Community

5 Minute Friday: Test

It’s been a while since I’ve written in this space, but what better way than to dive right in with 5 Minute Friday! If you are unaware, 5 Minute Friday is when women from all over all write about a one word prompt. It’s truly amazing the wide range of things one word can inspire. I hope you’ll hop over and check it out HERE.

5 Minute Friday: TEST

 

When I saw the word for today, I thought it was quite a coincidence. I was working on my Sunday school lesson this week. I’ve been teaching about women in the Bible, and I am also reading through the Gospels, personally, at the moment. I really had no idea which woman I should teach about in my upcoming Sunday school class and then I stumbled over the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15. I love it when God meets me in the crossroads of two studies like that!

I was familiar with the story, but as I read through it again – more slowly – I was struck by the uncharacteristic way Jesus responded to this woman. He was, dare I say it, kind of rude. First, the woman is crying out for mercy and He simply ignores her. This is so opposite of how He normally responded to people, that it made me stop and scratch my head.

Then, when the disciples ask Jesus to do something since this woman was following along, crying after them (and wasn’t that embarrassing?), Jesus tells them that He was sent to the lost sheep of Israel. In other words, this woman who was a Gentile, was not His intended audience.

Again, this made me stop and scratch my head. Jesus was the man who ate with tax collectors. He interacted with prostitutes and treated them with kindness and compassion. He spoke to the Samaritan woman (who was half Gentile  and half Jewish, which to some Jews at the time was worse than being wholly Gentile). Why would He deny this woman the help she so desperately needed for her daughter who was demon possessed.

The woman persisted, coming nearer and bowing down and worshiping Jesus, again asking Jesus to help her. Again, Jesus’ response is not what you would expect. He asks her if He should give His children’s bread to the dogs. To understand this comment, you have to get into the mindset of this time period. The Israelites or Jews were considered God’s children. Gentiles were generally despised by Jewish people and often referred to as dogs.

The woman responds with one of the best one-liners in the New Testament. “Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” Notice she doesn’t defend herself by saying, “How can you call me a dog when I’m coming to you for help?”

It’s only in verse 28 that Jesus seems more familiar to us. He responds by praising her great faith and granting her request to heal her daughter.

As read and reread this story, I was still a bit puzzled by Jesus’ response, so I turned to my favorite commentator Matthew Henry. He pointed out that Jesus was testing this woman’s faith, and the reason He did that is because He knew the outcome.

Well, call me slow, but that statement just hit me like the proverbial lightening bolt. I don’t know about you, but I often fail the tests that God brings my way. I don’t respond the way I should, or I out and out throw a royal tantrum.

It hit me rather forcefully that God tests us KNOWING THE OUTCOME. I mean, I should know this. I know God is sovereign and He knows the beginning and the end, but I am always sucked into the finite thinking that is my lot as a human.

God knows the outcomes of the tests He puts in my path which means He knows the ones I’ll fail. He sends them my way anyway. Because I know God works all things for my good, I can trust in the fact that even the tests I fail in some way work for my good.

I am reminded that it was only AFTER Peter failed so spectacularly by denying Christ 3x did he become such an effective leader in the church.

Maybe the whole purpose of tests is not just the “lesson” we are supposed to learn, but the overall idea of trusting in a good God that loves me and wants the best for me.

What test do feel like you are failing? Know that God already knows the outcome – whether passing or failing – and is working it for your good!

Blessings, Rosanne

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Community

Five Minute Friday – FIVE

If you’re not familiar with it, Five Minute Fridays are when women from all over come together over at Katie Motaung’s blog, Heading Home, and using the same one word prompt, write for five minutes. No editing, no censoring – just five minutes of free writing. Then they hit publish. You can join us HERE.

FIVE

 

I know we are all busy. Life is rushing by at a blurring pace. When you ask someone how they are, they tend to answer with a single word: busy. How would life be different, how would our relationships be different, how would the world be different, if we all decided to slow down? What if we all decided to practice the rule of five?

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What do I mean by the rule of five? The rule of five (to me, at least) means taking five minutes to focus and listen.

That means, when my husband comes home, I take five minutes to focus and listen when I ask, “How was your day?” Too many times, I have called that question from the kitchen or my office, and only listened with one ear. More embarrassingly, sometimes I’ve not even listened at all, leaving me clueless.

