Thankfulness Song

Lord of Creation,
create in me
a continuous harvest
of thanksgiving,
never ravaged
by the drought of looking afar
for springs of hope,
to energize;
Never darkened by the longing
for deep wells,
leaked out,
running dry,
of blind, worldly words;
to lighten me,

but only filled, spilling forth,
Your Joy,
Your salvation,
Your fulfillment of all
longings....

Never ending,
always renewed
forever freshened,
By Your Truth.

Overflowing with praises,
inward graces,
breathed out
For your Glory,
alone.

Poem by Philip James Elliot, my father

O Lord, against this bosom-blast

  of coiled and seething feelings,

Batt'ring passions, ebbing yearnings,

  oozing acne of inner man,

Raise Thou the flinty walls of

  stuff of which Thy Son was made-

Yea, build in me the buttressed

          bastions of faith

That shall resist the undersucking

          flow of soulish tide,

And make me to endure this late attack,

I pray,

In Jesus' Name.

-written in 1948, 1 year before graduation from Wheaton

Moose Lodge

We Shepards went to a Moose Lodge event today. A totally unusual thing for us, but we were invited by a couple who are involved in it, who also attend our "living room church" (Christ Coastal). I wanted to be out in the beautiful sunshine and clear air, but went, knowing we should support what they were doing. I'm glad we went.


Four first impressions: Smoke, loud country band playing, people over 45 sitting around, and no windows. Our friend was apologetic about the music, but I told her not to worry, that we enjoyed country music sometimes! We didn't know anyone else, but I thought, these are the people who need Jesus just as much as I do. How can they believe, unless they hear? Our friend explained to the whole group that this benefit was for a couple who are members of the Moose brotherhood, who lost their home to fire recently, and then he prayed for God to bless the food, and he ended it in Christ's name. There were lots of Amens and clapping. Clapping? I think everyone was happy that he mentioned God and His Son, and they were glad that someone was bold enough to honor Him. I think (and this is speculation) that people want to hear His name used in an honorable way, and not in vain, and they were happy that they were doing something good for the couple whose home was lost.



All that we do will someday be shown to be of eternal value or of wood, hay, and stubble. Coming home, smelling so strongly of smoke, I wondered if we'd spent our time well. Does it matter that we were exposed to second hand smoke? No, not really! And, by putting this in a blog, am I touting our "good works?" No, I pray to God that I am not, but I am more convinced than ever that we need to "mix" with the ones whom Jesus ate with, and we are also "those sinners." We're so thankful that God is giving us opportunities to meet people that He loves, and now I can learn how to love as He wants me to. This was a community that we may enter, and Jesus would be there too!

Prayers for Australia

This is from a friend who was a God-send to us in France in 2005. I asked her how to pray, forgetting that I had heard about the flooding in Australia and this is her answer. I have been thinking more about prayer, what it means to be persistent and prevailing, and this is a good answer for me! There are so many things we can pray for all day long!


PRAY... for God's mercy
Psalm 29 – to see & acknowledge GOD
For no-one to stay in a state of anger or fear or doing nothing, but to move on, closer to Him and His understanding/working
To open up to be saved,
to be comforted,
to be healed (so much sudden change, shock, hurt and loss of personal belongings, for some the love and lives of dear ones)
For Hope
To have the courage to keep on with life
To have the courage to tackle the mess, and wisdom and knowledge and the means to do it
For volunteers to help and keep helping in ways that are NEEDED: some places need HELP, while in other areas too many volunteers turn up and waste time by just waiting and wanting to help.
To not be discouraged by the fact that some had flood insurance and many others NOT
To us, Christians or not Christian, whose lives were not "disturbed" in the same way by the water, to too make the BEST of this flood – to CHANGE, to live CLOSER to GOD the Almighty.
For Australia to be granted a heart that will search for GOD, to be granted repentance, to ask God that we will let God do His work in our lives, and in the CHURCH!! What a wake-up call for the Church in Australia! To USE this time, His way, for God's Kingdom.
Romans 12:1, 2 in order to know His will, to OBEY Him.
To THANK HIM for ALL the GOOD so far – for the care for each other, for all the grace and mercy, for the humbling experience it was, and continue to be, for the fact that people talk more freely with each other, for the opportunity to change.
For a Spirit of forgiveness.
That we will keep on... In a new way, closer and closer to GOD. And not keep on as if it just/never happened. The media is a leader regarding this – so important to pray for national tv – the national NEWS on TV. Sport is such a pacifier. Maybe good to say "life" (the world?) goes on, but it too steers you AWAY from what is really happening – and not just what happened in our state, but also elsewhere in the country.
THANKS again for God calling us! (But that we will respond to Him – to HONOR HIM, and His Plan(s) with these Calls...)


