposes for that same ministry might be: 

• Bring healing among hurting family or church members, 
  
• Work behind the scenes to show the world His perfection and the brilliance of His word, and
  
• Give the leader of the ministry a new level of selfless humility. (Also clearly just hypothetical and in no way based on real life experience and y'all know I am Thoe Therious.)
  

My writing is still about Him, but from now on it is also For Him and His purposes. I'm about planting seeds that whisper, “For thou, Lord, art high above all the earth: thou art exalted far above all gods.” Psalm 97:9. He’ll make those words grow however He wants to.

The one word that I am pretty sure God whispered to me the other morning was, "Stand."

I had been praying about my children. I was feeling very beaten down and defeated. I wanted to stay in bed, hide under the covers and give up. All my strength was gone. All my enthusiasm was gone.

But God told me to stand.

Hearing that one word spoken into my heart by my mighty Lord and Savior caught me off guard. I wondered what He meant by it. So I started looking into that word and, when I did, it knocked me off my feet. Or rather, knocked me onto my feet.

Of course my mind raced about all the passages in scripture I could think of, containing the word “stand.” Two buh-lew me away and the first one is: "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." Galatians 5:1. God is telling us that standing fast is the way to remain free and not in bondage in our lives, to not revert back to our old ways of not trusting Him or not relying on His strength.

I was familiar with this next passage about fighting spiritual warfare, but I had never noticed the word "stand" in it before. Here is the second passage I loved:

"Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace: faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: Praying always..." Ephesians 6:10-18. 

In the mood to stand, anyone?

I wondered what else God has to say about standing, so I started at the beginning of the Bible and got as far as Isaiah. Honestly when I found so many passages with the word "stand," my eyes started to cross half way through. I thought, "Gracious mercy, I cayn't stand this no moe." 

That silliness notwithstanding, I think we're good on the stand passages, and it's enough to convince me to man up and stay diligent in my calling as a mother. If you ever feel like hiding under the covers, all those passages I found in the Old Testament are in this clickey button below.

When God told me to stand that morning, and when He tells us to stand in His Word, I believe the following is what He is encouraging all of us to do. I found these definitions in my Biblically sound Noah Webster dictionary from the year 1868. This guy knew and loved the Scriptures and here is how he defines the word "stand."

After all of that, I'm feeling rather inspired to rise up and face my reality. How about you?

When I was a little girl I could hardly wait to get out into the world and be independent. Once I was on my own, I was longing to be married. Once I was married, I was longing to have a baby and then, if only I could have a big family. 

Now that I have my sweet family, I find myself longing for the intense, selfless time to end. There is no me, it seems. I especially daydream about the day when my husband will finally retire from the military and stop going on deployments to the Middle East. 

I was praying about all of that one day, and this is what I got from that conversation with God: "You are wishing and longing to be an elderly woman. Who does that?"

God's got a point there. People who are always longing for another season or time, are always longing for another season or time. I remind myself of the old fable about the fellow who was given a magic ball of thread. When something unpleasant happened, or things weren't going his way, he could cut a little piece of thread and speed up time, so that he wouldn't have to suffer or endure anything difficult. He began doing this so often that he very quickly came to the end of his life. He was granted another wish at that point and, remorseful, he wished that he could start his life all over again, but this time never speed it up.

I've spent much of the first half of my life longing for the now to be over but not anymore. I don't want to wish for a time when there is no potty training, no teenage spiritual warfare, no glops of goo on my kitchen counter. Right now is chaotically wonderful. My children bring me to life. I'm tired, but I am always singing and laughing. The nun song from Sound of Music is my favorite one to belt out until they beg me to stop. I'm so humbly grateful for any time at all alone with my husband that I find anything we do together, eat, talk about, to be completely delightful. I'm so utterly grateful.

I got a big chuckle the other day when I read about monks in the Middle Ages who, as their Highly Devoted Service To God, cut themselves off from society and lived solitary lives on some grassy hill. Not impressed. Those guys were living the dream, as far as I'm concerned. Give me some of that solitary grassy hill. Mothers don't have a moment to themselves.

My life seems to be 99 percent sacrifice and one percent personal pleasure. I've been interrupted what feels like 37 times just in this paragraph, to kiss boo-boos, fix hair, discipline naughtiness, smile at my husband while I answered his question and comfort sad people. That is my right now and so that's where I have to end up finding joy. Jesus said whoever would be great among you would be the servant of all. 

