Author Archives: Tamar

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About Tamar

Tamar Knochel at your service! From sewing and crafting to words of encouragement when you need them most. I'm here for you. ❤️

Love, Honor and Cherish

Posted on January 22, 2012 by Tamar

“I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride; I have gathered my myrrh with my spice. I have eaten my honeycomb and my honey; I have drunk my wine and my milk.”

“Eat, O friends, and drink; drink your fill, O lovers.”

Song of Solomon 5:1

I have a lot of favorite verses in the bible, but I have to say that this one ranks pretty high for me. If you’re not familiar with the book of the Song of Solomon, and most people aren’t, it’s an allegorical poem about a couple who meet, fall in love and get married. This verse… well it’s their honeymoon. Heh heh heh. It starts off with the husband speaking to his new wife (“my sister, my bride” but she’s not REALLY his sister in a physical sense, only in a spiritual one) having just consummated the marriage. Then a narrator comes in and tells them to enjoy their marriage bed. Most translations of the bible have this part of the verse with the heading of “Friends” or “Narrator”, but me, I’m convinced that it’s God. Hence the plural form due to His triune nature (Father, Son & Holy Spirit) and when you think about it, who ELSE would be in that room with them at this time anyway??? EW! To have this narrative voice be God is why I like this verse so much and hold it so dear to my heart; because it embodies God’s approval of sex in marriage. It ENCOURAGES the married couple to ENJOY sex, to eat, to drink, to be FILLED with love for each other, to complete each other as only a married couple can.

So often in our lives as mothers we get so wrapped up in mothering and taking care of the household that we forget this vital aspect of being a mother. Yes, being a mother. Not to our husbands mind you, although it can CERTAINLY feel that way sometimes! But having adventurous and creative sex with our husbands IS part of mothering. I know, I know, right now you are shaking your heads and thinking I’m a loon, but stick with me on this one. The biggest part of being the best mother to your children is being the best wife to their father. SHOWING them, what a great God-centered marriage looks like, so that when they grow up and get married themselves, they too can have a great marriage filled with life and love and JOY and yes, great sex too. J

God didn’t create Eve to merely raise children and keep the house! He created her to be a HELPER for Adam. Honey, your husband has needs, needs that only YOU can truly meet. Yes, there are many many many alternative ways for him to fulfill those needs, but only YOU can truly satisfy him. This world has gotten so messed up and filled with the Enemy’s substitutes to real intimacy. Pornography for starters! It’s rampant! And it’s absolute POISON for marriages!!!! The internet is filled with images that can turn a man’s head toward digital fantasy women and away from his flesh and blood wife. The woman who was created to help him out in this area and has pledged to do so! (It was part of your marriage vows ladies – LOVE, honor and cherish.) Men were created to be stimulated visually, which is great when you live out in the middle of a desert with one woman and your kids… not so great when you’re in a society so flooded with sexual images to “sell” things that there is no where left to avert your eyes other than to stare at your feet all day! My husband and I have been battling this in our own home for years now. At an early age he became entrenched in pornography and masturbation, LONG before we ever met. This trend that started when he was in junior high has gone on throughout our entire marriage and almost ended it! However, God is amazing. He is the ultimate healer and miracle worker. He saved our marriage and with His help my husband is slowly but surely mastering the art of finding his sexual fulfillment in me, and me alone. Just imagine being the sole source of your husband’s sexual pleasure; the only place and person that his eyes can feast upon; the only person that his hands caress lovingly and hungrily. Doesn’t that just sound awesome!?! Don’t get me wrong, it’s a HUGE responsibility, but it comes with a huge reward as well.

Making sex a priority in your marriage is critical in the success of your marriage. Don’t believe me? Just keep reading. I’ll do my best to make a believer out of you yet. J God has taught me the importance of sex in my marriage, now it’s my job to pass that knowledge on to you. I pray that I will do a worthy job of leading you along the path of marital success and fulfillment. God has such blessings in store for you my friend! Believe in Him that He is the creator of marriage, and of sex. He can help you through this, I promise. He will not leave you stranded out in the cold in a loveless marriage. If you desire more than an OK marriage, I encourage you to put your trust in Him and Him alone; not me, or your husband, or yourself. Place your trust in the one place that it is truly safe and sound from all harm. Place it in the hands of the one who cares more for you than anyone else on the face of this planet! God tells us that when we place our hearts desires at His feet, He hears them. I assure you that no one wants you to have a healthy and satisfying marriage more than God the Father does! So don’t you think that if this is something that He wants for you, and it’s something that you want for you, that perhaps just maybe He will give it to you? Not that He just zaps you with the answers to all your prayers instantly, OH how I’ve wished that was the case, no you have to work for them too. But when you do everything you can, He picks up the rest of the “slack” and does the rest for you. God is in the heart changing business, it’s kinda His “thing”. So let God work on your husband’s heart, and your own, and just follow His lead. God knows what you need the most in this world, and He won’t withhold that from you.

Hang in there, help is on the way!

Categories: The Crazy Mom Blog

Mommy Guilt

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Tamar

Lord,

I’m confused. I know that I say that a lot, but I am. I’m going to guess that that is the Enemy’s favorite ploy to get me off track is to confuse me, but then he just must be very good at it. Father, I love you SO desperately, and I want to please you and do Your will, and sometimes I think I know what that is, but then the Enemy swoops in and sows those seeds of doubt in my head that just throw me for a loop! Ya know Lord, I really don’t like him! Father, I need your help. I need your insight, your wisdom and your grace. I desperately need for you to come and ruthlessly rip those weeds of doubt out of my head! And I know you can do it! Lord, I feel like your plan for me is to be a mother and a writer… but finding the right balance for all of that is proving extremely difficult. I certainly WANT to do both, very well. You know me, if I can’t succeed, then why do it at all?

Lord, yesterday I felt like we worked so well together, like we were both functioning on all cylinders and chugging right along down the path of success. And then, around 3 o’ clock when Gabe got home the doubt and guilt started creeping in. Father, I didn’t help him with his homework at all, well, OK, there was that one time… and I did “hold him against his will” for a while too. Yes, Lord, you did tell me to “snuggle them”. LOL. Father why do I so often think that you are speaking symbolically? Siiiigh, maybe one of these days I’ll learn right? LOL. OK, so I DID show Gabe that I love him yesterday, and it probably WAS louder than I thought. Alright. But then Sean got home and he had to wait for dinner, what about that? When he got home I was STILL on the computer writing emails. Yes they were important. Yes he did ask me to NOT have dinner ready for him immediately upon arrival so that he could run. No he did not run last night. No, if he had been running I would not have felt nearly as guilty as I did. Yes Lord, you’re of course right, the key word in all this is guilt. The Enemy sowed seeds of doubt by sowing seeds of Mommy guilt. I really don’t like Mommy guilt Lord. He uses it all too often on me. And it all too often works because I let those sink in!

Yes Lord, I remember, Eve’s first job was to be Adam’s helper, it’s what she was created for. But… Yes Lord, her SECOND job was to be the mother of all mankind. Yes Lord, I trust You completely. “Then why won’t you listen to ME?” OH FATHER! I’M SO SORRY! I think I’m listening to you, but sometimes I get so excited about what I’m doing that I forget to listen carefully. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in the moment that I forget to put up my shield of faith. Oh, Lord, it drives me CRAZY that the Enemy gets me so often! Have I mentioned that I really don’t like him!!!!!

