Higher Grounds: August 2014

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

As far as my eyes can see......

For so long now I’ve honestly been scared that God would call me to the mission field after Bill and I retired. Doesn’t that sound so crazy? This coming from the one that absolutely loves adventure, traveling and meeting people.

So why wouldn’t I want to go into the mission field? The reason is that I enjoy so much of what surrounds me right here where I am at including our home, our small town, and our church home. I become content and comfortable fairly easily. I very seldom go shopping or desire to change things in my home or my wardrobe. Yet if someone decides to bless me, I don’t care how big or how small, I am absolutely overjoyed to be the receiver as I get the biggest kick out of blessing others.

I hope you can sense from the past several Higher Grounds that God is really doing a number inside of my heart. I’ve been spending good quality time with Him and He is showing me where my thinking has been wrong in many different areas and this includes the mission field. As I seek to place Him first in my daily life and converse with Him through out my day I am learning so much. I pray that I will not be found loosing my zeal to learn and grow. That my heart will never get to the point that it stops loving Jesus and others.

In this life we simply get hurt. We just do! Often times this causes people to become hardened and secluding themselves is not the answer. My sweet friend, Becky has shared something with me several times this summer and it really means so much. “You have to put your heart out there to love – some people will trample it but if we aren’t vulnerable we’ll loose out.” TRUE TRUE TRUE! So I’m choosing to put my heart out there because I really don’t want to loose out!

God is equipping me to be a missionary right here in my own back yard!

By being a woman that desires to fear God and love my Man like there is no tomorrow
To be available to our children and grandchildren
Working with our youth group
Attending Super Summer
To be a light to my little Tiger Friend
Mentoring
Opening our home to others
Reconnecting with friends
Writing Higher Grounds and the testimony of what God is doing in my life currently
Becoming better at helping others, quick to assist anyone in need, showing no favoritism

Please, this is to not be used as a comparison, legalism, or look at her, or that I am bragging, as it is not! I have so far to go and I really want to stretch not only myself but perhaps you, my friend and reader as well. How about you? Have you been allowing God to use you, right where you are at? This has been on my mind for quite some time and awhile back I walked into church one morning and found this on our platform and I felt like God was confirming to me that I had no need of fearing the Mission Field. He had my back, and He wasn’t calling me to

India

, Africa, South America, but He was calling me to right here where I’m at as far as my eyes can see!

Heavenly Father, Your love amazes me! You always know how to get my attention and how to guide me ever so gently into Your truth and what You have for me and my life in my current season. Lord, may I be quick to assist those that are in need. May I not be found just sitting on my duff, but instead praying, getting my hands a tad dirty and my heart filled because I was willing to be Your servant. I love You Lord Jesus and may I love Your people!

Stepping up to the plate with J.O.Y. (Jesus, Others, Yourself),

Yolanda

Sunday, August 24, 2014

It's time to quit being a fake!

This summer has truly been very interesting for me in a very personal way. I began with knowing that I wanted to allow God to change me once again and the area that I really wanted Him to get into my business was in my marriage. Honestly, I want Him to get into ALL of my business, but I felt it was time to really devote myself to my Mr.

Bill is absolutely a wonderful husband and the very best husband for me! He is so patient with me, he is kind, and he is extremely attentive and giving. But in all honesty, I wasn’t so sure he could so those things back about me. I truly do desire to be patient with him, to be kind, extremely attentive and giving but I know in all honesty that I lack and have room for improvement. I desire to be a wonderful wife but most importantly to be the very best wife for Bill.

I set about knowing that the first thing I needed to do was write Proverbs 31:10-31 upon my heart and that it needed to be verbiage that would truly penetrate my heart. So after reading it from a couple of different versions I set about memorizing this passage of scripture from The Message. I then also began working through a study totally on my own dealing with being a better wife and loving my husband well. Then I found another study to do with a friend in a discipling atmosphere as a Titus 2:4-5 woman. Not that I am perfect, not that I have arrived, but one coming alongside desiring to be a better wife.

To be a better wife I knew that I also needed to spend time in James as there is so much wisdom in this little book. For several years now I generally read a chapter of Proverbs each day for the wisdom in how to do life this side of heaven. Please do not think that I have it all together, because I simply do not! I am a mess! But because of God and allowing Him to begin changing me ever since I surrendered my heart in November of 1999, I no longer am who I used to be! So back to James and trying to tie this all together without loosing you.

Faith and Deeds in James 2:14-26 really has been hitting me right where I needed to be hit! I'm not always the best at helping others and I tend to count the cost or I grumble and complain. Perhaps I’m not the only one, and you also aren’t so hot at showing your faith by the deeds you do? James is very explicit that it takes both faith and deeds...which got me to thinking about the Proverbs 31 woman that in vs. 20 she is about helping others. Not only does she help others, but from The Message it says she is QUICK TO ASSIST.

