Croley’s Corner @ Chicklit Power

Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power...

I love the smell and the sweet savoring scents of Christmas. Thanks for taking a moment out of your busy schedule to join me. Grab your favorite cup of something delicious and your journal as we look into the character of a name. His name was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before He was conceived in the womb.

When we as women become pregnant, usually the very first thing we, and everybody else, want to know is what the gender is. The excitement sometimes is more than we can contain, although back in my day, that was not an option. Isn’t today’s technology amazing? The ability to find out whether we’re having a boy or girl is so available and for the most part when we do find out, we start the hunt for a name. Yet, for some, they want to wait and see the baby before they pronounce the given name to them.

There are traditional giving names that have been passed down from one generation to the next and when we speak their names, we think of those we named our child after and what a treasure that little one is that carries such a precious name.

We can find ourselves inundated with so much information about a name. We can buy books; we can Google a name and even search for the meaning and the origin of where and how that name came about. More and more we are discovering new names from those who like to make up names and there are those who love those good old-fashion names.

No matter what your name may be, it has been chosen especially for you! Yes, there is something about your name that identifies who you are. Now if you were to call me by a different name, you would get no response. Why? Well, the answer is simple: because you didn’t call me by my given name. When you mention a person’s name, don’t you think of them and their personality? Their name depicts who they are and how you know them!! Your name describes…just that… who you are!

I bring this up because I want to talk about the name that is above all names, the name of Jesus. The prophet Isaiah tells us some important things, not only about the name of the Messiah that was to come, but also about His character:

For unto us a Child is born; unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Isaiah 9:6

Each of these descriptions gives us a different aspect of the work that God wants to do in our lives. His name is Wonderful, which means “a sense of awe,” and He wants to bring a sense of awe and wonder to our lives.  Next is Counselor; He wants to give us His personal counsel and direction.  Psalm 73:24.  No longer do we have to be perplexed by our problems because with Jesus as our counselor we can know He will reveal His will to us.

Oh, how awesome are these two names given to Him that we might find peace in them.

Oh I’m not going to leave you hanging with just these two names! Join me next week as we follow up on the remaining names of Jesus: Mighty God, Everlasting Father and the Prince of Peace.

 Until next week continue to make His name personal this Christmas and remember, keep Him close to your heart!

Have another sweet weekend.

Love Deb

Paws for Coffee Hour

Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power...

Ahhh, it’s that time of the week again: time to PAWS for Coffee Hour and learn something from our furry four-legged friends! Grab your coffee and your Strand of Faith, cuddle up with your four-legged friend and let’s go learn yet again another lesson from these God-given and created beings through the eyes of Jennifer!

When did the “most wonderful time of the year” become the “most rushed time of the year”?  This week it felt like time accelerated and jumped from Sunday to Thursday.  As I look at my furry babies resting peacefully on the floor, I check my list (twice), and I think, maybe they have got it right.  They get excited when they need to – especially when a guest arrives. They run around to the door to greet them then demand a few pets of love, but then they settle back into a restful state and enjoy the moment.  Oh, to learn how to do this! I have decided I don’t want moments to pass me by because I am in a state of constant movement forward.

I need to pause to enjoy my kids, scratch my puppy’s belly, or just enjoy my gingerbread latte.  Most of all, I need to remember why we celebrate this season.  It’s not about the hustle and bustle.  Or about the giving and receiving.  It is about the gift our Father gave to us.  The gift that canceled the separation of God and man because of our sin.

One of my favorite Christmas carols is O Come All Ye Faithful.  It is a true worship song and, for me, really puts this time of year in its place.  My prayer is that on Christmas morning I will awake with the last verse on my lips and the song imprinted in my heart…

All Hail! Lord, we greet Thee,

Born this happy morning,

O Jesus! for evermore be Thy name adored.

Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing;

O come, let us adore Him,

O come, let us adore Him,

O come, let us adore Him,

Christ the Lord.

Take a moment in the next couple of weeks to reflect on what Christ’s humble birth has meant for you on your journey.  Rejoice and be glad that He was willing to come to this earth and walk in our footsteps. Greet your guest with enthusiasm, but take time to sit and be still…peaceably!

Until next week…

Jennifer

Wednesday’s Word

Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power...

Thanks so much for joining me today for Wednesday’s Word and a little break from the business of life, especially during this season. Grab whatever you’re having for our Coffee Hour and come inside. Oh, and don’t forget your Strand of Faith. I’m confident there will be a couple of knots to tie today! Meet me in my hotel room in Texas, just minutes after finally getting three hours of sleep after a five-hour panic attack!