Even my five year old, who at this moment is asking me to make homemade play dough with her, has said that God gave her a Mommy because He loves her. She tells me, "Mommy, you're completely gor-juth." My two year old sits in my lap and looks at me adoringly, puts her hands around my face and says, "Mommy pwetty." She has also said, "Mommy gumpy," but that's okay. 

A very sweet friend of mine, Sharon, whose children are now grown, told me that she had a guest over to her house one day. The guest, who has five children but wasn't me I promise, complimented Sharon on how clean her house was. Sharon said, "I'd rather have five children like you." Sharon understands the beauty and loveliness of motherhood. She understands the value of embracing that phase of life and the trade-off of a messy house that comes along with it. 

Life is right now. Whatever phase of life I'm in, I don't want to spend today longing for tomorrow. Thank heaven no one gave me a magic ball of thread when I was a girl. I'd be 98 years old today. And wishing I was 43 again.

Abortion is nothing new. The ancient Romans did it. The men wanted "enjoyment" but no baby afterward. Duh. They understood where babies come from. In the Bible we have at least one example of a dude using birth control. God smote him (Genesis 38). Birth control is nothing new either.

When I was pregnant with my fifth baby, I was receiving lots of let's fight abortion e-mails and someone please help these poor babies e-mails. Let's raise a lot of money and show women how awful they are to kill their babies. Let's volunteer our time and get ultrasound equipment for these women so they can see that they are about to kill their baby.

Peculiar that they don't have much to say about how cruel the father is, only the mother. Where is the guy anyway? As far as I understand it, no woman impregnates herself. Well, one of the ladies who had just sent me some of these pleading, urgent e-mails blasting women who want abortions said the following to me when I saw her one day: "You're having another baby? Gracious. Was that on purpose?"

Now somebody help me out here. Am I understanding the anti abortion people also to be anti pregnancy? If you're past two or three babies apparently. So we are supposed to not kill babies but also not give birth to them?

Another contradiction for you is a magazine that I get from a Christian family advocacy organization. I'm fond of these people and I like what they are doing. But they are very vocal about being anti abortion. It's one of their main platforms. And ... everyone who works there has two children. Let's do the math. Somebody's been using some birth control. That's fine if they want to do that, but I can't get pumped about abortion with these people.

Again, the anti abortion people are now providing content for pastors who have barely any children to use as sermons on "Sanctity of Life" Sundays. I've heard passionate sermons blasting women who get abortions almost in a mean spirited way -- the fathers are off the hook for some reason -- and the pastors preaching these sermons have one or two children. Just kind of yawning on the couch over here. Not impressed. Not feeling it. Kind of thinking about my grocery list while you were talking just then actually.

Here's what the whole thing boils down to. I can't get fired up with you on abortion as long as you consider it a humanitarian issue. If we are sinning against poor innocent babies, I can't get passionate about that (though it of course is very tragic.) The reason I can't go activist with you is because you could very easily turn that view into a different humanitarian issue which sounds like this: Denying abortion is sinning against poor innocent women.

• The anti abortion people feel sorry for the babies (with an undertone of resentment toward the mothers).
  
• The abortion rights people feel sorry for the mothers (with an undertone of resentment toward the babies).
  

Where are the men? Where is God? It's just a different side of the same coin. The discussions about abortion based on these two views sound like this to me, "Wah-blah baby blah!" and then "Blee, bleh woman gah!" They are all just saying a bunch of nothing at each other, around and around. I would rather bust out with the following view. Here it is, its own special bullet point of honor:

• When man resists God's plan for creating life, he is striving against God.

That's a different statement than the others. And it suggests that women did not magically become pregnant by themselves. Abortion is preventing the Creator from creating life and so is birth control. Abortion is just a really horrifying way to do it. No one wants to talk about that because they don't want to be a hypocrite and have to give up using birth control, which is to say, end up with unwanted babies. The fun part about being a submissive wife is, I can say it because even though I hold this belief dear, the belief I hold higher is that I am not the decision maker in my family and I need to do what my husband says. And that's also out of highest respect to and fear of my Creator God. So I can have this nutty conviction I am sharing with you, I can even write about it, and be at peace with myself if my husband decides we are not necessarily consistently living it out.

A wife can be married to a husband who doesn't want children at all and she is perfectly right with the Lord in respecting her husband's leadership on that. But that couple doesn't need to be sending me brochures against abortion. See? Christians haven't ever addressed the issue of why certain people are being shamed into having unwanted babies (abortion) but others don't have to (birth control).

