Category Archives: my life

My Blog Facelift and a Little Mission Clarification

Yeah I changed my name again. I started blogging about 8 years ago actually. If you read through my blog (which I wouldn’t recommend… much better reading material out there) you’d find this blog has gone through several name changes and paint jobs. The content has had a similar theme along the way with varying emphasis which if I plotted on a graph would directly correlate to the current state of my marriage.

I am a mom and wife of 23 years to a man who does not share my love and worship of Jesus.  We met as teenagers, married while I was still a teenager and new believer, and have endured many hard times together and apart.  We’ve been separated twice and nearly signed divorce papers both times.  But, for God’s reasons (which are worth a lifetime of a difficult marriage) we didn’t and so the saga continues and I continue to blog as a public display of my affection for Christ in this hard life.

I believe the truly Christian life is not wasted.  It’s invested.  In eternity in the lives of those around us.  We die daily but not in vain.  We die daily to ourselves because we’ve seen a glimpse of the glory of God in the Jesus we’ve never seen with the eyes of our hearts and we’re hooked!  We want his glory… at all costs.  We want him to be high and lifted up in all things, especially our lives!  And we want our lives to reflect the true nature of the God we were made to image.

And so I change my blog wallpaper here periodically and the title changes too because I’m being changed all the time.  I’m being developed and matured and conformed to the image of Christ and I want to encourage someone else and comfort someone else and grieve with someone else and rejoice with someone else even through a blog.

My heart for my home to be my primary field of mission for living out my life as a Christian, desiring my husband and children to join me in that life, has been the driving force behind this blog and the changing of titles usually reflects that heart.  Being a homemaker is not just being a mom and wife who doesn’t work outside the home.  Being a homemaker is what all mom’s and wives are specially designed and equipped to do.  It’s a big topic on which I could blog a lot, and have.  But the term homemaker, especially in the Christian circle, has taken on a meaning that can cut a lot of women out of the picture.  I don’t want to just be a blessing to stay-at-home-moms (although I want to bless them too!).  I want to encourage women of all circumstances to find their identity in Christ and to walk with him through this life.  Hence my return to A Woman Found.  As far as Sojourning Sheila goes, yeah, that describes me.  But I don’t want this blog to just be about me.   Nothing wrong with that, I just feel like I might encourage another woman out there more if I don’t just use this blog to write about me and my daily life stuff- I’ll do that too, but I want to share the comforts I have been comforted in by Christ, and the sorrows I share with fellow suffers, and the joys only those who walk with Jesus know.  Only women, and men, found by Christ will really get what I talk about here.  Cause it just doesn’t make sense without being found by Him.  And I want those who may read this blog, who don’t worship Christ, to scratch their heads and hopefully pique their interest.  Maybe they would want to be found by Him too.

Ok.  That’s all.

I’m just a tissue sample

There’s many things the Lord has been speaking to my heart over the past several years about how I am just a tissue sample of the Church in America. As He’s exposed my heart and His word has done a surgical-dividing of my thoughts and intents, I’ve seen my “diagnosis” and the remedy my Great Physician has prescribed for my spiritual condition. As He’s dealt with me I’ve begun to have that “log” removed from my eye and have begun to notice that many of my dear brothers and sister have just a speck of what was blinding me in their eyes.

I see the same lukewarm-a little mixed in with the world-a little mixed in with the church-a little politically savvy-condition I’ve had in us as a body nationally. With the election of a president who violates the neat system we’ve become comfortable with, and who carries with him abominable beliefs about unborn babies, we’ve come face to face with our remedy, and it’s up to us to embrace our Lord’s chastizement and correction as His loving hand and deliverance for us.

Today, I was listening to this message from Jon Courson titled, He’s Still On the Throne- Proverbs 21:1. In the teaching Jon really speaks what God has been doing in my heart over the past three years, not really in regards to politics, but in regards to my marriage and the path He wants me to walk in and is leading me in. Courson shares from an AWESOME section of scripture-Isaiah 44 and 45. You have to go listen to the message, but in short, he shares about how God chose, as HIS annointed, a brutal king Cyrus, to be the one He would use to ultimately deliver His people out of the bondage THEY had chosen. In Isaiah 45 God says these things about the pagan king Cyrus:

Thus says the LORD to His anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held… I will go before you and make the crooked places straight… I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places, that you may know that I, the LORD, who call you by your name, Am the God of Israel. For Jacob My servant’s sake, and Israel My elect, I have even called you by your name; I have named you, though you have not known Me... I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will direct all his ways; He shall build My city, and let My exiles go free, not for a price nor reward, says the LORD of hosts. – Isaiah 45:1,2,3,4,13

Our thoughts are not God’s thoughts. And His ways are so much higher. He chose a pagan king to take His people into bondage for the purpose of ultimately revealing HIMSELF to the king and for the purpose of delivering His people from their bondage. It was through Cyrus that we have the story of Ezra.

God has been doing this work in my marriage and I see His hand at work in my nation similarly! We chose a little (or a lot) of the world, and now we suffer it’s bondage, but ultimately God will deliver! He has raised up Barrak Obama for OUR GOOD! And for HIS GLORY! The more we trust in that, the more we can focus on being a good witness of Christ to our future president, and the more we can pray for Mr. Obama with true love and desire for Him to know the Lord. And also, the more we trust in God’s soveriegnty in appointing our coming president and congress, the more we will grow intimate with the One who sees our condition and loves us too much to leave us that way.

Oh my LORD, my Treasure, my LOVE! You have humbled me so through my husband! You have said, “He’s right, listen to him,” when I’ve protested, “But he believes this, and he does that!!!” You’ve showed me Your heart through my worldly man and You’ve made me to see my bound-up, legalistic, luke-warm condition. You’ve used my precious husband to deliver me from so much! You’ve shown me such favor in his eyes… a favor I haven’t deserved or earned! And it thrills my heart that you said to king Cyrus, “… that you may know that I, the LORD, who call you by your name, am the God of Israel...” I pray you would call my husband by name! I pray you would say, ” ‘Here I am, here I am,'” to a person who is not called by Your name (Isaiah 65:1). I pray you would say, “Here I am, here I am,” to my precious husband who You have used to bring healing and to rebuild ruined-me! I pray that he may know that You, the LORD who calls him by name, is the God of his wife!

And I pray to You, my KING, for precious Barrak Obama and his family, who You went to the cross for! I pray You would also show us, Your people in America, our condition and Your loving remedy! I pray we would embrace the cure You have for us and receive Your reproof. For whom You rebuke and chasten You love! I pray you would use Mr. Obama to open our eyes and show us what true riches are and to give us total satisfaction in the white robes of Your righteousness! I pray you would also reveal Yourself to Mr. Obama and his family. I pray He would know that You, the Lord, who has called him by name and raised him up, is the God of Your people in America who You are humbling!

Redeeming the time,