When Blunders Become Blessings...

Throughout history some of mankind's most notable achievements were the result of something that went wrong, but unexpectedly ended up revealing something else of even greater significance. Perhaps the most well-known example is the discovery of penicillin by a researcher who left some bacterial culture dishes grow, meaning to clean them, but upon looking at them later noticed that the bacteria had been destroyed in circles by a green fungus that was growing--Penicillin! It's discovery has saved millions of lives and probably helped us win WWII.

This week on Monday night we, our Sherwood's Fabulous Fudge team, made 1000 bars of Fudge. When the pressure is on and I'm at the top of my game, I can cook two pans of Fudge at one time. Each pan consists of 2 batches of fudge so I am making 4 batches at a time.

 

 
The process of making fudge.  See Pics Above & Below:

Step 1:
Put half of the ingredients in a pan on high heat and bring to a boil. After it starts boiling, turn the heat down to medium high. Boil for 5 minutes.

Step 2:
After it has been boiling for 5 minutes, turn the heat off and add the second half of the ingredients in, mixing and mixing until it is thoroughly mixed.

Step 3:
This is what your fudge looks like after it is finished cooking.

Step 4:
After it is thoroughly mixed and looks shiny silky and smooth then pour the finished fudge into a restaurant-style cookie sheet covered with wax paper.
 

Here are some pics showing how Sherwood's Fabulous Fudge is packaged piece by individual piece:

 

Because it's in two pans. there are always some of the same flavors in both pans except if it's a two-layered variety. I make the bottom layer in one pan and then the top layer in the other pan. Anyway, I was going down the list of the flavors of fudge planning to make them in order. I would put the ingredients in the pan and then begin to cook the mixture.

When it was time to make the malted milkshake fudge, the next flavor was mocha but I made a big mistake and accidentally put the mocha mix in the malted milkshake pan. We all thought that batch was ruined but still I poured it onto a restaurant-style cookie sheet layered with wax paper and when it cooled down cut them into squares so we could give the fudge to the guys at the homeless shelter rather than try to sell it. But after tasting a square believe it or not it was Fabulous!!

So, yes, I made a big Blunder that Became a Blessing and  now we have a new flavor of Fudge. I named it Mocha Malt!

The spiritual lesson is obvious enough...as Christians we know that All Things Work Together for Good to those who Love God. So often, with a little faith, you can find a silver lining in almost anything that happens, from the simplest mistakes to the worst tragedies. 

Not Quite Water into Wine...

I'm working on revising my book which will be coming out in a few months under the new title, Everyday Miracles...Nurturing Faith, Love, and Family in Our Modern World.

We all know about the major miracles mentioned in the Bible, Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana, raising Lazarus from the dead, healing the sick, making the blind see. Yes, spectacular miracles have occurred in the past and happen even today. Some spectacular miracles have happened to me and will be shared in my book, but really it's the little miracles, the ones that can happen everyday, that reinforce our faith reminding us that there is an  unseen spirit world beyond the flesh but every bit as real as we are.

For example, my husband, Jonny, and I were vendors at the regular Sunday Milaeger's Farmer's Market selling our Sherwood's Fabulous Fudge, it was 1:00 PM and the session was going to end in an hour. We had 8 packs of fudge left to sell and hoping that would happen, I put out a little prayer asking God for help. Sure enough, not only did all eight sell, we had to get out two more at the last minute!

It's just a little thing, not like turning water into wine, but I still felt the joy of knowing that yes, God is taking care of the big picture, but your heavenly Father also has time to just be a friend and help with some of life's little problems.

Try it...It Works!!!

Hallelujah...the Song...the Poem

I came across this amazingly inspirational devotional song on YouTube sung by Celine Dion and the Canadian Tenors and just had to pass it on...

I then asked God to give me words for a poem to reflect the beauty of listening to this song and the poem below came to me. Then, I went online to check and as has happened before, I learned that these same words were first given to poet, Sabina Nicole...praise God!

HALLELUJAH 

There were many days when all was well
When hearts were pure and smiles swelled
I used to live in a shack down by the sea
I’ve seen the tears of joy at night
The radiance of stars so bright
It beauty melted the stony parts of me

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

There were many nights when I felt fright
When there was no one to be found in sight
But I had to keep on pushing, pressing on
And when I thought of the good old days
My only words became sweet praise
And the winds just whispered hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I know there is a God above
Who healed me by his tender love
Though all I’ve ever known was pain and doubt
It’s not by might nor by my power
It’s by his spirit I sing this hour
A redemptive, thankful,  glory hallelujah


Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah


They say that people cannot change
But I know better, because I’m not the same
And since I did, well, really, what’s it to you
There is a word I now call victory
I only know it because I’ve been set free
The holy one deserves his hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

"And He Made the Blind See..."