Father, thank you for the story about the Mom that moved to another country with her family. You know, the one where they uprooted their family, sold their house and moved… somewhere far away that I can’t remember the name of, all to be missionaries for you. Where once they got there they discovered a child-filled burlesque house and enraged they fought it for two years, all the while the owner of the house was threatening to kill her husband and take her own teenaged daughters. She too, like me, was seemingly forced to decide between her family and her mission work, only to find that there was no deciding between them, only looking at the situation differently… from YOUR perspective instead. Lord, she was able to send her daughters back home to family members because they were teenagers. Daddy, I’m not in that situation, my children are four and nine. What can I do? LOL! OK, I’ll look at the situation differently, from YOUR perspective instead. J Have I mentioned lately how much I love you???

OK, my situation from your perspective… let’s see. I have first been called to be a helper to my husband, then a mommy. OK. Hmmmmmm….. yes Lord, I HAVE found your children enslaved in a burlesque house!!! Wow! When you put it that way it IS very interesting. Yes Lord, you ARE my husband. Yes Lord, you have told me to “Feed the children”. Yes Lord, you have also told me to “write daily” to give your people “fresh manna”, the proverbial “slice of daily bread”. I remember that’s how the blog started. No, Lord, I did not blog yesterday… or the day before… or the day before that one either. I think I may be starting to catch your drift. Yes, Lord, I do enjoy praying with my pen… well it used to be a pen, now it’s straight onto the computer to save me time. LOL! Yes, you DID tell me to start doing that a long time in one of the writer’s tips I read. Forgive me for not listening immediately back then. Lord, thank you for leading me. I ask that you forgive me for not always following your directions immediately… I am so GLAD that you understand me completely! Thank you Father!!!!! I love you so much!!! Thank you for helping me straighten all that out. The guilt I feel, is just that guilt. I ask that you will help me recognize it a little sooner in the future so that I can tell that LIAR where to go when it happens. I thank you that you helped me figure out enough of this last night before I went to bed to know that at least some of this, and now I know that it, was all him! That the Mommy guilt that I felt yesterday walked in through the door when Gabe got home and is walking OUT my door right now!

Father God I praise you and your holiness! I shout Hallelujah to your grace and your lessons! I cry thank you for your gift of the Holy Spirit to lead us in the way that we should go, and I repent from not following Him more closely and carefully. Lord, I also repent of doubting the times when I HAVE been following closely! That’s just as bad as not following at all! Doubt is like cancer to the soul. Father I thank you for your forgiveness and your grace and your love!!!!! YOU ARE AMAZING!!!!! Thank you so much from releasing my from my Mommy guilt, it’s a poison that destroys YOUR plans. Lord I love you!!!!! THANK YOU!!!!! What would I ever do without you??? LOL. Nothing, yes, that’s what I was thinking too. J

Lord, please help me to walk in your ways today. Come, Holy Spirit, fill me with your fire, so that I may be more like you. Help me, I trust you. Father I give myself wholly to you, today and every day. I pray that you will see me standing in your classroom with my arm raised high in request that you pick me! That you send me to do your will and to be your hands and feet; to shine your brilliant light in this very dark place. Lord thank You! In the precious name of Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior, AMEN!

Categories: The Crazy Mom Blog

Sleep

Posted on December 26, 2011 by Tamar

This morning I woke up exhausted, too many late nights preparing for Christmas. I wrestled with myself for several minutes whether or not I should go back to bed after my husband left, the kids were still sleeping… I went back and forth, Bible study, sleep, Bible study, sleep… I weighed the consequences and possible outcomes of each and still couldn’t convince myself which direction I should go, nourish the temple or feed the soul? I sat down and opened up Streams in the Desert, one of the many devotionals I read, and it was all about a dream someone had about Jesus never coming. And then I thought of the “Footprints” poem on the wall behind me, it’s a dream as well! And then it dawned on me, you know it’s pretty hard to receive a dream like those, if you never sleep! And I know from personal experience that I dream the best when I sleep the hardest… when I’m exhausted. In Psalms 1:2-3 it says “His delight is in the law of the LORD, and on His law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whole leaf doesn’t wither. Whatever he does prospers.”

Now, I feel the need to point out that because Jesus DID come, the “law” that this verse refers to is Jesus. In Matthew 5:17-20 Jesus Himself tells us that He didn’t come to wipe out the past laws of God, but rather to complete them. The laws from the past were guidelines for healthy living, everything from food safety to relationships. None of these things have passed away since Jesus came. On the contrary, they’ve only been intensified. The Law (before Christ came) was like the pencil sketch outline on a canvas being prepared for a masterpiece. Jesus is the paint that came along and filled in all those temporarily gray pencil-lines with bold vibrant color and LIFE! The pencil lines are still there under the watercolor hues that now lie over them, but they certainly aren’t the picture. They’re not the part that you admire when you look at (or meditate on) the picture. Your eye naturally focuses on the colors that fill the lines. While the Law is still here it’s still active and applicable in our world and our lives, it’s not what saves us, it’s not what fills us it’s the color and life of Jesus that saves and fills and completes our world. Jesus IS the Law, in every sense of the word. He came to color in what no one else could. All we could do was add more gray shading, details to a formerly perfectly white canvas. The more rules humanity added to the Law, the more we added bleak gray to our world, and then Jesus came, with His paints and brushes and turned our upside-down thinking right=side-up. He is the Law on which we are to meditate. He is the bulls-eye that all of history points forward to, and all the future looks to. He is the focal point of all humanity.

How are we to meditate on Jesus – The Law – in the night though? Easy! You go to bed meditating about Him and His word. I can not tell you how many times I have gone to bed with a question on my mind and a prayer on my lips only to wake with my body in a position of praise (hands above my head) and the answer written in my heart. While my mind and body were at rest, and out-of-the-way, my soul was free to commune with the Holy Spirit without interference from my busy activities or my mind immediately rejecting everything He says because it might not be logical or the “smart” thing to do. Many times I will have a cryptic or strange dream that when prayed over and interpreted will reveal the answer to my question. God speaks to us constantly, but the business of our lives and the clutter of our minds disturbs His messages. It’s like He projects His messages on the movie screen of the still water of our souls and the more we disturb it with our motion, the more the message gets muddled. The best way to receive a clear message from God is to be routinely still, not just in our body but in our soul. To rest in His arms like that weaned child, who KNOWS that they are loved and fed and provided for in every way by their heavenly Father so they need not throw rocks of worry in the water of their souls, because God’s got it ALL under control. Every minute detail, He knows them all. For “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28) “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'” (Jeremiah 29:11)

Rest well this day, and this night, my friend. May the waters of your soul be undisturbed by rocks of worry. Rather, may you stand on THE rock, the horn of our salvation, and drink deeply from His gently flowing streams of living water. May that water fill your soul with refreshment and quench your thirst for anything less than His perfect righteousness. Jesus is the Law colored in with His perfect love that casts out fear. May His love for you shine through your darkness and color your life with the vibrance that only a child of God can claim. The vibrant life that starts with the red blood shed at the cross and sweeps across the entire blue sky with the rainbow of His promise of love poured out for the whole world. He loves the world so much that He sent His only Son to be the Way to an eternal relationship with Him. Praise be to the Living and active God who loves us with such an abandon that He is willing to go the distance and die a tortured death to show us just how much He cares for us. Jesus loves you my friend, rest in that truth today, He is calling you, by name, to come and sit with Him in His lap. Quiet your soul and be still so that you may KNOW that He is God.