That means, when my student comes up to my desk and holds out the paper or test or quiz that holds a letter they didn’t want to see, I take the time to stop what I’m doing, to look them in the eye and engage for five minutes.

That means, when my friend is hurting or tired or overwhelmed, I take five minutes to pick up the phone or jot a note or look them in the eye and listen. Not just with half an ear. Not with my mind on other things. Not with half glances at my phone. But to focus and listen and hear.

That means, when my neighbor shows up at the door, I don’t rush her off because I’m busy. Instead, I step out onto the porch and give her my attention for five minutes.

That means, when my kids are struggling or needing attention or a listening ear, I give them five minutes. Not minutes divided between a task or the computer or the phone or whatever else is tugging at me. But five minutes to look them in the eye, to see them, to hear them.

We are all busy, but we all have five minutes to give freely and wholeheartedly to someone else. Imagine a world where people took five minutes and gave it away?

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Faith

Outcomes Don’t Really Matter

I know, saying “outcomes don’t really matter,” almost feels like heresy in this day and age of being productive and using various bars by which to measure our success .

The problem comes when that mindset gets transferred to our spiritual lives and our relationship with God. We end up only seeing obedience as a means to an end – a great outcome we can measure.

But that isn’t really how God works. If you don’t believe me, take a good look in the Bible. A lot of the obedience in the Bible was blessed, but that didn’t mean the outcome was necessarily immediate or what we’d consider outstanding. Sometimes those outcomes didn’t show up until after the person who obeyed was long dead.

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I started teaching about women in the Bible in my Sunday school class again, per their request. Since I had already taught on the matriarchs in Genesis, I thought it would be fun teach about the women in Moses life because they are pretty interesting.

The first two women who are mentioned in Moses’ story weren’t directly connected to Moses, but their story was intertwined in his. They were two midwives by the names of Shiphrah and Puah (yeah – glad those didn’t become popular). Basically, the Pharaoh of Egypt saw that the Israelites had started to multiply, and he became afraid of their great numbers. They hadn’t actually done anything threatening. There were just a whole lot of them. So, he made them all slaves. Seems reasonable.

They continued to reproduce at a rate that would make rabbits ashamed, so he decided to take it a step further. He told Shiphrah and Puah that when a baby boy was born to a Hebrew woman, she was to kill it. Basically, in ancient Egypt, the midwife was the first one to see the baby. If there was something wrong with it, they did something called exposing it. This was a nice euphemism for leaving the baby outside until it died. This is what Pharaoh was asking these midwives to do, but not with babies that had serious medical issues (not that that made it right, of course). He was asking them to do this with healthy baby boys.

In the Egyptian culture, children were cherished, and midwives were well-educated and held in high esteem. Pharaoh was asking these women to do something that would have seemed horrific to them. But he was Pharaoh. In that day, he was basically considered a god. They had every reason to fear him and do what he said.

However, Shiphrah and Puah didn’t do it because, it says they feared someone a whole lot bigger than Pharaoh. It says, “they feared God.”  I’m not sure how two Egyptian midwives came to fear God, but it definitely influenced their behavior. So much so, that they defied Pharaoh.

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As I got to the end of teaching this lesson, one of the women in my class brought up an interesting point. It says that both Shiphrah and Puah were blessed by God because of their obedience. It says He established households for them. Some commentaries I read made the point that Shiphrah and Puah saved the Hebrew households, so God, in turn, established households for them.

What’s really interesting, though, is what it doesn’t say. It doesn’t say that Pharaoh changed his mind. It doesn’t say that they were successful in stopping the murder of who knows how many baby boys.

Instead, Pharaoh commands his citizens to throw the babies into the Nile River if they discovered a Hebrew baby boy.

I’m sure the women did save some lives, but the outcome wasn’t really what any of us would consider a happy ending by any measuring stick. Baby boys were still being killed – this time by the citizens.

In fact, I’d say things probably got worse because Pharaoh was no longer trying to kill of the Hebrew baby boys discreetly. He had declared an open war on them.

Yet, God still blessed the obedience of Shiphrah and Puah. Interesting isn’t it?

How many times do I stray away from what God has specifically asked me to do because I am more worried about controlling the outcome (usually in an effort to make myself look better) than the actual obedience?

God blesses our obedience, but that doesn’t always show up in the outcomes.

What outcome in your life are you trying to control? What thing is God asking you to do and you are frustrated because even though you are obeying, you aren’t seeing the results you thought you would? I’d love to hear about it!