WHILE WORKING ON MY BOOK, because of a stroke I’d recovered from I’ve recently adapted to a limited memory by setting a notebook open and ready on my kitchen table, pen poised to be picked up.

I can’t be sure how the scribes of old were inspired to write down the words that were later compiled into the Bible we cherish today, but since I’ve dedicated myself to this literary project to promote the faith, my mind is like a fax machine that’s always on and receiving memories and other new material that feels important enough to share.

Rather than losing a thought that pops into my head, now I can jot it down. Once I can recall the gist of the idea, I fire up my trusty Samsung with voice transcription, dictate the story, and send it off to my editor as a text email.

In the 2014 film, The Theory of Everything, Stephen Hawking slowly succumbed to ALS, better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, loosing muscle coordination and eventually his ability to speak. I fully expected to lose my ability to see which is why I was learning to use my Samsung to communicate.

During a recent seven-year period my eyes kept getting worse and worse as a result of a rare and incurable disease. I went to doctor after doctor and no one could offer me any hope that over time my sight would improve.

This really didn’t surprise me because all my life I’ve had trouble seeing. When they saw me squinting in school I was tested and needed glasses. I just sat in the front of the classroom to see the chalk board better. My eyes finally got some much-needed attention when I married.

My backup guardian angel, my husband, saw to it that I got glasses right away. My sight was much better for years until 2005 when I began feeling a gritty, sandy substance painfully irritating my eyes. After a few weeks of constant pain, I sucked it up and headed to en eye doctor.

Besides the obvious dry-eye syndrome, I had two infections. Eye drops didn’t help, so two weeks later I was back in his office. Next, he had me try a series of antibiotics, and still no results. In a bold and somewhat desperate move, he filled my eyes with an antibiotic and sewed my lids shut so the medication would take—first one, then the other. I hated needles, so this was a real pain.

After going through all that, the infection did not clear up. Next, it was on to a specialist when things finally got so bad you’d have thought I had Ebola or something, with blood oozing out of my eyes. He saw my condition as dire and indicated I should have my eyeball removed from my eye socket in order to stop the infection from spreading.

Instead of taking that drastic step, they tested the infection again and decided on a special antibiotic that they would dispense at the clinic over a two-week period. There was some improvement, but after visiting five specialists over the course of two years and trying their remedies, the infection persisted.

Finally, a Chicago specialist isolated the rare bacterium and was able to identify the disease. My prognosis was not good—no cure and permanent eyesight loss. When I asked him how I could have picked up such a nasty bacteria, he said that the eye infection was rare, but the bacteria I could have picked up off of a doorknob.

More antibiotics, no effect, my eyesight was getting worse and worse and now I’m worried that I’m going blind. By May of 2006 my left eye was sightless. Now, I couldn’t drive which made things even worse. A frantic search was on for a cure before my other eye went blind. More drugs, more procedures, still no cure. Then, it happened.

A year to the day after my left eye went blind, I woke up, walked into the kitchen, and I could see the gray shadow of my husband’s outline through my left eye!
“I can see you!” I yelled, excited beyond measure.
“What, honey . . . you know that’s impossible!”

We were told by the foremost expert in the field that once lost, blindness was permanent. To be sure I wasn’t imagining things, he waved his arms, and I could see the movement! As the day went on my sight got better and better until it was completely back to normal.
I’d been the beneficiary of many impossible miracles during my life, so I recognized this as a Miracle of the Divine Kind, got on my knees, and thanked God for the mercy of a healing against all medical odds.

Calling the doctor the next day, he insisted what I described was impossible and that my good eye was compensating, making it seem like my blind eye was seeing. He asked me to come in so he could run some tests. When they showed my blind eye could indeed see, he said he’d never heard of that kind of spontaneous regeneration before. Even he declared that it had to be some kind of miracle and made sure I realized just how fortunate I was.

Though my sight had returned, the eye infections were still there so several more years of trial-and-error medications. By 2011 a cutting-edge procedure was tried.
It was a tailor-made cocktail based on a blood sample from me that was sent to California, mixed up, and returned to the Midwest. Finally, by 2012, exactly seven years after my ordeal started, the infection began to fade, then, went away completely!

I have to wear glasses, my eyes are hypersensitive to laser light, but I can drive again and I CAN SEE!!

At the beginning of my ordeal, though my eyesight was failing, the Lord picked me to become a Hopelifter, turning my apparent weakness into the Holy Spirit’s strength.

What Exactly is Prayer?