Categories: The Crazy Mom Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

He Cares

Posted on December 25, 2011 by Tamar

“By the seventh day God had finished the work He had been doing; so on the seventh day He rested from all His work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work of creating that He had done.” Genesis 2:2-3

Out of the two hundred sixty-seven times the word “rest” is found in the New International Version of the Bible, this is the first. Firsts and lasts are important in the Bible, they usually tell us a lot in just one short verse. This instance is no different. It absolutely thrills me that this verse is the first time that the word “work” is mentioned AND the first time the word “rest” is mentioned, coincidence? DEFINITELY NOT!!! God’s “work” of creating was finished in seven days. Do I think they were literal twenty-four hour days? Yes. Why? Because He’s GOD, what other reason do I need??? When you really think about it, it probably could have only taken Him an instant to create the entire universe, again, He’s GOD. But instead He took His time, and enjoyed the work of His hands, continually stepping back from each stage of creation to admire His work and remark emphatically “It is good”. He enjoyed what He was doing. And yet, on the seventh day, He still stopped doing it. Why? To set an example for us. I mean, you don’t honestly think He rested because He was tired do you? Remember, He’s GOD. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done something just because my kids were watching, said something because I knew my kids would “over-hear” me. I believe this instance to be the same. God was resting as an example for us to follow, because we being, well, not God, need rest. An entire day of it every week.

Life is a journey, a very long one for most of us. One in which many rest stops are required in order to complete the journey successfully. Many people have set out to accomplish something monumental, only to fall short of their goal due to lack of rest and/or support. Human shoulders were never created to carry burdens, especially large ones for long periods of time, and neither were human hearts.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon [the richest king Israel ever had] in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of it’s own.” Matthew 6:25-34

Yahweh God, is our Father. Jesus the Messiah is our husband. The Holy Spirit is our comforter and helper. Together these three are one God, a God who cherishes us and calls us all by name. While our worries can not add a single hour to our life, they do subtract them! There are many studies that have shown how stress is very bad for our bodies. Stress, or worry, tears at our spirits. It makes them sick, sometimes to the point of becoming physically ill in a multitude of ways. Yet ALL of this can be avoided by simply resting.

God knows what we need before we ever need it. He had only created mankind the day before and yet the very next day, before they had even had a chance to work let alone get tired, He was instituting the first Sabbath day. Boy our God is good!!! He CARES for us. He cares about the little details in our lives, like the food we eat and the clothes we wear, so why wouldn’t He care about how we rest as well? First Peter chapter five verse seven tells us to “cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.” “And the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will HIMSELF restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.” (1 Peter 5:10)

In Matthew seven verse seven Jesus tells us that when we ask for things, God hears us and sends answers to our prayers. They’re not always the answers we like, but they are always, without fail, the answers we need. In verse nine through eleven He explains, “Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him!” God cares for you like a Father, He wants to provide for you all the things you need… including rest!

Right now you may feel like God has forgotten or forsaken you, but that is a bold-faced lie from the father of lies himself! God tells us through the prophet Isaiah: “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;” (49:15) Your name has been engraved on the palms of His hands with the nails that pierced those beautiful strong hands at Calvary. Trust me my friend, He is incapable of forgetting or ignoring you because He cares for you too much. But perhaps, you’ve been ignoring Him. His pleadings for you to slow down and notice Him, sitting in your quiet time chair waiting for you to join Him.

Do you have a spot where you routinely meet with God? A place that is set aside for that very special purpose? If not I suggest you find one, it’s amazing what a difference it can make! How just visiting that sacred spot can calm your soul, only if it’s for a brief moment. You can “still and quiet your soul; like a weaned child with its mother,” (Psalm 131:2) there. When a child is nursing its mother is its source of nourishment and therefore when it is in its mother’s arms it will fuss until it receives the milk it desires. However, a weaned child in its mother’s arms is a completely different story. Once weaned from its mother’s milk the child no longer seeks its mother’s arms for nourishment, but for company, for love, affection and comfort. So it also should be for us in our Father’s arms. We should be routinely (daily and weekly) seeking shelter from life’s storms under the wings of the Father who cares for us enough to engrave our names on His palms.

Yes, a Father like that I can find rest in! And so can you, when you seek Him you will find Him. But don’t seek Him for what He can do for you or what He can give you. Seek Him because He loves you. Seek Him because He cares for you. Seek Him because you want to know Him more as the Father, husband and comforter that He is. Cast all your cares, burdens and anxieties on Him because He cares for you! He is love, get to know that love more intimately through prayer and study. When you seek Him with all your heart, you will find Him and He will knock your socks off! He has mine! He loves you so desperately; won’t you let Him tell you how much? Give yourself permission to take some time and rest in the LORD today.

I’m too tired to trust and too tired to pray,

said I, as my overtaxed strength gave way.

The one conscious thought that my mind possessed,

Is, oh, could I just drop it all and rest.

Will God forgive me, do you suppose,

If I go right to sleep as a baby goes,

Without questioning if I may,

Without even trying to trust and pray?

Will God forgive you? Think back, dear heart,

When language to you was an unknown art,

Did your mother deny you needed rest,

Or refuse to pillow your head on her breast?

Did she let you want when you could not ask?

Did she give her child an unequal task?

Or did she cradle you in her arms,

And then guard your slumber against alarms?

Oh, how quickly a mother’s love can see,

The unconscious yearnings of infancy.

When you’ve grown too tired to trust and pray,

When overworked nature has quite given way:

Then just drop it all, and give up to rest,

As you used to do on mother’s breast,

He knows all about it – the dear Lord knows,

So just go to sleep as a baby goes;

Without even asking if you may,

God knows when His child is too tired to pray.

 He judges not solely by uttered prayer,

He knows when the yearnings of love are there.

He knows you do pray, He knows you do trust,

And He knows, too, the limits of poor, weak dust.

Oh, the wonderful sympathy of Christ,

For His chosen ones in that midnight tryst,

When He told them, “Sleep and take your rest,”

While on Him the guilt of the whole world pressed –

You have trusted your life to Him to keep,

Then don’t be afraid to go right to sleep.

    – Ella Conrad Cowherd*

____________________________________________________

* Ella Conrad Cowherd. Streams in the Desert. (Grand Rapids Michigan: Zondervan, 1997), 476.

Categories: The Crazy Mom Blog | Tags: , , , , , , ,

Rest

Posted on December 24, 2011 by Tamar

The LORD will guide you always; He will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of streets with Dwellings. IF you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on My holy day, IF you call the Sabbath a delight and the LORD’S holy day honorable, and IF you honor it by  not going your own way, and not doing as you please or speaking idle words, THEN you will find your joy in the LORD, and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob. The mouth of the LORD has spoken. (Isaiah 58:11-14)

Lord, HOW do I keep my feet from breaking Your Sabbath? Honestly, I’ve never been taught. If I’ve heard sermons on it, I don’t remember them. But LORD, I know that this is important because you keep bringing it up! And I LOVE You for that!!! You truly are my heavenly husband who keeps harping at me “would you please sit down! You’re making ME tired!” You are just that wonderful! So Lord, how should I keep the Sabbath holy?