The clock said 9:06 a.m. My first thought was that God had heard my cry for sleep. That thought opened up the door of my mind and returned to my last thoughts before falling asleep, the thought of having to have this sinus surgery. I pushed that thought back into the closet of my mind and sat up rather abruptly. Why do I feel so rested after having only three hours of sleep? My mind tried to reason but His Spirit within me whispered to my soul the answer: God had heard my cry, knew my limits and granted me rest, divine rest.  Heck, knowing that He had intervened gave me energy!

I got dressed to go downstairs and get us a few cups of their brown water …oops, I meant coffee! :-) The elevator door closed on this thought: It was time to start changing my thinking about this surgery and allow God to turn my fear into fearlessness!

I came back up and George and I sat down to have our coffee together and I opened up my Battlefield of the mind book. I had left off in Chapter 8, reading about a “normal” or abnormal mind and I began to read aloud and highlight fast and furiously, as if my mind and heart were starving and couldn’t take these truths in fast enough. The timing of this was profound, especially considering the night I had gone through.

See, as Joyce explains and I wholeheartedly agree, especially because I’ve experienced this truth, the mind and the Spirit are meant to work together, not to fight one another…however, the sad truth is our mind does fight against the promptings of the Spirit, especially if the prompting is an unknown direction! See, His Spirit is gentle, convicting but not condemning, believable and not bullying. He doesn’t shove us toward something; He nudges…ever so gently.

See, His Spirit within us has a very specific job: to reveal to us God’s wisdom and revelation for the Holy Spirit knows the things of God and my spirit knows only my own thoughts. How does that work, you ask? Well, His Spirit speaks to our spirit which then enlightens the eyes of our heart, aka, our mind! It’s a very subtle process and it cannot happen in the midst of chaos and confusion! 1^st Kings 19:11-12 confirms this through Elijah, a prophet whom God revealed many things to. I’m going to sort of paraphrase these verses and put you and me in them to bring this truth home to our hearts:

So God told Elijah to go out and stand on the mountain before Him. (He was going to demonstrate this principle of speaking quietly but always present to Elijah) So the Lord passed by and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord…but – yes, but – the LORD WAS NOT in the wind. See, just because we meet with Him doesn’t mean we won’t have storms and that the winds of life’s forces won’t be felt. It’s what we are able to know, hear in our hearts with our spirits that keep us standing. He’s always there, but oftentimes because of our fear, we can’t hear Him. He never leaves us or forsakes us; He’s always ready to speak to us! He was with me in my panic attack; I just couldn’t hear Him!

This portion goes on to explain that after the wind, there was an earthquake, but the Lord was NOT in the earthquake. What is shaking your world today? Has it knocked you down…and perhaps moved you a bit away from Him? Trust me when I say that a panic attack can really rock your world…and your faith but His Word rights what was threatening to fall down and crumble.

After the earthquake there was a fire! But the Lord was NOT in the fire. In other words, life can really heat up! Whether it is ignited through circumstances of failing health, finances or failing relationships, the fire is there to refine us. How do we know that? Verse 12 says “and after the fire, a still, small voice.”

See, that was a still, small voice I heard at the end of my panic attack, one that spoke life into my faith, quieting my fears. Friend, God is a gentleman, a gentle man in the form of Spirit…in each one of us! He is not loud and forceful, argumentative, bullying in any way. So for those of us who say we can’t hear Him, could it be that we are not sitting still long enough to soak in His presence and hear that quiet, still voice?

Take time to sit in His presence and soak in His Word because it NEVER fails to splash perspective on any given situation we may be going through or know of. It never fails to quiet the fears and feed the faith!

Listening for His voice

Evinda

Tuesday’s Trench Lesson

Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power...

Welcome to our Tuesday’s Trench Lesson & Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power! I can’t wait to share this lesson with you today, especially in light of what’s happened in the Inland Empire of California! Grab your coffee, your SOF (strand of faith) and let’s go talk about the differences between rage…and anger!

What is it that we think of when we think of acts of rage? It could be something as “subtle” as the subliminal messages of rage we hear when we turn the radio on and listen to what is being called “music.” All we have to do is turn on the TV or our cell phones, and soon, our screens fill or minds and hearts with stories of rage: road rage, domestic violence, rage on the fields and courts with athletes, devious acts of rage…and terrorists’ rage! In fact, haven’t we recently experienced such rage in our community?