I love that the church and Christians are at least standing up for something. We just need to use our noggin a little better. Of course there needs to be an outcry among believers about abortion. But when we speak out against it, we are not being effective because we are simply focusing on the consequence of man's actions. The end part. Christians are focusing not on the cause of the problem, just the tragic result. I didn't make that up, it's right here in James: “Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” James 1:15.

If someone wants to wake me up and make me think listening to them is more interesting than clipping my fingernails, they could preach or write about what the men in our nation should be doing to prevent abortions from ever becoming a desperate option. Do men ever teach younger men about the lust spoken of in that passage in James? Where is the girl's daddy? Why are her brothers not defending her honor the way Dinah's did? (Genesis 34.) Perhaps the men could hold each other accountable for living out in their own lives what the Bible says about defying God's plans for creating life. They could search the scriptures on that and articulate if and why God has different standards for married men than unmarried men when it comes to making babies. They could explain to all of us whether the Bible contains insight into what the difference is between abortion and birth control as they pertain to man honoring God. We could have "stop defying God" Sunday. Or "man up and defend the honor of the females in your family" Sunday.

I'll get you started. King David's great sin was impregnating Bathsheba and then sorta kinda taking responsibility for it. David actually said, "I have sinned against the Lord." 2 Samuel 12:13. And let's consider what God decided would happen to the baby. Discuss amongst yourselves in men's Bible study.

It is good that someone out there is compassionate toward the mothers and the babies. Both are victims. But we need Christian leadership guys to demonstrate whether one has more than the other to do with man honoring or disgracing the sanctity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

When my husband lost his airline job 10 years ago, I was praying a lot. I talked to God a lot. I read my Bible a lot. I had become like a little girl, looking to her heavenly Father during every moment of every day.

One day, I was talking to the Lord and said something such as: By the way, someday I'd love to have a pretty house. I was going to move on and pray about something else but I thought I heard God whisper to me, "What about the house?"

I laughed out loud. I said, Oh I don't know Father. Five bedrooms? I was going to move on and pray about something else but I heard the Lord say to me, "What else about the house?" This time I got a little choked up and said, Oh I really don't know, hardwood floors? A cul-de-sac? A pretty front porch? A third time I heard the Lord say, "What else about the house?"

This time I really started crying and sat there for a long time and told Him all about this house. I even cut out a picture of a floor plan and taped it into my prayer journal. 

The house that I live in now and have lived in for 10 years, is the very one that I told the Lord all about that day. Every single detail.

You have to understand that when I prayed that prayer, we had no income. We had no idea how long we would have no income (it was nine months). My husband is smart and had saved money for a rainy day but, the rainy day was turning into a whole year almost. It was a monsoon. We were talking about moving to my dad's vacant farmhouse in the mountains if the money all ran out.

Am I telling you this story so that if we all pray at the same time for our dream house it will fall from the sky into our backyard? If we pray really hard and say special words and do six jumping jacks will we get a trip to Paris and $3 million? If I pray again like I did that other time, will I get a lake house this time, or a beach house maybe? No, I'm telling you this story because in my brokenness, in my complete surrender of my life, in running to the Lord like a little girl in a time of crisis, trusting Him and loving Him with all my might, He chose to bless our family in this loving way.

My husband had a little something to do with it also, in having worked very hard to get a new job soon. But we both credit the Lord with providing for us and preparing a home that had all the details I had asked for.

Matthew 7:11 says, "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?"

If your heart is right, if you are in a state of utter dependence on the Lord, then you are irresistible to Him. He delights in blessing us when we are that trusting of Him. Matthew 18:4 says that whoever humbles herself "as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven." It might not be a pretty house or anything valuable or tangible very often, maybe once in a lifetime something miraculous like that will be prepared for us by our heavenly Father. Though He tells us He is preparing a place for believers in heaven right now. The Lord wants to exalt us in some way when we make ourselves as little children at His feet.

A dear lady who wishes to remain anonymous has given me permission to share the following words of wisdom from her to all of us.

We need to guard ourselves and our hearts daily against discontentment.

Before Satan brings temptation or before you would consider a temptation he has to make you discontent in your current circumstances. If we are 100 percent content in our lives - in all aspects - imagine how difficult getting us to stumble would be.

Because most bad choices start with us wishing we had something we do not. If our enemy will have his way to destroy our joy, peace, families, lives and testimonies, he must first work on our contentment with things in our life. Once he has us regretting decisions, wondering "what if" or wishing we had taken a different path...he has us right where he wants us and we are much easier prey.

So count your blessings, rejoice in what we have been given, find joy in each day and in the small things. Remember that we have been given life and our Father wants us to live it more abundantly.