This is what the LORD says: Be careful not to carry a load on the Sabbath day or bring it through the gates of Jerusalem. Do not bring a load out of your houses or do any work on the Sabbath, but keep the Sabbath day holy, as I commanded your forefathers. Yet they did not listen or pay attention; they were stiff-necked and would not listen or respond to discipline. But IF you are careful to obey Me, declares the LORD, and bring no load through the gates of this city on the Sabbath, but keep the Sabbath day holy by not doing any work on it, THEN kings who sit on David’s throne will come through the gates of this city with their officials. They and their officials will come riding in chariots and on horses, accompanied by the men of Judah and those living in Jerusalem, and this city will be inhabited forever. People will come from the towns of Judah and the villages around Jerusalem, from the territory of Benjamin and the western foothills, from the hill country and the Negev, bringing burnt offerings, incense and thank offerings to the house of the LORD. BUT if you do not obey Me to keep the Sabbath day holy by not carrying any load as you come through the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, then I will kindle an unquenchable fire in the gates of Jerusalem that will consume her fortresses. (Jeremiah 17:21-27)

In Jeremiah 17:21 it says to “be careful not to carry a load on the Sabbath” the word “load” in Hebrew is mas’sa and according to Strongs is: a burden; specifically, tribute, or (abstractly) porterage; figuratively, an utterance, chiefly a doom, especially singing; mental, desire – burden, carry away, prophecy, x they set, song, tribute. So, if I’m reading this right then for one day every week we are to lay down our burdens, to stop carrying them around with us. We should set aside one whole specific day every week where we put aside the labor of our hands and come join You at the foot of the cross where we spend the whole day laying our physical and spiritual burdens down at Your feet asking for You to take them and bear them for us. I think You’re saying that we need to dedicate one whole day to resting in Your arms, and not JUST in the arms of the Lazy Boy in the living room in front of the TV. An entire day to rend our hearts, searching them with Your light to find any deceitfulness in them so that You may remove it from us! Lord, “blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in Him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out it’s roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; it’s leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.” (Jeremiah 17:8) Lord, may I be that “man”! May I trust in You Yahweh, may my confidence be in You… my confidence IS in You. May I be like a tree planted by the water sending my roots straight to Your strengthening  streams of Living water – Your Word the Bible. Then I will not fear when trials come and will have no fear when hard times come – may I always bear much fruit for You and Your glory. Lord Jesus, I praise You and thank You that You love me so desperately that You’ve… strongly suggested… that I take an entire day every week to spend with You, our own date day! You ARE so incredibly sweet, I love You!!!

 

Categories: The Crazy Mom Blog | Tags: , ,

Blessings

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Tamar

“I have received a command to bless; He has blessed, and I can not change it.” Numbers 23:20

Today I’d like to share with you the story of Balaam and Balak from Numbers 22-25. King Balak can see the Israelites stretched out across the country side and it strikes fear in his heart. He’s heard the stories of everyone else going up against these armies and getting squashed like bugs… and he could be next! So in his fear he summons Balaam, a local soothsayer with a reputation for successful blessings and curses. Balak sends several elders of Moab and Midian to deliver his message to Balaam. When they get there Balaam consults the LORD and asks if he should go or not. God tells him “no”, and he sends them all away. So Balak sends a group of princes heavy with treasure to ask Balaam again. He inquires of the LORD again, this time God says “Since these men have come to summon you, go with them, but do only what I tell you.” (22:20) So Balaam goes with them, has an incident with his donkey on the way that we’re going to skip over because it doesn’t apply directly to my point today. Anyway, he gets to Balak and explains “I can’t say just anything. I must speak only what God puts in my mouth.” (22:38) Then they go up, sacrifice some bulls, Balaam has a pow wow with God alone and then returns to Balak with God’s message in his mouth.

Now Balak hired Balaam to curse the nation of Israel because the Moabites were afraid of what the Israelites would do to them. But when Balaam came down from meeting with God all he could do was bless Israel! Balak said furiously “What have you done to me? I brought you here to curse my enemies, but you have done nothing but bless them!” and Balaam answered “Must I not speak what the LORD puts in my mouth?” (Numbers 23:11-12) But Balak, not being one to give up easily took Balaam to another spot where he could see the Israelites, perhaps he could curse them from a different view. Exasperated sigh… so, from a different angle they present their offering, Balaam went off by himself to receive the LORD’s message and then returned to deliver my favorite of Balaam’s FOUR blessings to Israel:

“Arise, Balak, and listen; hear Me son of Zippor. God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change His mind. Does He speak and then not act? Does He promise and not fulfill? I have received a command to bless; He has blessed, and I can not change it. No misfortune is seen in Jacob, no misery observed in Israel. The LORD their God is with them; the shout of the King is among them. God brought them out of Egypt; they have the strength of a wild ox. There is no sorcery against Jacob, no divination against Israel. It will now be said of Jacob and of Israel, see what GOD has done! The people rise like a lioness; they rouse themselves like a lion that does not rest till he devours his prey and drinks the blood of his victims.” (Numbers 23:18-24)

Blessings from the LORD are irreversible! No one can curse what God has blessed, no sorcerer can be against it, no divination can break it, nothing or no one can reverse what God has blessed. My friends I pray that you’re catching my drift on this one, but in case you’re not, let me make it a little more plain. As a child of God you have been adopted into this family of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. You may be a branch that has been grafted in, but you’re still part of this family tree! Every word of blessing that God used Balaam to speak over the house of Israel, he was speaking over you too! God Himself has spoken His blessings over you and your life! Hallelujah! And what God has blessed the Enemy can NOT curse! Oh can I get a praise the LORD from the choir on that one?!?

However, this is unfortunately not where our story ends for the day. Because although no one else can remove God’s blessing from your heads, you can. According to Numbers 31:16 Balaam gave Balak some parting advice. Balak couldn’t beat them with might, and Balaam couldn’t curse them because of their blessing, but they could ensnare the Israelites to remove the blessing from themselves. Although nothing can separate us from the love of Christ (Romans 8:38-39), we can separate ourselves from that love, by the choices we make. God has promised to never leave us or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5), but we can certainly make the choice to turn our backs and leave Him.

So, what advice did Balaam leave with Balak? Sex. He suggested that the Moabite women go and seduce the Israelite men – drawing them not only out of covenant with their wives but also out of covenant with their God. In Deuteronomy twenty-eight when God lays out the laws of blessing and cursing He prefaces the blessings with “IF you carefully obey the LORD your God and carefully follow all His commands I give you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations on earth. All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you IF you obey the LORD your God:” (Deuteronomy 28:1-2) and He prefaces the list of curses (which is easily twice as long as the blessings) with “However, IF you do not obey the LORD your God and do not carefully follow all His commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and over take you.” (Deuteronomy 28:15)

IF, is a very strong word. It may be a small word, at only two skinny letters, but its a mighty one that packs a punch. IF you obey, you are blessed and IF you do not obey… well… then you’re not blessed. And believe it or not, it is completely possible to be blessed in many areas of your life and still be cursed in others. Your disobedience to the laws of God (love your neighbor as yourself) brings havoc and heartache, period. And the disobedience that brings the most havoc and heartache? Sexual immorality – adultery, porn, homosexuality, bestiality, you name it! And the worst part is, it’s not just physical sexual immorality that brings curses,  it’s spiritual sexual immorality too! How many times in the Old Testament did the LORD refer to the nation of Israel as an adulterous nation? A LOT! As a nation, they were following the physical rules and yet their hearts had been led astray! They had allowed other things to get between their God and themselves. God’s flow of blessing is permanent, it can not be broken or stopped, but it can be redirected when you put up blessing blockades between yourself and God when you sin.

