Victory

Today I saw one my prayers being answered and I'm rejoicing in God's victory! For about 6 months I have been off and on trying to get back into having quiet time with Jesus and reading my bible more regularly. I often pray but I haven't for years been good about diciplining myself to get in the Word regularly. God has been showing me lately that I can't expect to know Him if I don't read His Word too.
I normally get up and have coffee and read my emails or check facebook in the mornings while the little ones are eating breakfast. Off and on I've chosen to read my bible first but it's more been something I know I need to do rather than something I want to do. Last Monday at bible Beth study read a letter from the lady that leads the Come to the Fire Women's conference I went to in November. Beth had asked her to write about how she came to reading the Word and spending time with Jesus. Aletha said that she use to drink her morning coffee and read the newspaper (Kansas City Star) first thing in the morning. She said that one day she was needing more and she went over and pulled a book off the book shelf and randomly opened it to read: "God's Word can be as fresh as the morning newspaper". Ummm wow! Could God speak any clearer? And something Beth said something to the effect of "Reading God's Word starts out as a dicipline and a decision of self-will, but it becomes a desired pleasure." That was the nudge from Jesus that I needed to make the decision to not read His Word first some mornings, but every morning. I got up this morning tired and was a bit overwhelmed with helping Isaiah get together all his stuff for his 4-H demonstration at school and at the same time getting the girls ready and also caring for Abby and John-Marc.
So as I put a load of laundry in right after getting the big kids off to school I was thinking ugh I have a long day ahead of me, I'm babysitting for 2 of my friends today and for the better part of the day and evening I will have 5 extra kids. I love those kids so it's not that, it's just the idea of it and that I was tired.
Then I had the thought... I get to go drink my coffee and READ MY BIBLE, and I was excited. So looking back an hour later and realizing that God was giving me a hunger to read His Word I was thankful. He does answer our prayers. I had been feeling like I wasn't getting anything out of reading my bible months back, but today I realized that God was changing that and that by letting HIM give me the desire to know Him, and by letting Him show me the Word through His eyes that the Word was becoming real to me again. I praise God that His mercies are new every morning, and that He is so faithful!
I read this morning part of Romans 8.. I think that has to be my favorite chapter in the bible right now. It's inspiring and deepens my hunger to let Jesus rule my heart more and more. God's Spirit has the power to control our mind and help us think about things that please Him, we have the choice to let His Spirit give us life and peace, no matter what our circumstances are externally. Praise God!
I wrote some praises in my prayer journal about what Jesus was saying to me through the first 17 verses and thought I'd share a few here of those awesome truths here.
God's life giving Spirit has freed us from the power of sin.
God did what we couldn't do and sent His Son in human form to end sin's control over us by sacrificing His Son for OUR sins.
Because of God's Spirit when we yield to Him and die to ourselves we are NOT controlled my our sinful nature but by His life giving Spirit that has power over anything our fleshly minds would think.
His Spirit living in us has Power to put to death the sin (and for me a big one is fear) of our nature.
God gives peace and not fear through His Spirit and gives us a heart to not want to have anything to do with it.
We are HIS children and He is our Abba Father, so everything that is His is ours, because He withholds nothing of Himself. He gives Himself freely to us when we give ourselves to Him.
And lastly in verse 17... if we are to share in His Glory, we must also share in His suffering.

We can't expect to live painless lives, but we can expect Him to walk it with us, and when we let Him He trades our ashes for Beauty!
I love Him and I love that He loves me and that through His love I can love others.