Blessings, Rosanne

 

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Reviews/Resources

The Triggers Study Guide is HERE!


I distinctly remember the day when my oldest son, then about 3 years old, protectively put his arm around his younger 1-year-old brother, and looked up at me with fear in his eyes. I, you know the person who was supposed to be the adult, was completely out of control. I’m sure if I had had a mirror it would have shown a screaming, red-face, wild-eyed woman who was, well, scary – especially if you were 3 years old.

Seeing my oldest son trying to protect his brother from my anger, I knew things had to change. Honestly, nobody was more stunned than I was that I had an anger problem. If you would have asked people who knew me at the time, they would have described me as easy-going and laid back.

So, imagine my surprise when the very little people who I loved more than life could push every button I never knew I had.

After that realization, I did make the effort to change, but I still messed up and I had to back and apologize so many times. It’s humbling how forgiving a child can be. I had to learn the hard way about the things that triggered that volcanic anger that had the ability to bruise and hurt my children’s hearts.

That’s why I wish I had this book when my kids were little. Written by Amber Lia and Wendy Speake, Triggers: Exchanging Angry Reactions for Gentle Biblical Responses  is the parenting manual to understanding your own triggers and how to replace them with better, Biblical responses. And now, the study guide is available!

** Disclaimer – I did receive a copy of this book to review, but I would never recommend a book if I didn’t find it valuable to my readers.**

This book is a great resource for moms who who want to model Biblical behavior but struggle with controlling their own responses.

I mean, we’ve all been there right? For whatever reason, our child is getting on very last nerve. Triggers addresses both external and internal triggers by highlighting 31 different behaviors and circumstances. These triggers include everything from backtalk and whining (can I get an amen?) to exhaustion and depression.

Each trigger has its own chapter that discusses the triggers and what God has to say about them, and then offers suggestions to help exchange the old, angry response with something that is gentler and more Biblically based. Each chapter ends with a prayer for moms to overcome that first, often angry, response.

While Amber and Wendy offer lots of empathy for overwhelmed moms, they also don’t pull punches about the long-term consequences of out-of-control parenting.

You can purchase this book here as a pdf, Kindle book or paperback. Just so you know, I am an affiliate for this book which means I get a percentage of the purchase price (it doesn’t cost you anything though!).

If we are honest, even though we would probably give our very lives for our children, we’ve all had days when our reactions were anything but loving. But the good news is that we don’t have to live in bondage to just reacting and the fallout of shame and guilt that brings.  Triggers: Exchanging Parents’ Angry Reactions for Gentle Biblical Responses is a great first step to getting intentional in the way we parent.

Blessings, Rosanne

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Family, Grief

The 5 Things Death Taught Me

Just a forewarning – this is going to be a pretty raw post. If you want pretty ideas tied up in pleasing bows, you might want to stop reading now.

Okay, now that you know that, I also want you to know that this is a hard post for me to write because I’m sort of hanging out a lot of my own shortcomings and mistakes. What I hope, though, is that by sharing my mistakes, you can avoid them. Regret can leave a pretty nasty taste in your mouth. Take it from someone who knows.

It’s interesting how death has a way of exposing what you really believe – not just in your head, but deep down at the daily difference level. When my brother died last summer, God used his death to expose those things I talked about and said I believed, yet I didn’t really do. He showed me, in the loving, yet exquisitely painful way that only God can, that I was a hypocrite.

Here are the five things God taught me since my brother’s death. My hope is that you won’t just read this, but that you’ll take action in the areas that call to you.

5 ThingsDeath Taught Me graphic

 

  • Don’t put things off. About a month before my brother’s death, I had this prompting that I should go see him -not just try to call him – but actually get in my car and drive over to visit him face to face. It was just after school ended, and I was kind of busy. So, I kept putting it off. I thought, “Oh, I’ll do that tomorrow or next week.” To be completely honest, I was really just putting off being uncomfortable. There were times when my brother would get upset for one reason or another and would pull away from our entire family. This was one of those times, and I hadn’t talked to him in a while. I had tried calling, but he never returned my calls. I wasn’t 100% sure how happy he’d be to see me, and even if he was, I knew the initial conversation might be awkward. And awkward makes me so uncomfortable. So, it was easy to make excuses to put it off for another day.Until, of course, there were no more days. During the first days after my brother’s death, that regret of not going to see him was like a knife twisting in my heart. “If only” played over and over in my head. So, if you get that feeling you should call someone or stop by, please just do it. Most regret isn’t over something you did, but over what you didn’t do.