Categories: The Crazy Mom Blog | Tags: , , , , , , ,

They

Posted on December 19, 2011 by Tamar

Once upon a time, in a high school far far away from here there lived a cute, short, curly-haired Freshman girl who had a friend named Carey. At this same school, with the same friend there was a Senior football player. He was handsome and funny and was extremely muscular. On the first day of school, the girl was nervous at lunch time. “Who will be in my lunch group with me this year?” she wondered, “Who will I sit with?” As she emerged from the lunch line and into the bright lunchroom she immediately spotted her friend Carey, a senior on her dance squad. She rushed over to see if she could sit with her. “Of course!” Carey said, and the girl sat down relieved that there was at least one familiar face in her lunch group. Next, Carey’s other friend, the Senior football player came up and asked if he could sit with Carey too! Seeing as how there was plenty of room and he was her friend too they said “sure”.

Almost every day after that, lunch was spent with these three friends chatting over one thing or another, high school issues, those kinds of things. And the more the girl got to know the boy, the more the girl liked the boy. He was fun to be with, he liked a lot of the same things that she liked. But the best thing of all was how he made her laugh. He had such a strange sense of humor that she just adored about him. After several months of this, Carey and the girl were waiting in the lunch line when the boy walked up behind the girl and covered her eyes with his hands, “Guess who?” he said. Of course she guessed immediately, and he let go of her eyes and stepped into line next to the girls to wait for lunch. That afternoon Carey, their mutual friend, mentioned to each of them that they might make a cute couple. Hmmmmm…. But alas, at the time he was single and she wasn’t, maybe it wasn’t meant to be.

However, it wasn’t long before the girl broke up with the boy that she was seeing and took a bit more interest in the boy. He WAS handsome, very handsome now that she was looking a little closer. And wow! Look at those arms, he MUST lift weights, a lot! But, it was too late for her now too, he was asking another girl out by now. Siiiiiigh……

By this time Christmas was getting nearer and nearer and it was basketball season at the school. The girl was busy preparing for the halftime shows at the games and the boy was busy preparing for wrestling season (Oh, yeah, he wrestles too), and pursuing that other girl. So our girl started focusing less on the boy and more on her dancing, and a little on school too. The time came around for the dance squad gift exchange and the girls all filled out their short wish lists, placed them in a bag and then one by one drew them out to see who they had for the Secret Santa gift exchange. The girl, just as a joke put the boy’s name at the bottom of her wish list, because EVERYONE on the dance squad knew that she liked him and whoever got her list would think it was funny. Little did she know, but her friend Carey had gotten her list! The last few weeks of school went by quickly and the girl quickly forgot about her little “addition” to her list. The night of the last game of the year came around and there was a dance planned for after the game. All the girls from the squad were planning on going together, it was the last dance of the year before Christmas, they HAD to go! The game ended and the girl was in a small storage room next to the band room putting her things away when she looked up to see the boy changing his shirt. She nearly swooned at his rippling muscles! “Ahhhhh,” she sighed, “maybe someday”, as the boy then walked past her to the hallway on his way to somewhere else in the school.

Suddenly Carey came storming into the storage room with her coat. “Why does she have her coat?” the girl thought, “I thought she was staying for the dance.”

“I have another present for you!” Carey said with a giant grin.

“OK” the girl said suspiciously, one eyebrow cocked to the air. They had already done their gift exchange and she had said nothing of more gifts being in store for her, what was going on? Carey flung her coat over the girl’s head and led her in the direction that the boy had just gone. She wanted to say that she had no clue what was going on, but she did have one glimmering hope that it would be the one thing that she expected the least to get from a colorguard gift exchange. As Carey wrangled her into the hallway the rest of the girls in the squad chattered and giggled excitedly in a circle around her as she came to stop in front of two red wrestling shoes on the hallway floor. Carey asked her, “are you ready for your surprise?” “I guess so”, she replied, what DO you say in a moment like that? When Carey pulled the coat off her head the girl raised her eyes from the shoes on the floor to the jean wearing legs that were attached to them, to the familiar black shirt that she had just swooned over moments before, to the absolutely beaming face of that handsome Senior football player she’d had her heart set on for the last few months. The look on his face was PRICELESS to say the least, he was so proud of the fact that she had asked for him for Christmas and that he was able to deliver that gift himself. A trophy date for the dance to be sure! She nearly passed out as ALL the blood in her body seemed to flock instantly to her face! Boy, he sure was cute, and all hers for the night. After months of crossing paths, there they were, both single and staring at each other… with the entire dance squad standing around them watching! They all walked off toward the cafeteria where the dance was being held that night, the boy and the girl still in a bit of a daze as to what to do with themselves. The girl asked the boy, “I thought you liked Katie, what happened?” He said, “she told me ‘no’ because she knew that you liked me”. It looks like things might actually work out for these two.

The next Monday at lunch the girl found herself sitting alone for some reason, I don’t remember why. Until just a few minutes before the lunch bell rang. She was just getting ready to get up and take her tray to the kitchen when the boy came strolling through the lunchroom door headed right for her lonely table. He plopped himself down and said “I’ve got a question for ya”. “OK” she replied, “what’s up?” He tossed his huge class ring across the table at her and said “will you go out with me?” As she sat there watching the ring spin like a top in the middle of the round table, what else could she say but “YES!”? And right there, in that small town school lunch room she and he became “they”. “They’re a couple now”, “they’re dating now”, “they’re an item now”. And they were, and have been for the last SEVENTEEN years, today. I am that girl, my husband is that boy, and he still makes me swoon when he takes his shirt off! Our “they” has increased from just the two of us, to the four of us plus two cats and a tank full of fish. As for everything in between that day and this day? Well, most of that is for another day’s blog, but parts of it can also be found in our book True Intimacy, the story of how our love became cursed through the sin of pre-marital sex and then adultery. And how Jesus redeemed that love and broke the curse, and the details on how you too can have a truly intimate marriage! Jesus can help, He helped us, and He’s more than willing to help you too! Trust me, it’s TOTALLY worth it. I thought that we had lost that high school romance long ago, but we hadn’t lost it, we had just cursed it, pushed it back away from us with our sins. But with God’s help we learned how to change all that, how to get that lovey feeling back, only it was better this time. Because it had depth and meaning and healing in it. Yes, this time our love was rich and real and founded on what it should’ve been founded on it the beginning, JESUS and His grace. I am more desperately in love with my husband today than I ever was seventeen years ago, and this morning as I snuggled up to him in bed I told him just that, and then said “and just think, if I love you this much more now than I did then, how much MORE will I love you seventeen years from today???” And he squeezed me tight in his warm and still very muscular arms and said “I love you” in that way that always makes my heart melt for him.

God has blessed us with something that many couples never get, a second chance at love with the person they fell in love with in the beginning. Through what I can only account as the grace of God, we have stayed together through some really tough stuff, and I can’t even begin to tell you how grateful I am for it! The love that I feel for this man is so much deeper than anything I’ve ever felt for anyone in my entire life. And honestly, that’s only possible because of the forgiveness and TIME that we have invested into each other. Neither one of us was willing to give up on “us” when I was so very ready to give up on him. During those cursed years of our relationship, which in all honesty was the majority of those seventeen years, we stuck together, many times just for the sake of sticking together. But I can’t tell you how glad I am today that we did stick it out despite those really cursed years. It’s funny how breaking a curse can change things. Happy things happen now, and we’re happy, not so happy things happen now… and we somehow manage to still find happiness, in each other. Nothing is perfect, and we’re just as not-perfect as everyone else, but we’ve found joy in our not-perfect-ness though. 🙂

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Comfort: Day 5 Spiritual Stay-cation

Posted on December 10, 2011 by Tamar

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.” 2 Corinthians 1:3-7

Last night my little baby girl Anna had an ear ache. The moment we pulled into the driveway from ballet pictures she started sobbing “my ear hurts”. And she didn’t stop whimpering about it until I put her to bed. Honestly, I figured it was the barometric pressure from the snow on it’s way and didn’t think too terribly much of her pain because I knew she was tired and really just needed to sleep. So I was encouraging her to push through her pain to get ready for bed. When she laid down her whimper turned more to tears and my heart was aching for her. I knew it hurt but there wasn’t really anything I could do for her. So I laid my hands on her little ears and prayed for her while I sang her favorite song “Jesus Loves Me”. I accidentally sang the first verse twice and by the time I got to the end of the second verse and was starting the third, she was in peaceful sleep. I lingered by her sleeping side, praying for her healing rest, staring into the still tear-stained face, that just moments ago was filled with pain and was now covered in peace. How blissful sleep can be.