When I am quick to assist, with out grumbling and complaining and no longer counting the cost but stepping up to the plate and doing what ever simply because I love Jesus then my heart it right. Am I not only helping others as well as SHOWING my faith to the world? That is what you and I need to be doing as Believer's LIVING OUT LOUD our faith to our corner of the world. I want God to truly be able to call me His friend! I want to be able to some day hear God say, Yolanda, thank you for allowing Me to get into your business and providing for Bill the very best wife ever for him that I knew you could be!

I want to close by sharing from my study in James as this hit me several weeks ago concerning this particular passage in James. "You hypocrite, you cover up your penurious, stingy heart and clamp down your fist upon your purse by offering prayers instead of clothing and pious talk instead of food. Listen! That is what is wrong today....The world wants action, not words, and many a cheap, stingy heart is camouflaged under pious cant and hollow prayer. The world is not interested in our prayers. It wants evidence." Elizabeth George

This was reaffirmed today in our service as Pastor Jon stated something along the lines of serving is not staying in our chairs here in the sanctuary. We honestly have to rise to the challenge he gave us the first part of January to reach up, reach in and then reach out. I say this all the time and if you’ve spent any time with me you hear this out of my lips often. I have to reach up, reach in and reach out! This impacted me so much in 2014.

Dear Heavenly Father, I am so grateful that You did not leave me like I was when I came to You all those years ago. That You have tenderly pruned me and molded me and may I never quit being teachable. That I will always hunger and have a desire for Your Word and the ability to hide it in my heart to be able to apply it to my daily life. Father God, I ask that I and those in my circle would quit being fake about following you. That our faith and deeds would match and be pleasing in Your sight.

I am continuing to dig deeper into James and desiring to be the best wife in the whole world for my Mr. here at Higher Grounds. With love, Yolanda

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

A Camp "High"

As Super Summer was coming to an end one of Pastor Mike’s closing remarks was that the “Camp High” could be taken home with us but it was truly up to each individual to keep that fanned to flame within them. How do you go about doing that? He shared to be determined!

I got to thinking about how I can become more focused and what I would need to do to accomplish keeping my faith where it needs to be. You and I have to be determined to shut the world out at times and make Jesus a priority. To disconnect for a set amount of time from anything that keeps me away from being able to get alone, quiet and still before God. That I/we need to make our time with Him quality as He desires us to invest in Him.

To be hungry for God’s truths and His Word and I couldn’t help but to call to mind Psalm 119:131 that I had read earlier in the morning in my own quiet/devotion time with God, it reads, "I open my mouth and pant, longing for your commands.” I had also written down in my journal from my quiet time to share with the students vs. 133 that generally says to not let sin rule over me, vs. 134 to be redeemed from the oppression of men (peers) and how I felt this was vital to in turn have victory over “how” we had come to camp and that we didn’t have to return home in the same fashion. If we would become determined and soak ourselves with truth, we could over come and continue becoming changed men and women of God.

I had been working through the book of Psalms for July and August and as I camped on Psalm 126:1-3 it caused me to reflect upon the “Camp High”.

“When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. Then it was said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’ The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.”

Father, As You continue restoring us, Your sons and daughters that are no longer orphans, having returned us from Super Summer to our homes in Ulysses may You increase our dreams to be outside of the box. That our mouths would be filled with laughter and our mouths sing joyfully of all that You’ve done within us and for us. Father, may we continue allowing You to change us so we wouldn’t return here the same as when we left. Thank You Jesus, Amen.

Soaring because of what God has done,

Yolanda at Higher Grounds

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Pep Talks

Pastor Mike spoke such an amazing word to us one evening that truly hit my heart at dead center. I so often fall into the pit of re-thinking and hashing over and over in my mind past sins. I can be so hard on myself and I have such remorse over things that I did especially as a teenager, college student and as a young adult. All before Jesus became a focal point in my life. In all honesty, these things that flood my mind at times absolutely haunt me. I know that I know that God has forgiven me and I truly grasp that He has removed my sins as far as the east is from the west. (Psalm 103:12) I trust and believe 100% of God’s Word, I’m all in!

The problem for me is just deep down remorse and how God didn’t give us a hard drive for our memory. Things simply are not erased or deleted from our minds when we surrender and begin to live a life of love for Jesus and others. Pastor Mike taught from Romans 7:21-8:2 and I encourage you to look this up for yourselves, it is powerful! You see, I’ve always had a heart that wants to do good but yet I would often choose doing the evil things. My actions hurt others immensely, they hurt me and they hurt the heart of God. Those very choices of not doing what was right came with a life long reaping of consequences this side of heaven.