 

  • Don’t let busyness keep you from important relationships. As a wife and a mom with two sons who were always in sports, my evenings were (and are) often busy. While I made the effort to give my brother my kids’ game schedules, after he died, I found myself wishing I had invited him over more often. I found myself wishing back evenings he could have joined us for a quick dinner, afternoons watching football on television. It is so easy to get caught up in our never ending daily to dos, but when we let our tasks trump the people in our lives, we waste the time we have with them. While I’ve always known in my head that we are not guaranteed tomorrow, I certainly did not live that way.  Your to do list will always be there, but that person won’t, necessarily. Take time for the people in your life and you won’t regret it.

 

  • Say the important things. When my brother died, I spent a lot of time wondering if he knew. Did he know how much I enjoyed the fact that he worked so hard to find the perfect gift even during the times when he didn’t have a lot of money to spend? Did he know what a kick I got out how he tried to match the  wrapping paper and tissue paper to that person’s gift? Did he know that I admired the way he volunteered to help other people even when he was struggling himself? Did he know that I would always be there for him and he could call me anytime for help or support? I knew I felt that way, but did he know I felt that way? I hope he did, but I don’t know for sure. That’s a tough pill to swallow now. Take the time to tell the people in your life you love them and what you love about them. Your words will never be wasted.

 

  • Don’t give up on people. When someone you love has a mental illness, it can be hard sometimes. Relationships aren’t always all sunshine and kittens. My brother was a great guy in so many ways, but he did have his issues. There were times over the years, when I felt like nothing would change. There were times when I stopped praying for him because it felt hopeless. Here’s the thing – nobody is ever a lost cause with Jesus. If He can offer salvation to a thief dying on a cross next to Him, He has a hope and a future and a plan for whoever that person is in your life who it seems will never change or get back on the path. You will never regret praying more for someone or continuing to believe God has a plan for their life.

 

  • Be present. Want to completely ruin the vibe in any gathering? Tell them your brother killed himself. An immediate pall will fall over the group. Nobody will look you in the eye, and nobody will know what to say. I get it. Standing in the face of someone else’s grief is hard and awkward and painful. We don’t know what to say and we can’t fix it, so we just don’t show up. Well, sure we go to the funeral. We walk through the line and shake their hand or hug them, maybe murmur, “Sorry for your loss.” But then we disappear, and we tell ourselves the comforting lie that the person looks and acts like they are okay, so they must be just fine. That if they needed something, they would ask. I’m not pointing fingers because I’ve done it too. But let’s at least stop lying to ourselves. The person is NOT okay. They don’t have the emotional or mental capacity to ask for what they need. Heck, they probably don’t even know what they need. I know I certainly didn’t. They are grieving and grieving is hard, but it’s infinitely harder when you feel like you are doing it alone. All that person really needs is your presence. No fancy words or miraculous solutions. Just you sitting with them in their grief. I learned how powerful presence – even if the presence comes in the form of a card or phone call – can be when you are hurting, and I’ll never think of it as doing nothing again. Don’t let awkwardness keep you from offering your presence to someone who is hurting.

It isn’t really feasible to live our lives like it is our last day on earth. If I did that my house would be declared a disaster area, and I’d probably weigh about 300 pounds. But we can live our lives so we don’t have regrets.

What do you need to change so you can live a life of no regrets? I’d love to hear about it!

Blessings, Rosanne

 

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Faith, Grief

One Year Later – A Reflection God’s Faithfulness

It’s been a year. A year since I found out my brother was gone, not just from my world for a while, but from this life forever. (You can read my brother’s eulogy HERE).

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As I’ve walked this path of grief for 12 months, there have been the expected moments of deep pain. There was that helpless, hopeless moment when the reality of my brother’s loss really hit me, of truly knowing he wasn’t coming back. He wasn’t just on a trip or away for a while. He was really gone – forever.  The finality of that realization is a grief in itself.

There have been moments of deep longing – longing to share my life with my brother. To share my oldest son’s senior year, to share how special it was to see my oldest and youngest play basketball on the same court while their dad coached them; to share Brock giving his valedictorian speech.

