Kara's Wise Words

Treat yourself to the truth and spend a few minutes with Kara.
(Link below) So glad I did. A word fitly and beautifully spoken. Penetrating.
The pearl in the oyster. Fruit worth picking. Golden apples in a silver picture frame.

Thanks, Kara!

Kat

http://karashepherd.blogspot.com/2012/02/real-vows.html

Sacred Fields

This is a wonderful posting John did some time ago based on a sermon he offered. Lately we (John and I) have been talking about the land and territory God has given to each of us. How He has enriched it and planned for its abundance. How God is not the only one who is preparing seed for our field and how cautious we need to be to insure that only sacred hands are welcome to broadcast seed onto precious soil.


I offer it as a repost for any who need to embrace the idea of a lengthened growing season in a garden of riches.

Enjoy.

Kat

http://iamcallingshotgun.blogspot.com/2010/11/gennesaret-garden-of-riches.html

A Link To Love Stories by Kim

I am crazy about love stories. The real kind. Not the Hollywood variety where genuine character and tenderness are left on the cutting room floor.

There are lists I could offer of favorite books and movies. John, who is indulgent of my penchant for happy endings could quote those lists from memory. He had not a clue who Jane Austin was before we were married but she is family now. Most of us lovers of love stories love the same stories. The same plus one- our own love story.

My friend and fellow love-chef, Kimberly Lorentzen, a woman who knows about love's goodness and God's goodness, has posted a thought as good as a hand dipped, dark chocolate apricot.

Have one at Ambushed by God.

Blessings.

Kat

P.S. Best fun love story suggestion (no, not Sweet Home Alabama...but that one is good) try Last of the Dogmen. It has mystery, history, scenery; the most sincere, feel it in the balls of your feet, long, rewind it and watch it again kiss, and a dog. It is a man's man chick flick he will like as well.

The Man In The Moon Is A Woman

Rise

The man in the moon is a woman
and she followed me home tonight
over the mountains, through the spruce
kissing the tip of the highest bare cottonwood,
teasing me out into the cold.
She is the night ruler, my celestial sister,
called to display the hand that made her,
to sing to waves and tides and move the oceans
with her sky dance.
All but the most persistent stars hide from her strength
and wait upon her half closed eye to show their faces.
She has no fire of her own save that which fuels lover's hearts.
She goes or stays as He delights this One who made moon and man
and has all in His keeping.
It is for the Blessed One she shines and bids me do the same
even in the darkest time
and to rise.

Kat


At midnight I will rise to give thanks...Psalm 119:62


To all those gallant women I know who are pushing back against something dark. Christ put a light in you to rule that night and to get Him glory.


Valley of the Moon, Anchorage, Alaska

Here Begins A New Life

In that book which is
My memory...
On the first page
That is the chapter when
I first met you
Appear the words...
Here begins a new life.

La Vita Nuova by Dante Alighieri


I first met John, or the promise of him, when I was in the seventh grade. I was living in Virginia and he in New York. We had never set eyes on one another. It was Christmas Eve and I was adding a few last gifts under the tree. There was an ornament that spun around when hung over a tree light and it caught my eye. As I watched it a voice from my prayer life came. A voice I have been hearing since childhood. "You will marry an artist." Like Mary, I hid it in my heart and moved on.

Six years and 290 miles later a full blooded Sicilian-Italian walked up to this Irish girl at the university in Ohio and asked me to dance. He was there pursuing a music degree and was first chair clarinet in the orchestra. I had not been praying for a musician. No woman in her right mind would. I had been praying for a friend. That is what I found that long ago night. I had a sense of recognition and I knew this was special. I felt places in me that were frozen begin to thaw. Tight buds opening. Hard edges softening.

That winter evening changed my life. A new and different life began for me that Thursday, February 5th, in 1970 at 8:00 PM EST, when I looked into blue-green eyes and said, "Yes." John led me to the dance floor and into deep water.

We were engaged on Christmas Eve 1972 and married February 10, 1973. John and I courted for three years and still married as strangers.

In truth, the both of us came with so much baggage Fed-EX should have been chartered to drive us from the church instead of a limo. We had romance and "stuff." We loved eachother deeply but sometimes we wounded eachother. We had passive aggression and self protection, the silent treatment and offenses that claimed immortality as well as everyday differences.