It wasn’t even thirty minutes later that she started crying in her sleep. That’s when reality really started to sink in for me. She hadn’t been crying from fatigue and a little pain, she had been crying from real pain! My tough mom heart broke into a million pieces when it hit the floor. No longer aching for her it was crying out with her! I was desperate! How could I make her pain stop? I prayed with more sincerity “LORD! What can I do for her??? She’s really hurting!” His reply? “Nothing, she has to go through this.”

Her sleepy cries of pain eased momentarily and I scrambled to get ready for bed myself. I put pillows and a blanket on the couch and turned down all the lights in the living room so that when her cries rose again I could be there for her. While I couldn’t make the pain go away completely, I could hold her in her sleep, comfort her just by knowing I was enduring the pain with her. Making SURE she didn’t feel alone in her pain.

At about a quarter to nine, just as the make-shift bed on the couch was prepared, her tortured cries of pain started up again. (And I’m not exaggerating when I say tortured either, because that’s what it was, torture, for both of us.) I scurried into her room, where my own tear-filled eyes found her covers already askew from her flailing. My poor precious baby!!!!! I snatched her from her lonely bed and clung to her ever lengthening frame. Her toes, once upon a time only come to my breasts, now hanging down past my knees, swung gently back and forth as I carried her limp and exhausted body to our place of mutual rest and suffering for the night.

As we lay down belly to belly together, she snuggled her head into the familiar comfort of my chest, still sobbing, but maybe not quite as loudly as before. Sean came up behind me and just stood watching the two of us for a moment before he went out on his run. Huh, I didn’t think of it at the time, but he was possibly more tortured about all this than I was. I moved so quickly to comfort her myself that he never got a chance to even blink let alone move to help! There’s nothing like wanting to help someone and you can’t. You feel useless. (I’m sorry Beloved!) Seeing that everything was being done that could be, he turned around and went for his nightly run. A few minutes after he left Anna began writhing in pain, unconsciously kicking me and wailing. I held her tightly, letting her know “Mommy’s here” and softly praying over her head, and eventually the pain ebbed from her body, her muscles relaxed and she was at peace once again. After that her cries and writhing started lessening each time – Thank You God!

Around eleven Daddy came back into the living room. He gently touched my outside arm to wake me up and asked “Want me to take over?” His turn to help had finally arrived. He pulled back the blanket and gently lifted her from on top of me into his loving gentle arms. “She’s hot” he said, “I know” I answered. He situated himself in his recliner for the night as I headed off to our own luxuriously large bed all alone, well, with the cat.

As I snuggled myself down under the comforter I prayed for them both, that they would rest well and realized that this is precisely what Paul was talking about in 2 Corinthians 1:3-7. The God of all comfort. There are trials and pains that we just have to go through in life, for one reason or another. Things that God is using to ever so lovingly mold and shape us into the creation He wants us to be. And during those times He is desperate to comfort us, in any way that He can without ruining the purpose of the suffering. He hears our tortured cries and He starts preparing things to comfort us immediately. He moves into action immediately, He does not wait. He doesn’t even wait for us to ask Him for comfort, because many times we’re asleep to the fact that we even need it. Jesus lays His loving hand on our heads and prays for us and our complete healing. Not just the easing of the pain, but HEALING. And when we cry out, He lifts us up out of our lonely bed of suffering and moves us to a bigger bed prepared for mutual suffering. A place where He can hold us, soothe us, and pray over us all night long through our moaning, tears and fitful sleep of agony. And right at the eleventh hour, the Father comes along and tells Jesus it’s His turn now. And so the Father comes and lifts us from Jesus’ arms into His own and carries us to His throne (you gotta believe He’s got the BEST recliner in ALL of history!) where we lay with our ear pressed to His chest for the rest of the night until we wake up feeling strangely better and He asks us, “Are you ready to go back to your own bed now?” and we walk painlessly back to where we started the night. Healed and happier having slept through the whole thing… sort of.

I looked up the verse “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted”, and looked up the Greek for the word “comforted” and I am so pleased with what I found! Parakaleo is the Greek word translated as “comforted” here and it’s Strong’s definition is (a) I send for, summon, invite, (b) I beseech, entreat, beg, (c) I exhort, admonish, (d) I comfort, encourage, console. Now I don’t know about you, but when I read that definition the thing that strikes me more than anything is the personal nature of the word. I send… I beseech… I exhort… I comfort, the person speaking the “parakaleo” is the one who is personally doing the action. They’re not talking about someone else performing the action for them, THEY are the one doing it. In Matthew 5:4 where we find this verse, it isn’t just anybody saying these words, it’s Jesus Himself. Jesus was telling His disciples, and us, that when we are comforted, HE is the one doing the comforting. He is the one who sent them your way. He is the one comforting you through that other person, being His hands and feet. He is the one holding you through that dark night. He is the one wiping all your tears away from your face and making it all better.

Isn’t our God AWESOME!?! How can you not love a God like that?

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” Matthew 5:3-12

“He will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces; He will remove the disgrace of His people from all the earth. The LORD has spoken. In that day they will say, ‘Surely this is our God; we trusted in Him, and He saved us. This is the LORD, we trusted in Him; let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation.” Isaiah 25: 8-9

“The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion – to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of His splendor.” Isaiah 61:1-3

“For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; He will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” Revelation 7:17

“As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, ‘Where is your God?’ These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thansgiving among the festive throng. Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God. My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember You from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon – from the Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me. By day the LORD directs His love, at night His song is with me – a prayer to the God of my life. I say to God my Rock, ‘Why have You forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?’ My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, ‘Where is your God?’ Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God.” Psalm 42

“The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters, He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.” Psalm 23

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Spiritual Stay-cation Day 4: Because Jesus loves YOU

Posted on December 9, 2011 by Tamar

Well, I had a great talk with my mom last night reassuring her of my newly retrieved peace (thanks to God commanding me to put everything down for a week and let Him carry it instead). I am realizing that I’ve been carrying too much myself, including my old self “Tyra”. I’ve talked about her a couple of times over the past six months of blogging. She seems to pop back up into life occasionally, usually through friends who accidentally call me Tyra still… and then the accidental slip becomes a habit. Or in the case of most of my family members where I haven’t ever really explained to them the whole name change thing. Honestly, it’s not something that’s very easy for most people TO understand. “You changed your name… because God told you to??? O…K…” then they smile and nod and quickly change the subject. Some have even gone so far as to tell me I’m crazy, hence “The Crazy Mom Blog”.