 
In our lives, just how to pray is often confusing and ill-defined as well as often neglected. Does prayer feel like a burden or an obligation to you? Have you reduced prayer to just another habit, or simply something that every good  Christian does? Has prayer become one more thing you work on to keep up with your spiritual life, or, is prayer a treasure map in the quest for fulfillment and happiness? In all of this, the primary question remains:

What exactly is prayer?

Let’s not base our definition on misguided presumptions, and thus perpetuate the same superficial view of prayer.   

To find the answer, let's turn to Jesus.

Jesus is the pray-er. The symphony of his life was conducted joyfully by an unceasing series of prayerful notes. He did not pray out of duty. He did not pray under the duress of guilt and shame. He did not pray to get God in line with His plan. Rather, He prayed because He is the Son of the Father. Jesus grasped His divine identity and as a result cast a vision for life as God intended, a prayerful life. He prayed as beloved dust, in order to talk to someone He loved.

What becomes clear as we observe Jesus praying is that to pray as beloved dust means to pray in reality. We pray in the reality of who we are. We pray as beloved children of the Father. We pray as dusty ones, sinful and broken.

We are called to pray in the truth of our identity. If we do not pray in the truth of who we are, we cannot truly call prayer being with God. Being with God implies that we have actually shown up, that we are actually present. Prayer is not a place to hide and cower like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It is a place to be honest, like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. It is not a place to avoid the truth. In fact, prayer is a place to learn the truth.

 
We are our most true selves when we pray. And yet we all are tempted to embrace a false posture in prayer. Perhaps this false posture is sitting in our dustiness. Rather than relating to God from our acceptance in Christ, we try to self-generate righteousness to make Him love us. Maybe we don't avoid our true selves in prayer, but we sulk in it. We spend our time in prayer brooding, beating ourselves up, and trying to manage our dustiness.

In effect, prayer becomes a place to continue with our soul rather than with God’s. We search within for answers to the problems we uncover and continue to roll around in the dust over and over, thinking it will clean us off just like Dusty the chinchilla! Prayer too often becomes a place for self talk, self fixing, self condemnation, and self obsession. For many of us, it is difficult to receive fully the Good News that we are God's beloved. It is hard for us to turn to anyone else, even God, for rescue, healing, and redemption.

If our earthly parents did not embrace us with an unwavering legitimate love, it is challenging to receive our identity as beloved of our Heavenly Father.  Yep, God is calling us to pray with Jesus,  "Abba father!" (Romans 8:15). In contrast, perhaps we embrace the promises of a beloved child while rejecting our status as dust. This may take the form of presuming upon God. Perhaps we treat God like just another of life's resources rather than the sovereign Creator of the universe who is beyond our grasp. In effect we domesticate God to fit our world. Many of us refuse to acknowledge our temporal nature in prayer. We stubbornly pretend as if we have things under control in prayer, rather than acknowledging the truth that we are feeble and needy creatures. Yet, God is calling us to pray like Jesus, on our knees in desperate need of the One who is above all things.

 
If we are honest, prayer feels like a challenge. We have made prayer a chore as opposed to a gracious gift. We have made prayer a place to protect a false self, rather than rest in our true selves. Jesus offered us a different vision of prayer.

What we see in Jesus is One who prayed in truth. Jesus prayed from his identity as beloved dust. This is prayer. Not a duty. Not a ritual. Not another item on your TO-DO list. Rather, it is a place of abiding. Prayer is being with a God who is always with you. This call to be with God can be a an important first step. The false postures we have spent years perfecting will not simply be undone by awareness and willpower. These false postures are habits of the heart connected too deep beliefs about God and our souls that can only be transformed by the work of the Holy Spirit.  

Our false postures in prayer can only find transformation in prayer itself. If we give ourselves to the Holy Spirit's work of purging false postures and beliefs, we should take a cue from Jesus. He showed us what it looks like to pray in reality, in the truth of our identity. He pointed us to a resource to put off these false postures in prayer. We have His sheet music for a prayer symphony.

There are 150 prayers in the Book of Psalms. We can pray them with Jesus. They can help to locate us in God's redemptive work within. There are Psalms of lament, praise, thanksgiving, and confession. As we enter into the ancient prayers all of the people of Israel, God will begin to open up a pleasing view into the truth of our identity in relationship to Him. As we pray the words of the Psalms, we will hear the voice of God singing the truth of who we are in light of who He is. 