Best is to ask the Holy Spirit to guide your thoughts and prayers...

My mother, Elisabeth Howard Elliot Leitch Gren

How very thankful I am for my mother, who taught me to love Truth, be clear in my speech, love and follow the God and Creator of the universe, and do the little things faithfully. She taught me how to clean, how to iron, how to bake bread, how to love my husband, how to laugh, appreciation for good stories, appreciation for listening to accents, how to dress nicely, how to love being at home, and how to trust my Father in heaven.
She is now in Florida, spending some time with her husband and Dani, the young woman who helps them, in a warmer climate. She does not like the cold, and she loves fires and a good cup of hot tea. I will never forget the joy of coming home from miserably cold skiing lessons on Cannon Mtn. in Franconia, and she had a roaring fire in our huge granite fireplace, and hot tea in a lovely tea pot, and delicious hot muffins that we could put butter and honey on. What a sweet memory. And our dog, Zippy, would sit with us in front of the fire, sometimes putting his paws up on the hearth to get warmer, and then not knowing when to get down when his face got too hot, but moving his head from side to side. My mother loved animals too, another thing she gave me appreciation for. (I know, you're not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition!) [for which she gave me an appreciation does sound a little stilted.]

3 Daughters Engaged

I'm so thankful for my 3 daughters, Christiana, Colleen, and Evangeline. They will all get married summer of 2011, Lord willing, and we are happy with them. The world's way of thinking is "Oh No!"- "all the money that will cost!" But God's way is His provision and His glory, so I refuse to be "stressed."

And I'm reading The Mystery of Marriage, by Mike Mason, which is truly a wonderful book! It is esoteric in parts, so, must be read slowly and thoughtfully. It becomes more and more practical as you read about Love trapping us, and making us learn to lay down our lives for our spouses. I found it most interesting that Mason writes about how because divorce is so common and so accepted, marriage is held more in honor than ever before because Love is the ONLY reason people stay together. When people see a couple who have been married a long time, and who still love each other, they are impressed, and softened in their hearts toward good marriages. But because people allow themselves to "fall out of love" they cannot persevere in the "trap" that Love has bound them to. Everyone loves a good love story or "how we met" story, and it's because true love is getting rarer and rarer!

So, I'm thankful that I have 3 daughters who are very much in love, and very sure that God brought them their future husbands. We will trust Him to be the absolute Love that will hold each of these happy couples together.

thankfulness

We are so very thankful because 3 Christian women joined us today in our living room to find out what our church was "doing." They are already Christians, but they have had several sad church experiences, so they came. They encouraged us, the Spirit helped Walt take us through the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. Then he connected it to Communion, because of our need for the Savior, and the need for humility, and we had a simple Lord's supper, with a loaf of bread and a lovely silver goblet for the juice. The quiet and peace in the room was His.

Then later, Evangeline (our 22 yr. old) showed us a video of Tableproject.org -an explanation of a church that is COMMUNITY, and it helped us even more!! Pray for Christ Coastal Church as the Lord adds people that He wants, and as I meet with a woman this week who wants to work with us on reaching the poor or unchurched in Brunswick County

the HERE and NOW

God wants to be a VERY PRESENT help in any time of trouble.  We tend to think of our salvation as the experience of first coming to Christ, and for our future blessing after we die.  But He wants us to know how NEAR and NOW His help is.  My husband and I were reading this morning from a book called How People Change, by Timothy Lane and Paul Tripp.  We were very blessed by the 3 pages we read today of chapter 1.  I love to quote people, so I must share this from the book:

"I am now a child of God, with all of the rights and privileges that this title  bestows.  This is important because each of us lives out of some form of identity replacement.  That is, if who I am in Christ does not shape the way I think about myself and the things I face, then I will live out of some other identity.

Often in our blindness, we take on our problems as identities.  While divorce, depression, and single parenthood are significant human experiences, they are not identities.  Our work is not our identity, though it is an important part of how God intends us to live.  For too many of us, our sense of identity is more rooted in our performance than it is in God's grace.  It is wonderful to be successful at what God has called you to do, but when you use your success to define who you are, you will always have a distorted perspective. 

Second, a 'here and now' gap in the gospel also causes us to be blind to God's provision.  As Peter states, in Christ we have been given 'everything we need for life and godliness.'  Why does he use two words here, both 'life' and 'godliness'?  The second word is meant to qualify the first.  If Peter had simply said that God has given us everything we need for life, it would b easy to add the word eternal before it.  This is how this passage is often interpreted.  We find it much easier to embrace the gospel's promise of life after death than we do its promise of life before death!  But when Peter says that God has given us everything we need for 'godliness,' we know that he is talking about life now.  Godliness is a God-honoring life from the time I come to Christ until the time I go home to be with him.