I was a nurse-germaphobe and he gave the parakeet a bath in my best pasta pan. I put his elegant European sweaters in the dryer and he washed my white nursing uniforms with his burgundy socks. I was a public speaker and he would rather play for a thousand people than return a purchase. I asked for pearls our first Christmas. He bought me tools. I spent. He saved. Who were these people who thought they were us?

They were the lovers from a Thursday dance who somehow kept dancing through it all. They were lovers who took scripture at its word and who bent a knee rather than break a covenant. We sometimes had the worst moments but somehow chose the better. We did our married work and Christ did His. The choice was always there and we kept choosing love and giving grace. We still do.

We learned over the 39 years of our married life that just as our first fated meeting was the beginning of a new life for us, so was each conflict, argument and problem that followed. We had a choice. New life or old. A new beginning or...what?

When I would carve my anger on the soft, unguarded surface of John's heart and he would forgive me anyway, "Here begins a new life." When he would breech my defenses and wound me and I would allow God to step in, "Here begins a new life." Every day, new life. Every year, new life. Every challenge, new life. Life! It made us perfect for eachother.

That new life was the making of our now old love. Love that is graceful, easily entreated and trustworthy. Love that is kind. Love that has been there and back and will see Eternity complete. Love that has come full circle and has transformed two people, who could hardly have grasp what it was they promised to each other 39 years ago, into us. Two who found love's deep and forever places.

We are a Christ-matched pair of lovers who will one day step through a single, carved, translucent, pearl gate. I like to think the carving above that gate will proclaim in every tongue what our own souls will have embraced throughout a lifetime together, "Here begins a new life."

You've captured my heart, dear friend. You looked at me, and I fell in love. Song of Solomon Chapter 4 (MSG)


Happy Anniversary, Sweet Husband. You remain the Darling of My Soul. We got to have love and history.-Kathy

http://mybrightestdiamond.bandcamp.com/track/escape-routes

No Occasion Necessary

A friend loves at all times...Proverbs 17:17

I have just unwrapped a chocolate heart and it is delighting my taste buds. It is almost as much of a delight as the heart from which it was given. This candy was no only child. There was also honey and a book and artwork.* A lingering Christmas or the promise of Valentine's? You might think so, but better.

Among friends there is no occasion necessary. Generosity and encouragement are as commonplace as they are welcome. That is what makes one friend who has lent a favorite dress to another say, "You need to keep that. It looks stunning on you." It prompts one friend shopping alone to buy two of something because friends are always out and about with you even when they are not.

Friends are attracted to cards, books, music, scriptures and tokens that will bless, brighten and inspire their friends. Birthdays come early or every day. Christmas is seldom just a winter holiday and those offerings are always treasured.

Several years ago our house was burglarized while we were working. What a mess the thieves made of the place. I walked in the front door to overturned chairs, curtains off the rod and bedding dragged out into the hall. Failing to grasp the situation, I made my face into a hard scowl and yelled, "Bad dog!" Then I noticed the television was missing.

My lovey Italian jewelry box was also gone from my dresser. All that remained was the dustless rectangle where it had been. I was not happy. Why, because all my jewelry was gone? Nope. That box contained handmade cards from friends. Special scriptures God had spoken to someone just for me. Dried flowers from long ago apologies. Hand painted ornaments from artist friends. Love letters from a husband who is crazy about me and good at putting it into words. Real, genuine heart-life stuff, some from special occasions and others because I was the occasion.

That was a genuine loss but friends and lovers being what they are, all that goodness has been replaced ten times over. We are such fortunate people in this house. Our friends stir up our feelings and our giftings. They encourage us to live more and love more and be more. Friends keep us going. We are full.

Does someone in your life needs a care package? Maybe has an empty jewelry box that needs to be filled? Needs a Rhema word? A card? A love note? A praise? An inspiration? An encouragement in gifts and life? A ring from your finger? Something to keep or pass on? Some honey?

No occasion necessary.


How many times has God poured out His goodness upon us just because He could?


And let us consider and give attentive, continuous care to watching over one another, studying how we may stir up (stimulate and incite) to love and helpful deeds and noble activities...Hebrews 10:24 (AMP)

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*To a special six year old friend and painter, thank you, Asa.

Write Down The Revelation and Make It Plain

(A re-posting from an earlier year that has been re-visiting my heart. Please agree with me in prayer for the declarations at the end of the posting.)

Some time ago a number of us who are in an email group were stirring one another up to believe God for His promises. Promises made to us in His mighty word as well as promises made by personal revelation.