Most people don’t understand going through a life change dramatic enough to warrant a change of name. Yet, really, when I really think about it, it was less that my life changed and more that my view of God changed. My view of myself changed because I was suddenly seeing my life through God’s eyes instead of my own. That changes a person in ways that most people can’t understand, because they’ve never had it happen to them. And I pray for that kind of change for them! Most people can stand to have a personal encounter with God that changes their entire outlook on themselves and the world around them. I can’t tell you how many times I have cried out to God on their behalf, praying that they would have a PERSONAL INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP with Christ even more intimate than mine is. That they would know Him the way Adam “knew” Eve in Genesis 4:1, with a kind of knowing that only husbands and wives share with each other, the kind of knowing that brings about children and fruit and offspring and seeds.

I haven’t always had this intimate of a relationship with Jesus, even though I’ve always been a church attending Christian. But just like sitting in a garage doesn’t make me a car, sitting in churches never made me a Christian. Anyway, there came a time in my life when I started actively seeking God out of a heart of wanting to know Him more. I was going to a Friday morning Bible study at a local church with some friends. I had attended Bible studies before, but it was really more out of a need for fellowship in a place where I knew no one that anything else. In this study, however, I already HAD the fellowship with the people around me and so through that Bible study I started seeking fellowship with the One we were studying. Through studying God’s word I came to know Him more, and the more I knew of Him the more I wanted to know Him. I wanted to experience Him the way Beth Moore was telling us that we could. There was something about the way that she talked about Him, the way she lit up when she said His name. She wasn’t just teaching because it was her calling, she was teaching because she had a true passion for the One she was teaching about. She had something in her that called out to me like a moth to a flame. I wanted that fire in ME, I wanted the passion that she had for what she was talking about. Through her I started to realize that the hunger I’d had my entire life wasn’t for the things I thought it had been for, it was for HIM. It was a hunger for a relationship with HIM! And OH! When I started setting aside my religion for a RELATIONSHIP, *romantic sign…..* I got what I had always been hungering for. And so much more!

Just like a true bride, when she gets married she is thrilled to take her new husband’s name, I too took a new name. You know how most pastor’s will say that they were called into the ministry? Well, although I was not called to be a pastor, I too have been called. And in that calling has come a LOT of changes. God has taken me through some really wild rides and experiences that you do NOT want to know about let alone experience. To prepare me for this calling on my life, I have seen things that most people never see, and most people would never believe. When I laid down my life to follow God’s call, I laid down the name that went along with that life. And I picked up the name that symbolizes this new life within my bones.

But that doesn’t mean that the old name (and everything that goes with it) hasn’t persistently followed me since then! Oh NO! The sentimental and emotional cord that has bound me to Tyra started out quite short and she followed along behind me very closely. And slowly but surely, bit by bit I’ve consistently tried to sever that cord between my old self and my new self. But the only thing my scissors have done is make the cord longer. And every time she follows behind me a bit farther; so that I THINK she’s gone… but then she just comes bounding back up again with those eyes that just plead “You know you really do love me. You really do want to keep me.” And for a while I’ll look into those eyes and think, it’s just a name, does it really matter what these other people call me? What they call me doesn’t define who I really am. But allowing them to think that I am still that person, by allowing them to still call me that dead person’s name, is lying to them. I let it go for the sake of trying to be polite and not correct people, but the truth is, that’s just not who I am anymore and I need to be honest with myself and them.

In first Chronicles chapter four verses nine through ten we read about a man named Jabez. Now some of you may be familiar with his story, hidden within a huge list of names, but for those who are not:

“Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. His mother had named him Jabez, saying ‘I gave birth to him in pain.’ Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, ‘Oh, that You would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let Your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.’ And God granted his request.”

Now “Jabez” sounds like the Hebrew word for “pain”. His name means pain. His mother called him “pain” his entire life as a reminder that she gave birth to him in pain. There is power in a name because the name of something defines it. When I say “basket ball” you don’t just think about the ball that get’s thrown into baskets, you think about the ball, the sport, the court, the players, the fun, the cheers, everything that is related to basket ball is defined in those two small words – its name. The definition of Jabez’s life to that point, was pain. When he cried out to the One who can do all things, he asked (of all things) to be free from the one thing that had plagued him for his entire life, pain!

How many of us have had pain plague us throughout our entire lives??? You know, there are two different kinds of pain, physical and spiritual. I personally have experienced both and between the two I can say hands down that Spiritual pain is the worst! Because spiritual pain is a pain that doesn’t go away when you rub it, there’s no pill that you can pop to make spiritual pain go away. When your body is in pain there is a multitude of ways that humanity has come up with to ease that pain… but when your spirit is hurting there’s only one cure. Jesus. Sure, we’ve come up with lots of ways to attempt to substitute some other forms of spiritual cures, from booze, to food, to sex, to violence, but when we really get right down to it, they’re all just substitutes. Like aspartame is a substitute for real sugar, that tastes nothing like real sugar and has horrible side effects, so do these substitutes. They’re nothing like the real thing and they leave behind them horrible side effects and after tastes. Jesus is the One and only true healer of ALL pain, in all of its forms and functions. Jesus is the only one that has the ability to free us from the pain that plagues our souls day in and day out. And when we cry out to Him He can and does free us from that pain. No, the physical pain may or may not leave, but the spiritual pain ALWAYS does.

One hundred percent of our spiritual pain comes from sin. And it may not even be sins that we ourselves committed, it may have been the sins that our ancestor’s committed, or our relatives, or even our neighbors or friends! Our society stresses individuality and the Enemy likes to try to get us to think that our actions only effect us, but nothing could be farther from the truth! Our actions, good or evil, create waves in the air around us. They change our own reactions and the reactions of the people around us, which changes the reactions of the people around them. Nothing that we do, stands alone. Nothing that we do DOESN’T leave a point of impact or change something in the environment around us. Nothing.

I know that my own sins have caused me pain and the pain that I experienced changed me… but it has also changed the people around me too. Through my healing from that pain, came my greatest transformation. A new birth, a new name, a new career, a new lifestyle, pretty much a new everything! From my pain I’ve written a whole book on the sins of my past and how I was transformed from that pain they brought about. An excruciating pain deep in my soul that I couldn’t seem to wrap my brain around or ease with my finger, and yet it throbbed in my heart all the same. Outwardly I looked fine, but inwardly I wasn’t. I couldn’t ever define HOW I was in pain, or where it was really coming from. Until I started earnestly crying out for God to fix the thing that was wrong, whatever it was it was causing me pain and a lot of it! I wanted it gone! And God granted my request. It wasn’t at all the way I thought He would grant it, and yet it was exactly the way it needed to be.

That pain I used to experience, I see it in the eyes of the people I interact with day in and day out. I recognize that pain, because I’ve lived that pain. Oh! For so long I lived in that excruciating un-named pain… and I’ve been freed from it. God gave me a new name because He freed me from the pain that was attached to the old name. “Tyra”, while a perfectly good name, defines that time in my life filled with the pain of past sins plaguing me and tying me up from the blessings God was trying to pour out over me. Tyra, like an umbrella, was blocking God’s blessings and favor from reaching all the way down to me and causing them to flow to the sides of me instead. Tyra was a beautiful person, she loved others, she loved God, but she turned herself into an idol and got in her own way. Tyra made a HUGE mistake and suffered for it for 13 years. But she didn’t suffer alone, she brought her friends and her family and her boyfriend and then her husband in on the pain as well. Misery loves company and so did Tyra. Tyra is a slave. A slave to sin, and pride, and fear. She’s a slave to lust and gluttony and adultery. Sure, Tyra did a lot of really good things too, but all of them were done through the filter of sin and slavery.