What a perfect time to share a bit of our Root of Rage within our Transform, the Series program!

The statistics for child, spousal abuse and domestic violence are staggering and they all have the thread of rage as a common denominator. A simple explanation of rage is Roaring Anger Going Everywhere! Imagine you have an emotional pot within you wherein every wrong thing ever done to you has been put – may be even forgotten and not forgiven, but every wrong things is simmering, burning from the inside out until one more thing happens and then…the EXPLOSION!

Let’s take just a few minutes to talk about a few tell-tale signs of rage that often go undetected, although they may not be so easy to detect in a terrorist-type situation – that’s a whole other subject and mindset – the symptoms often go unnoticed, not dealt with until it’s almost too late. I say almost because God has righted so many of our rage-filled wrongs and only HE is able! We must ask some hard questions that require some honest answers!

Do you feel persistently angry with other family members and/or yourself? If you are paying attention to your emotional dashboard you may be able to answer that one right away…honestly. Here are a couple ways to help you determine if you have this symptom: you don’t participate in/with family gatherings; instead, you kind of feel like you are on the outside looking in. Or, when you see someone do something wrong and it goes uncorrected, it baffles you because you know how you would handle it! Or how about this one: the smallest thing makes you want to scream? And I’m not talking about a hormonal scream every now and then where you get on that broom and ride, but a consistent pattern of small things taking up big space and causing big reactions!

There are many other tell-tale signs and you may think that this blog does not pertain to you – and maybe it doesn’t pertain to you, but someone you know, so let me give you some differences between anger and rage.

1. Anger is temporary, usually situational whereas rage is ongoing and growing!
2. Anger is about the present moment, the current action; rage is a collision of that moment with many distant/past accumulated memories simmering in that emotional pot.
3. Anger can be resolved by communication and/or compromise; rage takes a deeper work for it is a mixture of many ingredients: fear, desperation, anger, panic, and many more, which is what makes it so volatile!
4. Anger can be healthy; rage is never healthy.

There is such a thing as righteous anger! We hear over and over how many of us were taught never to be angry, but I daresay that is a contradiction to scripture. See, God created us as emotional beings with the ability to experience every single emotion…which HE experienced, including anger. What we need to remember is being angry is not the sin; it’s what we do with that anger that either tears down or builds up!

Until next week…

Evinda

Jenn’s Journey

Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power...

Hi and happy Monday! Enjoy a hot peppermint mocha or a spicy holiday drink  and take a little time off with me. I am glad you stopped by.

"This is what the Lord says to you: ‘Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army; for the battle is not yours, but God’s." 2 Chronicles 20:15

This is a verse I have claimed many times. It has brought me great comfort. In fact, God won a battle for me the other day, one I've been at for quite awhile. Sometimes, when I finally see the answer to a prayer, it feels surreal for a few minutes. I can't say that I never felt discouraged while waiting for this particular answer, nor did I never feel afraid. At times, the 'army' against me did indeed feel unbeatable Yet, after those few minutes of feeling shocked to see the answer in black and white, I was able to jump up and down, share with a few close friends and say my utmost thanks to God.

We all have battles…against our own natures, against what life has thrown our way: the effort to pay the bills, the effort to keep relationships strong, and against 'powers' that seem invincible. It's easy to lose hope. That's when we need a friend or two to stand in the gap until we feel stronger again. I think often of the story in Exodus 17 where the Israelites were in a battle against enemies. God asked Moses to stand, with his arms up, over the battle. When his arms were up, God's people prevailed and when his hands fell down, they began to lose. Two men, Aaron and Hur, came next to Moses, gave him a stone to sit on. Then, one on either side of him, held up his arms until the battle was won.

This, my friends, is what we must be to one another. We must hold each other up until the battles are won. Many times when I have felt weary, I've heard from a friend who says "I'm praying for you" or "I'm thinking of you." I have many friends and family who I KNOW will pray for me at a moment's notice when I am feeling down or weak, or as though hope is nowhere in sight.

The world around us is getting darker. Not only are we called to be His light to our neighbors, we are called to bear one another's burdens. How we do this may look different in each situation. It requires prayer and a listening ear for His prompting. Some battles will be won easily; some will require a great deal of blood, sweat and tears. The good news is we will one day prevail over it all. May that day come quickly!

If you have Aaron and Hur in your life, thank them today! If you can, BE an Aaron or Hur to someone today.

Until next week, be blessed,

Jenn

Croley’s Corner @ Chicklit Power

Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power...