There was a thought Jan Collins contributed that was sage advice and I share it now. May it cause you to stand and believe for all The Father has planned for you.

Jan wrote:

"The Lord just spoke to me about our declarations. He loves it that we are declaring and speaking aloud because our words carry unbelievable power...be sure you search out the scriptures that go with what you are declaring. His Word carries the anointing that we need to give us the momentum to push these things through to fruition.

We are who God says we are.
We can possess what God says we can have.
We can do what God says we can do.

What does the Word say about your situation?
Find out and then begin to speak it out.
Quote the scriptures you are standing on aloud.
Make them personal and insert your name.
What has God spoken to you?

Believe what God says and start to speak it out along with the scripture. God wants to take us into new territory. He wants us to go places where we have never been and see things in the Spirit we have never seen. He wants us to move heavily in the anointing with miracles, signs and wonders following. He wants us to change nations and people's destinies. He wants us to be the devil's worst nightmare.

2 Cor 4:13 We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak."


Special thanks to Jan for her wisdom and friendship. kl

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I (Kathy speaking now) discovered in nursing school that the more of your senses you involve in the learning process the more indelibly the information is imprinted. When you read the scriptures aloud, when you openly declare God's faithfulness and His promises to you, you are seeing, speaking and hearing. When you journal it you are utilizing four senses. There is a part of your brain that listens to the unfiltered word and files it away uncontested. There is also a part that will review and weigh it but that unfiltered bit is in there for good. (Consider this as one of the reasons the scriptures warns us to set no unclean thing before our eyes.)

There are promises God has made to me, hopes I have had that I speak, sing (yes, I know singing is so not my gift but God has not turned down the volume on me) and even dance out before Him. Sometimes I draw out those promises, paint them, make cards out of them and mail them to friends as a witness. We were meant to live the Word and the Word was meant to live in us to the full. That Word will seek out our giftednedness as a means of expression.

What would you stand and declare today?
What would that look like as a dance of faith?
What work of grace in your life might that jump start?


Habakkuk 2
1 I will stand at my watch
and station myself on the ramparts;
I will look to see what he will say to me,
and what answer I am to give to this complaint.

The LORD's Answer
2 Then the LORD replied:
"Write down the revelation
and make it plain on tablets
so that a herald may run with it.
3 For the revelation awaits an appointed time;
it speaks of the end
and will not prove false.
Though it linger, wait for it;
it will certainly come and will not delay.
LORD,

You told me time and accomplishment are in your hand and surely you will not withhold what you have promised and fore-sworn to each of us in your word. I stand upon the wall and recount within your hearing that these people have loved you more than another, "more than the gods of this present world," more than any hope of gain. They have loved you for yourself. Have loved your heart.

Now therefore, Lord, answer their declarations according to the revelation you have given to each, in harmony with your scriptures, according to their great names which you have kept hidden but which when spoken by you cause our souls to hear and believe. You who are the confidence of all the earth have put within our grasp the keys to liberate and to make fast. We release belief and blessing and generosity. We bind unbelief and insecurity and competition.

We are in agreement that the King of Glory will come in and be known of us.

We are in agreement that the Holy Spirit will bring gifts worthy of a Warrior or Warrior-Bride.

We are in agreement that our children will inherit to 1000 generations.

We are in agreement that the enemy of our souls has been defeated by the cross and his cause is without appeal or advocate.

We are in agreement that we have died to this present world and are raised with Christ who sits at the right and power hand of the Father.

We are agreed that all honor, glory and power has been given to Jesus and that He has given us His Name.

We have confidence in the inspiration we have received from you, our God, and in your promises revealed in your word, even for those things that seem impossible and hopelessly lost or lingering.

We wait for it more than the watchman waits for the morning, for it will surely come and will not delay!

For we have seen and have read of the power in a people who agree with each other in your Spirit. We have read of the surety of a thing when the Lord himself makes a Declaration.

Lord, your Declarations birthed the Heavens and filled the oceans. May you birth in us that which begins and does not end and which fills this present day with your Glory!

Amen.

Then Haggai, the LORD's messenger, gave this message of the LORD to the people:
"I am with you," declares the LORD...So the LORD stirred up the spirit...of the whole remnant of the people. They came and began to work on the house of the LORD Almighty, their God.
......."WE ALSO BELIEVE AND THEREFORE SPEAK!"