 

 
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the Son of Man that you care for him? (Psalms 8:3-4)

How long O Lord?  Will you forget me forever?  how long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?  (Psalms 13:1-2)

There is no soundness in my flesh because of your unfair treatment, there is no health in my bones because of my sin, for my weaknesses have gone over my head, like a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me. (Psalms 38:3-4)

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Psalms 73:26)
 
For you formed my inward parts; you wove me in my mother’s womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful are your works, and my soul knows it very well. (Psalms 139:13-14)

We must not forget that the prayers of the Psalms are God's word as such they are right speech. They reveal the truth of who God is and who we are. They are not simply prayers offered by men, but our God’s revelation. Could there be a better place for us to learn how to pray? 

The child learns to speak because the parent speaks to the child. The child learns the language of the parent. So we learn to speak to God because God has spoken and speaks to us. In the language of the Father in heaven, God’s children learn to speak with God repeating God's own words, and that’s how we begin to pray to God.

Like a child, as we pray the Psalms, we are learning prayer talk. We are learning to speak to God. We are learning to relate to Him. We are learning that God is God and we are not. We are learning that we desperately need God’s forgiveness. We are learning that by God’s abounding love and grace our Father calls us beloved.

 
As we pray the prayers of the Psalms, the full picture of our reality will come into focus. We will be set free to be honest about our reality and our relationship with God. As we express our true feelings, the seal of pretense is broken, and the cave of the soul is revealed. We put voice to deep feelings of regret, hurt, and pain. We ask God to search us and know us (Psalms 139:23). The poetic words of the Psalms are rhythmic tools of the Holy Spirit to welcome us into reality and invite us play along with the symphony of Jesus’ soul. In short, the Psalms invite us to pray as Jesus prayed, that our lives may declare,

My heart is steadfast, oh God I will sing and make melody with all my being! (Psalms 108:1)

What about you? Have you ever felt that praying was a chore, a duty to check off your TO-DO list as part of a daily Christian ritual? Are you totally honest with God in prayer? Pause today and think about how you relate to God in prayer. Ask God to show you how to think and pray differently.


Submit yourself, then, to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. (James 4:7)
Join along in my daily devotional blog posts! I would love to hear from you in the form of blog comments!

Note:  This may be hard to believe, it's hard for even me to believe, but these words were given to me, word for word, without me seeing them anywhere or reading them from any other source. Since this has happened to me before, I can only conclude that there are some inspirational messages which God wants "out there" on as many channels as possible. 

The words of this devotional was originally presented on: http://www.faithgateway.com/prayer-our-most-true-selves/#.Vpa5eU-6SuJ

When you Feel Alone...

We all have times when we feel completely alone. Sometimes it's like nobody cares or even notices that we exist. You can be in a house full of people and still feel isolated. I know this sensation all too well because it has happened to me many times, especially when I'm at my lowest point during a bout of depression.

                                                                                                                       


The only way I know how to get out of this rut is to always remember that no matter how alone you feel, God is always just a prayer away. I pray... and ask God to help me not feel so alone and I also ask Him what I can do to get out of this lonely funk and I remind God that I cannot do it on my own.


                                    

So I ask God to help and show me what it is that He and I can do to help me feel better. And when I do this God always helps me get back on my feet. I think He answers my prayers because we have such an extremely close relationship. You have to establish a good, sound relationship with God first and except Jesus into your heard as your savior and once you do that, many blessings will come your way.


                                    

What is the Fruit of the Spirit?

The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. (Galatians 5:22-23)

Fruit is the delectable product of that which is created by the inner life of the vine. On the eve of the crucifixion, the Lord put it this way, "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of it's self, unless it abides in the vine, neither you can, unless you abide in me." (John:15-4)

Earlier on a Galilean hillside, He had said, "By their fruits you will know them." (Matthew 7:20)

The fruit we bear as believers is evidence of His abiding on the throne of our lives.

At first glance, there appears to be a grammatical error in this verse. Note carefully: "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace..." The truth is that the fruit of the spirit is love...Love, period. The nine fruits listed here are a cluster describing the evidence of the life of Christ within us. The fruit is singular here because it is the outcropping of one's life within. The fruit represents what we ARE rather than what we DO. Here we are reintroduced to the principle of BEING before DOING. What we do is determined by whom we really are.

The fruit described in Galatians is a triad: three clusters with three fruit each. They are reflected in a countenance, that is obvious, conduct that is orderly, and a character that is obedient.

A Countenance That is Obvious: Love, Joy, Peace.

Certain individuals seem to have a countenance of love, joy and peace. The word translated "love" here is Agape, God's own love. Agape is the highest level of love, the kind that always seeks the other's highest good. It is the same word we found back in the John 3:16 statement that "God so loved the world." It is no coincidence that Love is first on the list of the nine pieces of fruit here. It is the foundation of all the others.