There have been moments I have felt my brother’s absence keenly. His absence from the audience when Brody performed in his first play. His absence when he wasn’t there to proclaim in that way only my brother could, how AWESOME it was when Brody won a few art competitions this past year. I knew how much Scott would have enjoyed those moments and it was hard to know he missed them.

The hard truth is my life is moving on and my brother isn’t a part of it.

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While he has at times been absent from our lives, now that absence is permanent and final. (I wrote about moving on and all that entails HERE).

That makes me both sad and a little mad sometimes.

Suicide (and murder for that matter) are never God’s will. When someone dies of cancer or a heart attack or a car accident, there isn’t a choice. When someone takes their own life (or someone takes it for them), that is a choice. And while I could argue that my brother’s mental illness made that less of a choice than some people think, it still hurts. It hurts that we weren’t enough to keep him tethered here.

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But with the pain and the hurt and the change has also come moments of joy and of healing. I know – that sounds weird doesn’t it?

While I would never have wanted my brother to kill himself and his death has been one of the hardest things I’ve experienced, in walking through the grief from that tragic event I have experienced God’s presence in a way I never have before.

Sure, I knew God never leaves us and walks with us always. Heck, I even believed it quite sincerely. I even had that poem “Footsteps” on my bedroom wall when I was growing up.

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But believing God will be there when we walk through the deepest valley is different than actually walking through that valley with Him. 

God’s tenderness, His comfort, His love were never more real and tangible to me than in the weeks and months after my brother’s death.

And with that experience came the realization that if God cared that much for me, how much more had He and still was, caring for my brother?

Suicide seems like such a lonely, desperate thing, but knowing that God was there – even in my brother’s darkest moment – has brought me so much comfort and healing.

God has also brought me healing by allowing me to use what I’ve been through to comfort others, too. The article I wrote about suicide prevention held an urgency, a realness, that it probably wouldn’t have if I had written this before my brother’s death.

Being able to hold someone’s hands, look them deep in the eye and assure them of God’s love and presence no matter what – not because of some head knowledge but because of actual experience – that is healing to me.

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Because here’s the thing, if God can use my brother’s death to help others, then the enemy doesn’t win. Even though my brother is gone, God can still use his life and death for a greater purpose. What the enemy meant as evil and the end, God continues to use for good and life.

If I’ve learned anything during this past year, it is that God is able to redeem anything – even the unthinkably horrible like suicide. God truly can bring beauty from ashes, and that stands as a testament to the faithful, loving God that I serve.

To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified. ~ Isaiah 61:3

Blessings, Rosanne

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Community

5 Minute Friday: HELP

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve participated in 5 Minute Fridays since I was on vacation for a few weeks, but I’m so glad to be back. If you don’t know, 5 Minute Fridays is when women from across the country (and probably globe) write for five minutes on one word. We all link up over at Kate Motaung’s blog, Heading Home. Check it out HERE.

Today’s word is HELP.

I could talk about a lot of different things when it comes to the word help, but lately God has been teaching me something I didn’t actually want to learn.

Not everyone we want to help wants to be helped. I know – bummer isn’t it? It seems like your good intentions should be enough to help someone over the edge. Your desire to make it better or to give someone a hand up should be enough.

But the sad, hard truth is: you can’t help everyone. Some people will refuse your help, and when we insist on continuing to offer it, sometimes, I think it can be a pride thing.

It doesn’t feel good when someone throws your good intentions, your sincere care back in your face. It makes me feel kind of helpless (no pun intended!), and if I’m really honest, a bit angry. After all, here I am going out of my way for you and you aren’t even grateful for it.

And there’s the rub – when we desire to help others, I think it’s really important to identify our WHY in all of that because if we don’t, we can end up going down a rabbit hole of our own making.

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Do we want to help out of guilt?

Do we want to help out of a sense of we should?

Do we want to help to make ourselves look better?

Do we want to help because by helping we give weight to a certain identity we want others to see in us or we want to see in ourselves?

Do we want to help because it someone how makes life more comfortable or at least less uncomfortable for us?

Here’s the thing – Jesus came to this world as the ultimate helper. And people reject His help, so why do I think my offers of help will be 100% successful?

God has to deal with a lot of rejection, and I’m sure He is looking at us wishing we’d accept His help instead of always trying to do everything ourselves, in our own strength.

At the end of the day, by faith I offer my help. In the same way, the outcome has to be left in God’s hands. Sometimes, trying harder isn’t actually what God wants from us. I don’t like to think of that as giving up but in giving over.