The cool thing though is that even though I was/am a wretched woman, God rescued me because He loves me! Romans 8:1 says that NOW there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. When I surrendered, repented and began to live my life for Christ in November of 1999, I was no longer under condemnation. How cool is that???!!! What I need to do when my mind hits rewind is focus on the fact that God has forgiven me, He is a promise keeper, He loves me and I am no longer under condemnation.

The next morning I was still impacted from the teaching from Pastor Mike so I shared with Robin and Misti in our Sponsor prayer time what I was dealing with and how do I get past that? They came alongside me and shared with me something that Pastor Mike had also taught that I missed the night before. When those memories are called forth, they are there to help me no longer walk in the footsteps of my former life. They are reminders to keep me from those mistakes ever again.

At camp there were roughly 300 participants and so we were divided by churches into 4 groups and our color was pink. All the groups were amazing and worked together so very well. One of the things that we had to do as a group was create cheers to encourage our teams when we were participating in Blast games each day. For one of our cheers, Stephen a Sponsor from Missouri and he may even be their Pastor, stepped up and became an amazing leader and started off our group cheer with our group flag giving us a pep talk similar to Braveheart. “We may have _______ yesterday, we may have __________, and we may have __________, but, BUT TODAY IS A NEW DAY!!!”

Stephen spurred each one of us to dig deeper and to not allow the past to keep us knocked down. That it was a new day and we could face the day with a good attitude. On the final day of Blast games we moved forward and won not only the event of the last day, but we also came away having moved into first place overall. So when the enemy is knocking you down, and your own memories and poor choices have you discouraged, don’t stay there!!! Get back up, giving yourself a pep talk, allowing others to give you a pep talk, God’s Word to give you a pep talk and remind yourself that TODAY IS A NEW DAY!

“Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.^”Lamentations 3:22-23 NIV

Father God, You are so creative in how You get our attention. The examples that You call to mind that illustrate so beautifully the truths of Your Word are such a blessing. Thank You for reminding me that today is a new day, with new mercies and that You are faithful. And all God’s people said…AMEN!

With love and giving you a pep talk to continue on in the things of God,

Yolanda and Higher Grounds

Monday, August 4, 2014

We were made to THRIVE

WE WERE MADE TO THRIVE

I’m not sure what the 21 students and the other 5 sponsors are feeling this morning but I awoke thinking, wow, this time a week ago we were gearing up for Supper Summer 2014. I left home so pumped and ready to face the week as I had never been to church camp, ever in my entire 48 years of life. When I was in high school I did go on a mission trip with my youth group, and I’ve attended VBS as a child as well as a worker but never church camp. As soon as I committed to going to Super Summer that excitement never left me, not one single time! God was so faithful for those 5 days last week with what He had ordained in each one of our lives and hearts. He was so faithful with giving me unrelenting energy on very little sleep, a heart filling with love for the 26 attending (excluding myself) and to speak to my heart with the teaching from our Camp Pastor.

Our theme all week came from the lyrics of the current Casting Crowns song, “Thrive”. I’ve included the lyrics because they are so powerful!

Here in this worn and weary land
Where many a dream has died

Like a tree planted by the water
We never will run dry

So living water flowing through
God we thirst for more of You
Fill our hearts and flood our souls
With one desire

Just to know You and yo make You known
We lift Your name on High
Shine like the sun made darkness run and hide
We know we were made for so much more
Than ordinary lives
It's time for us to more than just survive
We were made to thrive

Woah
Woah

Into Your word we're digging deep
To know our Father's heart

Into the world we're reaching out
To show them who You are

So living water flowing through
God we thirst for more of You
Fill our hearts and flood our souls
With one desire

Just to know You and to make You known
We lift Your name on High
Shine like the sun made darkness run and hide
We know we were made for so much more
Than ordinary lives
It's time for us to more than just survive
We were made to thrive

Joy unspeakable, faith unsinkable,
Love unstoppable, anything is possible
Joy unspeakable, faith unsinkable,
Love unstoppable, anything is possible
Joy unspeakable, faith unsinkable,
Love unstoppable, anything is possible
Joy unspeakable, faith unsinkable,
Love unstoppable, anything is possible

Woah
Woah

We were made to thrive

Father God, I really don’t won’t to loose or forget any what You did within our group. Prompt me Father to share a little bit each day until I feel as if I’ve been poured out and empty of what You deisre to share. May the 27 of us be found today digging into Your Word, praying for the needs all around us, depending on You. Thriving in the name of Jesus.

And so I close challenging each of us to…..THRIVE!