It's All About Relationship!!!

So my brother is working on a Bible Study of sorts and I can't wait to get it. We talk everyday and we always get around to what is truth and what is not. We believe it all comes around to relationships. It's our relationship with God, not what we do or do not do, but it is just having a ongoing open relationship with Him.

See for example, in my family there are times, believe it or not, that we don't agree. We don't hate each other and never see one another. No, we begin to work to find common ground on the issue. There are things we do and don't do that are just out of respect for one another.

I am coming to believe that if I just keep a healthy relationship with my FATHER, I will see His ways more clearly. I've been trying so hard to understand it all, I thought I was losing my mind. I was getting more and more confused. I was trying to take people and their beliefs and figure it into mine. The other day it just hit me like a ton of bricks. I have to stop listening to what everyone else thinks and just pray and "seek out my own salvation". Not in that I make it up in my mind, but by studying God's word I find truth in It's pages.

It's amazing the pressure that leaves you when you give it to Him. He doesn't expect me to be perfect. I've lived my whole life stressing over the fact I have to be perfect and that isn't so. He only asks that I follow Him and believe.

Sunday we had a very good 2 services. I enjoyed them so much, the rejoicing and dancing and jumping in the spirit. The Bible says Leap FOR Joy. I believe that!!! I was so full when we left the service, I had a smile on my face and joy in my spirit.

Bad Week

OK, so you KNOW you had a bad week when you write to release your feelings and you are in so much turmoil that you can't get your feelings to come out. I can have any kind of emotion usually and sit down and just start typing and it all just starts pouring out. I get up and walk away knowing I will be OK.

Last week I couldn't even write. How crazy!!

So looking back it was just a really emotional crazy week. So much went down. Came home from vacation and I didn't want too, LOL. Sounds like a little kid, huh. Everything in Winter Park/Granby is perfect. Well the 40 below in winter might be a bit much. I even found apartments up there and got a price on them. I'm serious, I didn't want to come home. I do however, believe in living my life in God's Will. So, I came home and asked Him to find a way to send me back up there. LOL. You think I'm joking? You have NO idea how serious I am about going back, it may be 5 years from now but I would love to move up there.

So drove into Texas and hit the 107 degree heat. I started sweating at the border and I don't know if I have stopped yet. It was horrible, then my a/c quite blowing cold air so we sat in traffic in 107 degree temps. I was so frustrated and a little disgusted that I live in Texas. Now, don't get me wrong Texas is a great state to live in but why oh why can't we have Colorado weather???

So then get home and the house is like a sauna, hot!!! The next day I'm driving to work and I am sitting at a red light nad I hear this AWFUL noise, I wondered if that was MY car. We took off and the noise quit so I thought it must be another vehicle. My car didn't have much power but perhaps I was imagining it. I am related to my Mom the BEST worrier around. Headed after work to pick up my Dad, I start to back out and there was that horrid noise and it was MY car. I stopped jumped out, raised the hood and couldn't figure it out. So took it by my mechanic and he gives me the wonderful news that the compressor bearing is locking up. Then he explains that if I keep driving it it WILL lock up and then the it will overheat, the belt that does EVERYTHING will burn up and break and etc etc all the things that would need to be fixed over just the compressor. I was so discouraged, I went home and when your house is over run where do you go for privacy??? So I just laid on my bed not caring who came in or didn't and just stared turned on a message by Dr. Jeffers and let his words reach deep inside me to the places that hurt. I couldn't stop the tears. I was boo hooing, just quiet tears flowing out from all the hurt inside, the stupid compressor was just the cherry on top. Mom decided to go get her tire fixed (she had a blow out that day also), if she was taking everyone to work and picking us all up PLUS she had to go to stores in Waco (part of her territory for work). Then we went by and spent time with Gavin and Landon, those 2 can lift your spirits!!! Gavin was showing us all his "dance move tricks". I love watching him dance, he is so limber and actually quite a good interpretor of music to dance. Too funny.

Then the next morning we get up jump in Mom's car and I'm driving and we didn't see anythign but something was in the road and YUP, immediate flat!!! Drove very slowly down to where I could turn onto a street we get out (let me stop here to say my Mom carries and ungodly amount of stuff to do with her job IN HER TRUNK. It all has to come out to get to the spare. Then she remembers, the guy who had helped her with her blow out 2 days before had to use his own tire iron because she obviously didn't have one. We are like a mile from home and it's hot as blazes already. I call Bob he brings one down and bless his heart, he changed the tire also!! Get everythign in the trunk, tire in backseat. I look at the spare and ask a simple question, is that low?? LOL, it was so to the gas station for air. Dad says we can't go around on a spare that is losing air so off to a tire shop to buy yet another new tire. So you see how my week went? It is just full of those kinds of moments, that was BEFORE they told me my car would be over $600. LOL. I was past the laughing until I cried, I just laid my head down and cried. Where is the end??? Perhaps there isn't one??

I got home that night and talked to my best friend on the phoen and she shared the same story to me not knowing what I had gone through. The whole week I fought the worst anger I've ever had. I just hated EVERYTHING and ONE. LOL. I'm not real sure what was wrong with me. Funny thing is I talked to so many friends calling about my vacation and they were all the same way. Strange, we decided the moon and stars were out of alignment or something. It was too weird.