How about you? Have you had your help rejected? How did you handle that? I’d love to hear about it!

Blessings, Rosanne

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Community

Fear is NOT From God

Spirit of fear

I have been on vacation the last two weeks. In fact, I hadn’t even planned on blogging at all over those two weeks, but as things sort of imploded around our country, I felt compelled to write about it. You can read that post HERE.

In that post, I talked about how FEAR plays such a big role in the racial issues that keep boiling over. As I’ve meditated on what fear is and how the enemy uses it to distract us and shut us down and turn us against each other, the verse in 2 Timothy keeps coming to my mind.

“For God has not  given us a spirit of timidity (or fear), but of power and love and discipline.” 2 Timothy 1:7

The fear that is choking our country is NOT from God. That fear is from the enemy because he wants to kill and destroy.  Instead, what God gives us is power, love and discipline.

The word power is from the Greek word dynamis (also the root of dynamite) which means strength or ability.

The word love is from the Greek word agape which means love feasts or benevolence or charity. (personally, my favorite is love feasts).

The word discipline is from the Greek word sophronismos which means moderation or self-control.

I don’t know about you, but I think the world could use a little more strength and love and self-control.

It would be so easy right now to feel helpless and hopeless. It would be easy to feel like the answers are too hard or too complicated. It would be easy to be overwhelmed by the violence and death, to drown in the waves of grief and hate and rage that seem to be all around us.

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But that isn’t truth. If we are God’s children,  He tells us that HE has equipped us to to do what we can’t in our own strength. He has equipped us to combat fear at its root.

We can’t do that, though, if we allow fear to win.

This morning I was reading Psalms 118, and a few verses stood out to me.

Oh let those who fear the LORD say,
“His lovingkindness is everlasting.”

From my distress I called upon the LORD;
The LORD answered me and set me in a large place.

The LORD is for me; I will not fear;
What can man do to me?

The LORD is for me among those who help me;
Therefore I will look with satisfaction on those who hate me.

It is better to take refuge in the LORD
Than to trust in man.

It is better to take refuge in the LORD
Than to trust in princes.

What stood out so clearly to me in these verses is that who and what we put our trust in is the key to defeating fear. It would be so easy to put our trust in so many other things: politicians and movements and protests and hashtags, even our own anger. But our true refuge in any crisis is God, and I can’t help but think that the answers start there too.

What about you? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Blessings, Rosanne

 

 

 

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Faith

The Joy of Worship

The other day, I was feeling a bit rumpled in my spirit. (I wrote about it HERE). I wrote about how God met me where I was at and what a beautiful thing that was.

I also realized something else that morning – something that was stealing my joy. The thing is, this spring has been overwhelmingly busy. A lot of the things that made me busy were good things. Things like my son’s senior year winding up and him getting some awards and recognition for his hard work (which greatly embarrassed him but had me beaming from ear to ear). Things like speaking at Converge, a teen conference that had almost 1,000 attendees (the conference, not my class!). Things like surprising my husband for his 50th birthday (and pulling it off!) and celebrating my son’s graduation with a big party.

I will bless the LordHis praise will continually be in my mouth

All good things, but it’s been kind of exhausting, all the things. And because I’ve been so busy, I’ve kind of short changed my time with God more mornings than I’d like to admit. I usually try to spend an hour each morning, but over the past six weeks or so, that time has been cut short. My prayers have been sort of to the point – not a lot of time for “extras” like worship and thanksgiving, or at least not more than cursory nods to those things.

So, the other morning, I decided despite the many needs of the people I know, that I was going to spend my time worshiping and thanking God. I wasn’t going to bring Him my laundry list of needs. I was just going to focus on His greatness.

And you know what happened? It transformed my day. The cup of joy that had run a bit dry, overflowed again. My world and circumstances hadn’t changed. There were still a lot of needs – real ones – all around me,  but what had changed was my perspective.

That’s the thing – worship brings joy into our life. A friend of mine who attends my Sunday school class, shared her word for the year. It was Praise. She said she chose praise because the Bible tells us that God inhabits the praise of His people and she wanted more of God’s presence.

Happy little girl
Happy little girl

In the Psalms, David was always pretty raw about his feelings and emotions. Often a Psalm would start with all of his troubles and some of them were pretty serious, but then David would purposely start to praise God. By the end of the Psalm, his perspective had changed.