Peter is saying that we cannot live properly in the present unless we understand the provision God has made for us.  Many believers are blind to the fact that this provision runs deeper than the commands, principles, and promises of Scripute we normally associate with the pursuit of a godly life.  It is even more fundamental than the conviction of the Holy Spirit or our legal forgiveness.  God's provision for a godly life now is literally Christ Himself!  He has given us Himself so that we can be like him.  (See Galatians 2:20)

.....Without an awareness of Christ's presence, we tend to live anxiously.  We avoid hard things and are easily overwhelmed.  But a clear sense of identity and provision gives us hope and courage to face the struggles and temptations that come our way."


May we be so aware of His presence, that we truly can rejoice throughout every day!

Enduring Hope

"I hope so" is not my foundation and my anchor in daily life.  My anchor is in what Christ did- His obedience, His love, His power, and His trust in His Father are what gives me endurance and continuous HOPE.  I am not naturally a persevering, determined person, (in a few areas, but not in very many!)  but when I found out that Jesus Christ has endured before me and continues to pray for me as my High Priest, I found real rest and joy.  It's not that He doesn't call me to obey and "work out my salvation" but it is that He will love me no less if I fail Him, and I cannot "do more" for Him in order to make Him  love me more.  He chose before the foundation of the world to love me with an everlasting love and I cannot change that by my losing ground, or by disobeying, or by having a faith that is as small as a mustard seed.   In fact He said that if our faith is as small as a mustard seed, we can move mountains.  What a strengthening word that is.  I'm finding out that by giving Him my failures~by confessing my self-centeredness, my wanting my own way rather than His, (and one of those ways is my wanting to control my husband,) He is willing and able to cleanse me continuously, to help me continually, and to lift my eyes and heart to Him, to "lead me in paths of righteousness."  When our sin gets too big in our own eyes, it blinds us to see what He did for us on the Cross.  When we look to His work on the Cross, our sin doesn't overwhelm us, but can be placed on Him and we, like the thief dying next to Him, can know with assurance that He will save us from our sins, and He promises that we will be with Him in Heaven.  What ENDURING HOPE that is!  The joy of this hope is deep down and lasting- I have nothing to fear because of what He's done.  And to think that He prays for me every day, that my faith would be strong, as he prayed for Peter!  Hallelujah!

Reliv business

I'm looking for people who would like to make an income by selling products you believe in, because they give results.

I used to take handfuls of herbs and vitamins but they never made me energetic, nor did my nails, skin, and hair improve, nor did my menopausal issues go away.  Now that I'm consuming Reliv powders, a complete nutritional system, which is bioavailable and  synergistic, I have truly seen results.  I no longer have to have a daily nap, I feel great when I wake up in the morning and feel great all day, and I've seen much improvement in my body in several different ways.  Therefore, I am happy with these products and want others to know about them!  Reliv pays their distributors well, and there is a willable income that comes from the "generation royalties" which I can will to my grandchildren, if I decide I don't need to do the business anymore.  I believe Reliv has created some excellent products (6 of them are patented) that everyone needs, whether for prevention, or for addressing specific health issues.  The company is 22 years old and solid on the Nasdaq.   If you're interested, please contact me through the comments section of this blog.

Simply This

My family has had results with taking some simple powdered nutrition. When I say "simple", I mean that it is simple to take, but it is formulated very scientifically and is made to synergistically be used in our bodies because it is so absorbable. The company does not guarantee cures, but offers these powders as super nutrition, which gives us the extra boost of health which our normal diet does not. With this good nutrition, healthy lifestyle, and exercise, we believe we are helping our bodies to perform at their best. Most of us in the family take 2 shakes a day, the powder mixed with water or juice. I take 3 shakes a day, because I don't want to have to take a nap, so it keeps me going till bedtime, and I want to eventually get off of blood pressure medicine. It is mildly sweet with a rehydrator called Innergize, and always refreshes me.



Our son, Theo, started taking the products in November of 2008 because he was diagnosed with a genetic disease called Charcot-Marie-Tooth. It is a form of poly-neuropathy, which means the nerve impulses to his muscles in the extremities are slow, so when he began to grow fast in adolescense, he began to have pain in his ankles and feet when running, and he lost his balance a lot. He began to drink the shakes 3 times a day, but doubled the amount from the normal dose. In four months, he began to see a change, and was able to join a musical in which he had to dance. He danced with the group of actors perfectly, and ran down stairs on stage, for the 4 evening performances, without ever stumbling. We were amazed because we had been seeing him lose his balance about every other day before he started Reliv. He has faithfully taken the shakes now for over 2 years, though he doesn't take 3 a day, but just 2, with a double scoop of Classic (the essential powder) in each shake. He rarely stumbles or falls, so we are very grateful for this result in him!