When Tyra cried out to God for help, that He would bless her, enlarge her territory, that His hand would be upon her, keep her from harm so that she would be free from pain, He didn’t just grant her request, He leapt for joy. Simply at the fact that she had finally asked HIM. God was so happy that day, that after years of being in pain and searching for answers she had FINALLY come to the ONE WHO COULD GIVE HER THE ANSWERS AND THE HEALING TOO! When she cried out to God that He would bless her, He did so much more than simply bless her, He has consistently enlarged her territory (to the point that it is starting to make her uncomfortable – not that that’s a bad thing!) He has kept His hand upon her, directing her steps and making them more and more sure every day. He has most definitely kept her from more harm that even she could ever imagine!!!!! But the best part of all, He has freed her from the pain. And to signify that freedom from pain He blessed her with a new name. Tamar. A name that symbolizes strength in adversity, fruit in the wilderness, love for the unloved, water for the thirsty and food for the hungry. Tamar symbolizes light for those in darkness, hope for those in desperation, Tamar is a bride of Christ.

I am Tamar, who are you? What does your name mean to you? How does it define you? Is it holding you back? Or is it pushing you forward toward Christ?

Just like Saul, Tyra lived her religion most days of her life, until she came face to face with the One her religion was named after. Have you come face to face with the One your religion was named after? Many people today claim Christianity and yet know very little about what it really means to be a Christian. The every day practices of a Christian vary depending on what denomination you talk to, but the core, the center, the HEART of Christianity has very little to do with religion. It’s ALL about RELATIONSHIP. It’s about having one, with THE ONE. 🙂 Tyra lived her religion, Tamar lives her relationship. Don’t just go through the motions of religion, live them. Don’t pray for the sake of praying, pray because you want to carry on a conversation with the One who heals; because Jesus loves you. Don’t go to church because it’s something Christians do, go to church because He’s told us not to forsake gathering together with fellow believers; because Jesus loves you. Don’t get involved in volunteering because it’s the right thing to do, do it because He’s asked us to be His hands and feet; because Jesus loves you. Jesus loves YOU. Jesus came and fought religion because He doesn’t want empty rituals and empty sacrifices, He wants a marriage relationship with YOU. If that relationship involves a ritual or two, and what relationship doesn’t, then that’s OK. But it’s not the ritual that He wants, it’s not the ritual that He loves, He loves YOU!

Most parents go through a bed time ritual with their children. Usually because the routine of it bring the child comfort in its predictability, it helps the child know what time it is and prepares them for sleep, and they’re fun. As the parent, you don’t go through the ritual just to do the ritual, you go through it for your child’s benefit. There are parts of it that you enjoy and benefit from, but you do it for their sake, not wholly your own. God is the same way. He’s given us rituals to follow to bring us comfort in their predictability, especially when life is so unpredictable! He’s given us rituals to help us know and remember what time it is and to prepare us for what is coming next. But it’s not the rituals that He loves, it’s not the customs we have or the words that we say that He loves, it’s us. The rituals and customs and rules are supposed to REMIND us of Him and His unending love for us. And it’s easy to get so caught up in these things that we forget to look to whom they are pointing. They’re supposed to be pointing us to a relationship with Jesus, to an ever new level of intimacy with Him until we finally get to go home and know Him as we are known. That is what a relationship with Him is about, constantly getting to know Him better. That’s what any relationship is about! You don’t stop getting to know your husband the day you get married, that’s the day you REALLY start to get to know him!

I challenge you today to be thoughtful in what way you can get to know Jesus better; today and every day here after. He is desperate for you, are you desperate for Him? If not, ask Him why you aren’t and start seeking ways to become desperate for Him; hungry for His presence His touch in your life. It’s like a drug that isn’t illegal and shouldn’t ever be, are you addicted to Him? Do you wanna be? I’ve got some you can try, it’s the really good stuff, the kind that you NEVER come down off of either. Because He promises to NEVER leave you or forsake you, not ever; because Jesus loves you.

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Day 3 of my Spiritual Stay-cation

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Tamar

Well folks, the time “off” has been helping. I can honestly say that I am doing better today. Yesterday afternoon when I went to go pick up Gabe from Good News Club at school I stopped by the grocery store to pick up another two dozen eggs to replace the ones that went missing. And hey! I was in luck and they had the 18 packs that I really wanted the day before. SCORE! So I bought two, because ya know, with Christmas baking and all I would need more right?

Then when we got back home I had the kids start picking up their toys and cleaning the house while I worked on the dishes in the kitchen and got the counters almost completely cleared back off again. Hallelujah! I had some broken Christmas tree ornaments drying on one counter so I went to hang them up on the tree and I didn’t even cry when the whole tree fell over!!! I *almost* lost it, but I didn’t! YAY! That’s a sure sign that my stress levels are going down! Time with God alone really does help! Amazing!

Gabe and I decided that we should just have egg sandwiches for dinner so that we would have more time to clean the house up, that and we had lots of eggs now! Then Sean called, he had stopped on his way home and bought two dozen eggs! I about fell on the floor laughing (for real)! Now we had FIVE dozen eggs! Thank You Lord… I think. Looks like I’ll be making a LOT of divinity this year for Christmas. 🙂

Last night we decided to let the cat sleep on the end of the bed, big mistake! She scratched and scratched all night long until Sean finally kicked her out of our room, then Anna woke up at 4 AM! Why???? But you know what, it was OK, because I had taken several naps during the day while I was camped out on the couch writing so it didn’t bother me a bit and I was still able to get up at 5 bright and chipper and ready to praise the Lord. And I’ve been going strong ever since.

I have to admit that I haven’t really spent so much time in the word today as yesterday, but instead I’ve been working on getting a new blog site together. The original one at www.TamarMinistries.net wasn’t able to provide a “subscribe” feature and this new one does! I’ve been praying about that since MAY! Hallelujah! So all day today I’ve been working on moving things over and getting settled into my new home here at http://www.tamarknochel.wordpress.com

God has really been showing me a lot lately how He’s been setting all these things into place for me so that when His timing is right everything will line up and the promises He has made will come to fruition. In His timing and in His way. And I trust that. I don’t want anything that isn’t in His timing and His way, because then it’s at best still only second best. And I want His BEST for me and my family, I want His dream for us. I want His goal for us. I want His blessings and favor for us, no matter what they look like. I know that He loves me and I trust that any decision He makes will be made completely out of love for me. Period.

Have you been wondering what my Spiritual Stay-cation has looked like? Day 1 looked like shopping with my friend Kelly, Day 2 looked like sitting on the couch the whole time Gabe was at school, Day 3 has looked like sitting on the computer all day, all three days have been cutting out absolutely all things that don’t entail feeding my family (which I have made as minimalistic as possible). I called off Bible study today and Monday night, and volunteering at the school too. I have made myself and my stress-level a priority, if something starts to frustrate me I stop it and walk away. I have turned the ringer off of my phone, it’s still on and I’m checking it periodically, but it’s amazing to me how the lack of those message tones has been so amazingly peaceful! I’ve come to realize that they’re like little voices saying “Pay attention to ME! I need your immediate attention!” No, they DON’T need my immediate attention, my family and my God need my immediate attention everyone else will just have to wait until I get around to answering your messages! God bless a silent phone! Basically I have set these seven days aside as a Sabbath rest week. My own little vacation with God on the mountain of Shalom peace. Lord, thank You for strongly suggesting that I do this, I can’t thank You enough for the rest I have been finding in letting these things go by the wayside for a time! I pray that next Monday come slowly! I am really enjoying this private time with You!!! I LOVE YOU LORD!!!!

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