That’s what worship and praise does. Yes, we are praising God and we are worshiping Him. We are doing it FOR and TO God, but I love how God blesses us even in something that isn’t supposed to be about us at all.

We pour out our praise to God like an offering, and He splashes joy back on us.

I’m not sure how I forgot this, but what really transformed my prayer life was incorporating worship and praise into my personal quiet time. I grew up in church, but for some reason, worship to me was the songs we sang between the opening prayer and the sermon. When I started to worship on my own, it was life giving and transforming.

If you are new to personal praise and worship, you might feel a bit awkward. I know I did. I mean, it’s not like God doesn’t know who He is. But please don’t let awkwardness keep you from spending time every day worshiping God – even if you can’t sing.

Here are five ways to worship individually besides singing along to worship songs.

  1. Read a Psalm to God, substituting personal pronouns. For instance, if you are reading Psalms 34:1, it says, “I will bless the Lord at all times, His praise shall continually be in my mouth.” You can turn that into personal worship by saying, “I will bless You at all times; Your praise will always be in my mouth.” It gets easier with practice.
  2. List God’s attributes out loud. A lot of times, I will take the alphabet and list one of God’s attributes for each letter. You do have to get a bit creative with letters like x.
  3. List God’s promises out loud. I write down the verses with promises on a 3×5 card, and then I personalize it by saying the promise and then praising God for the ways He has fulfilled it in my life. I always felt kind of weird reminding God of all the good stuff about Him, until I realized that it’s more about reminding me of who God is not reminding Him who He is.
  4. Write out a praise poem. I like to write my worship poems in shapes, but that’s just me. Some people color code them or draw doodles or just write them out. The nice thing about writing something out like that is you can look at it again and be reminded of how awesome God is.
  5. Read hymns out loud. A lot of hymns have some great theology about who God is and what He does for us. For me, reading something familiar out loud makes the words sink in a bit more than when I sing them.

Don’t just limit yourself to these suggestions. Be creative. God certainly is and He is pleased when we worship and praise Him.

What is your favorite way to worship God? I’d love to hear about it!

Blessings, Rosanne

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5 Minute Fridays: REST

Another week has gone by, and it’s time for 5 Minute Fridays again. If you aren’t familiar, 5 Minute Fridays are when women from all over write about one word for five minutes – no editing, no second-guessing – before they hit publish. Come check it out HERE.

Today’s word is REST.

The word rest seems sort of serendipitous today, as I come off a week of feeling rumpled in spirit (you can read about how God met me in all my wrinkled messiness HERE) and sort of blah. I’ve had a serious lack of focus and clarity, and the desire to start my vacation early even though I still have quite a bit of work to get done before I can officially be “off.”

I am deeply aware this week of my need for rest, but it’s not just rest for my body. Don’t get me wrong, if I have to operate on much less than 8 hours for more than a day or two, I get VERY grouchy (just ask my family!). But more than physical rest, I need mental, emotional and spiritual rest.

Have you been there? That feeling like no matter how much you try to relax, you just end up feeling restless? Here’s the thing, as I was praying and walking today, God showed me that one of the reasons I feel SO weary at the moment is that I have allowed myself to be overloaded and that I have failed to be still, to be unplugged and quiet.

We live in an age where we have information coming at us from every direction ALL. THE. TIME. It’s easy for our minds to be like gerbils running in a wheel from the time we get up in the morning until we close our eyes and try to go to sleep.

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Physical rest is important, but it doesn’t matter how many hours of sleep you get, if your mind is never allowed to reset from the information overload, you will never feel rested. Worse, you’ll always feel this vague sense of stress.

It became very clear to me on my walk today that I have been scrambling around, distracted by fractured goals with no clear sense of where I’m going and, more importantly, why. I have heaped a mountain of meaningless tasks on my plate without stopping long enough to ask myself why they are on my plate to begin with.

For the past couple weeks, I’ve struggled with what to write on this blog. I’ve sat and stared at the screen many mornings and wondered what in the world I had to share that would help anyone when I felt so depleted myself.

How can you give water to the thirsty when your cup is dry?

It was like God said to me as He did to Martha, “Rosanne, Rosanne, you are busy with many things.” All this time, rest has been waiting for me at the feet of Jesus. I just need to take those moments to stop, to be still, to take the time to fill my cup again.

How do you find rest when you are weary? I’d love to hear about it!

Blessings, Rosanne

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