I do have good news, the craziness we've had goign on for 4 months comes to an end this week. It's funny because Saturday night I was so crazy, I prayed and told God HE knew what I could handle and I was really starting to doubt because I was really feeling like I was living on the edge, kind of on a emotional teeter totter. I just told him in plain english that I didn't understand, I was trying to have a good attitude until last week and trying to be kind and all but I just needed Him to understand I didn't think I could keep on this open ended situation. I needed it to either END OR give me a set time it would end so I would know. The next morning I found out it will be ending. I was still feeling kind of out of it and numb and was in my jamma's at 10am. But I thought the Devil knows my fragile mind and knows if he can get me seperated for God I will not make it, I'll crash and burn in a heap like you have never seen. I remembered my Dad telling me about 8 years ago to just "go to church, if you don't live it, if you don't get involved just sit there" so Sunday morning I decided that is what I will do, I'm not going to quit. Let the whole world fall around me, I just wasn't sure if this mental or emotional battle could get any worse. I mean I had been sooooo depressed all week.

But yesterday mornings message reached through the fog a bit. Last night message was awesome!!! It's like an awakening. He kept talking about a place in God that is so deep and I know what he is talking about but sometimes it seems like that place will never be felt again. We do go through things for a reason I believe that. I have to wonder why, though??? Will it come to a place that it will end? Then I think about the fact perhaps I'm not to where God wants me? I have a hard time pressing through the fog, could it be the devil is fighting me that hard? If so, why ever for???

I just have to believe that the answers will become clear and perhaps it is about relationship!!

What a week!! This one ranks up there with the worst. I talked to a friend of mine while on vacation. She was giving me info on contacting some people to get involved in singles events.

More Vacation Pics

Rocky Mountain National Park

This lovely lady enjoyed the photo op. LOL. She was posing, I swear. There was a whole herd including little babies all up in the trees, this girl was wondering close to the road. She kept stopping and looking at us. It was hilarious. How cool is this???
Me in snow in my flipflops. LOL. On Milners Point a storm blew in up there and the temp dropped to like 35 degrees. It was freezing, I had on flipflops and no jacket. The weather here is predictable but WOW what extremes and all in one day. It rains everyday here around 5ish. and when it does the temp drops majorly adn then the sun shines again and we hit 65ish. Crazy.

I think I took some very good pics. I am posting a few today and I'll post more as time goes by I'm sure. Have to get them all organized and decide the best ones for printing.

I love the mountains, perhaps God will send me a rancher from Colorado. LOL. I can dream!!

We are having a great time up here. We have most of teh week to go and I don't want to go home. It's so peaceful and quiet and non-stressful, well except when I'm driving corkscrew roads up mountains. LOL>

My Gazebo

This is the view from the gazebo across the valley and up the mountain from us. Hard breathless walk but totally worth it for the view. It gives you that on top of the world feeling.
Here I am sitting in one of the swings they have in the gazebo.

This is the gazebo from the road. LOL. Doesn't look very neat for down there but it was awesome. Not sure what it's for. They are building up the area now. Lots of new homes and condos going in. This also looks over the golf course below.

Chantry's Explanation to me of Gal 3:3

Ok, my brother sent this to me when I wanted to know why his FB status was Gal 3:3. I read it and was curious why that scripture. So he sent me this. I read it and was like WOW, I totally understand. Bro. Pixler has kind of been teaching this and I just wasn't getting it, kind of but not totally. It just clicked when I read this so I ran in the kitchen and read it to Stephanie and she was like WOW, answered some questions she had. So I asked if he minded if I put it on my blog and he said go ahead. So here it is. Maybe it will help someone else.

Ok, rather than try to make something make sense in short form I decided to message you.

We were discussing because of some other issues the method and determination of our salvation. Galatians makes it clear that our salvation is in nothing other than the faith of Jesus Christ. The fact that Christ died for us is too often quoted as "Christ *died* for us" but in fact should be quoted as "Christ died *for* us." The wages of sin is death, we owed the payment and Christs death wasn't just to give us the possibility, but he paid the bill in essence. He died so we dont' have to. Our salvation is guaranteed unless we turn away from Christ because his bank account covered our bill. Once the bill was paid its no longer owed. It didn't cover our specific sins as much as it covers the fact that we are sinners from birth.

Galatians 3:3 is where paul asks the question: If Christ's death and the Holy Spirit are responsible for the beginning of our salvation, who are we to think that anything we do affects it either positively or negatively short of turning away from Christ. We are assured salvation regardless and like a marriage, our failures aren't about divorce from Christ but about our relationship with Him.

For example, I don't take out the trash because Tiffany would divorce me if I didn't. I take the trash out because I value our relationship and want to please her. Likewise she doesn't cook meals to keep me from leaving, she does it because she wants to please me.

A person who turns away from Christ does so because they have had a lack of concern about the relationship until it has gone so far that they no longer care about their "lover" Christ. He doesn't turn away, they do.

So in essence, we live holy because we want to please Him, not because thats what saves us. We are not in fact lost because of what we don't do. I could possibly smoke a cigarette without being lost, but since I understand that it would be damaging my body in disregard to scripture then it would signify a serious relationship issue between myself and Christ and indicate that I was headed away from Christ not towards Him.

Likewise however, if I stopped wearing any color but black, covered my face and only listened to the McGruders I wouldn't be any more saved and in fact if I feel like that is assisting my salvation then I am again headed away from Christ saying that I can do it myself. Our life is about relationship with Christ not about saved or not saved. To say that we are trying our best and have recieved the Holy Ghost but aren't sure we are saved is basically saying that we're not sure that Christ was good enough to cover our sins and we think His "check" might bounce.

Basically the happiest and ideal place for a christian is to say that I am no longer the master of my own ship. I've turned it over to Christ, I take no thought to my salvation other than my relationship to Christ and if I'm on the wrong path then He will direct me. Then if I suceed its Christ, if I fail its Christ.

Does that make any sense and did I ramble too much? :-) That may have been more than you were asking for. lol

Finally in Colorado!!!

I'll put up more tomorrow, well later today. LOL. It's 1am mountain time so for me it's 2am central. I'm falling over exhausted. Wanted to post a couple pics. More to come.