We should keep on encouraging each other to be thoughtful and to do helpful things. Hebrews 10:24

Welcome to Coffee hour today. Pull up a chair, your favorite beverage, your journal and let’s get started.

How often have you gone into your knife drawer or even your knife holder and found that your knife isn’t doing the job it was designed to do? We certainly know for a good knife to work properly we need to keep it sharp, and the best way to sharpen it is to use a whetstone or water stone.

Proverbs 27:17 instructs us “As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend”

What lessons can we draw from this proverb? How important it is to keep iron sharpened and the reason for the sharpening. How can we sharpen our friends just like iron sharpens iron?

This verse must be pretty important to be found in God’s Word and for King Solomon to bring out such truths for us so let’s talk a bit about that today.

For some that understand the process of sharpening iron you usually use a whetstone, which is an abrasive stone in sharpening knives or other sharp-edged tools, and it is the instrument of choice. The point Solomon is making is two people, having the same nature, both iron, can sharpen each other’s mind, help each other to grow and be in tune to the things that are going on around them. And, yes, they can even help each other to move in the right direction, to stay on track, to walk away from sin and towards God. And even if sparks do fly, if both sides are open to the truth, those sparks will not be deadly but will result in each instrument, each person, becoming sharper in the Lord and their walk with Him. 

As iron is sharpened by its like, especially by the file we are filing with, it will be made smooth, and positive, and fit for corporate gathering and with pleasing conversation together.

God’s intentions to us are this practical act of sharpening ourselves, but with "caution" to take heed whom we choose to converse with because their influence upon us is so great and can be used either for the better or for the worse. To direct us that we would have in our eye, a sense of discernment in our conversation, namely to improve both others and ourselves; not to pass away time or banter one another, but to provoke one another to love and to good works and so to make one another wiser and better. Hebrews 10:24

A dull knife is a cook's worst enemy, and easily the most dangerous tool you can have in your possession. If we become dull, our ability to be effective to others is lessened. There are many ways we can sharpen our friends, but I consider encouragement to be the most important tool. King Solomon had this to say about encouragement in Proverbs 16:24 “Pleasant words are as a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and health to the bones.”

So go, sharpen yourselves with His Word and make it a great and powerful weekend! And remember to keep Him close to your heart!

Love, Deb

Paws for Coffee Hour

Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power...

Welcome to PAWS for Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power! We are delighted you could join us today for another lesson to be learned and some wisdom to be gained from our four-legged children and Jennifer! Grab your coffee and come join us for some profound communication tips…from a dog!

My dog Logan has no problem letting me know what he wants.  Sometimes I feel he is a better communicator than I am :-). 

• When he is hungry – he carries his dog bowl around
• When I walk in the door – he shows concern (where were you, he says)
• He tells me no when he doesn’t want to do something
• He sits by the door when he wants to go outside

The list could go on and on.  He is a very smart dog and has learned what responses or interactions get corresponding reactions from his people.

Do I think that deeply about my communication?  I like to think that I do but sometimes I don’t believe I do.

When God created the first human beings—Adam and Eve—He created them in His own image (Genesis 1:26-27).  This likeness included the ability to engage in intelligible speech via human language.  In fact, God spoke to them from the very beginning of their existence as humans (Genesis 1:28-30).  They possessed the ability to understand verbal communication—and to speak themselves!

Last week I pondered listening and communication.  This week I have been focusing on why God created communication and how we are supposed to use it. 

God spoke the world into existence and we were created in His image, so that tells me how much power our words have.  So what do we do with that power?

I believe there are five standards of communication:

1. Care - Am I choosing my words carefully and weighing the consequences of them?
2. Praise - Is what I am saying tearing down or lifting up? (even conflict can build up someone)
3. Truth - Do I have all the facts or am I making assumptions based on what I am feeling?
4. Faith - Where am I placing my faith? In them? God? Circumstances?
5. Surrender – Am I holding back or putting up defensive walls?

Hurt people hurt people. Healthy people don’t hurt other people. People are dying for respect. When you treat people with dignity, and use communication standards, you treat people with respect. Stop and listen to what’s beneath the words they’re saying.

James 1:19 tells us: “Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry”.  God gave you two ears and one mouth. He wants you to listen twice as much as you speak. But we get in a hurry. St. Francis of Assisi said, “Seek to understand before seeking to be understood.”

Until next week, PAWS and pay attention to what you may learn from your four-legged pet…

Jennifer