Posts Tagged With: family

“Family Affair” with Guest Writer Dalaiah Hepburn

Posted on June 15, 2013 by Mrs Knochel

061313_0054_IsThataSire1.jpg 1 Chronicles 4:24-7:29

Dalaiah Hepburn is back with us today! Yay! I am so excited to share her writing with you! Plus, this time she brought me cupcakes mmmmmm……. Those I won’t be sharing with you. 😉 If you would like to visit her TransparenMe blog click here. Or her other blog, Not so Empty Nest Days, click here. Dalaiah thank you so much for coming back today. Let’s all give her a nice round of applause as she takes the stage.

*Thunderous Round of Applause*

I have a big enough family, both on my mom’s side and my dad’s. for whatever reason, I know my dad’s side more than I do my mom’s. I also notice something about my dad’s family. As far as I can tell, they are into children’s work. I don’t know how far back it goes or when this legacy started but its there and my brother, myself and even my kids are showing this trait of desire to work with or for kids, from teacher all the way to advocate. Just like in this genealogy, I’m sure we have some kin we love to be around, some we don’t. Some we flock to, some we duck from and then there are the ones no one can remember how they are kin to us!
Jabez, earlier in the text (v9-10), was one of the family members we would have asked as we saw him walking in the room or backyard, “now how is he related? I see his mama, but who is his daddy?” The other thing we would have noticed about him is that he, “more honorable than his brothers.” But he didn’t notice it. How many times has someone told you how gifted you are in an area and you thank them, though not believing it because of the torment you lived with in another area of life. Ouch!!

This is really a part of the Bible I struggle with. Can I say that out loud and still be looked at the same? I skim the genealogies not so much because I don’t care, but because all I see is and this one begat this one, this one begat this one, this one, this one and two others by his helpmaid. It’s just not as active as Judges 15:4-16!! Now Sampson read like an action packed movie!! But because it is in God’s Word, it’s important. That’s when it began to hit me, quite recently actually. Like right as I was writing this, what’s in the genealogy of Jacob’s sons is family and how different they are yet still blood.

We are actually able to see what Jacob had spoken over his sons and grandsons come forth. In the latter part of chapter 4, we see the family lining up and starting their own family trees, some of great worth, some not so great yet not counted out. In chapter 5, speaks of Reuben’s lineage and how sin can cast you out of the place of honor you were once in (his birthright was as firstborn) but not out all together. We also see others lineage as faithful, as small, as disobedient. In chapter 6, we literally see the birth of the Levites. We see the birth of Aaron, Miriam and Moses (in that order) and the understanding of their portion being the LORD. These were those set apart for Him. Chapter 7 gives no explanation of the omitting of Zebulun and Dan but they are visibly absent. This chapter ends speaking of where Joseph’s sons are…. and the saga continues right up to Jesus!

Whew!! What I pulled out of that is that we all have families we don’t get to choose. Some good, some bad and some…. yeah pray for those ones! But in our lineage, they were family before we knew it. And they left a legacy for us. Our forefathers and patriarchs, or matriarchs in some families, paved the way for a path. What I love about Christ is that when you surrender, this is no longer your path! When the path is filled with addictions, so on and so forth, our life in Christ is what now defines us! On the flip side, there are some whose lineage is success, fame, power, blah blah blah and when they surrender He may call them out of that! Only he knows what your path is in your Jesus journey! Your family cannot make or break you. The biggest thing I pulled away was that this was all BEFORE Christ! These folks had family lines they had to walk out due to the prophetic speaking of Jacob and his “blessings.” Our families don’t have to be that way!
My family is marked with all sorts of generational curses, but once I surrendered, Jesus’ blood covered me and I broke those with His authority! I now speak life and cancel every assignment made by the enemy for my kids! But it doesn’t stop there. Just speaking it isn’t enough! We must walk it out, no matter what!

Have you had a sordid, rough past? That doesn’t make you who you are, HE does! I leave you with this saying that God gave me as I did devotion one day, blessings!

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Categories: 1 Chronicles, 365 Life, Writing Through the Bible in a Year | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

Healed

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Mrs Knochel

2 Kings 1:1 – 3:27

Word of the Day:

“from now on neither death nor miscarriage shall come from it.” So the water has been healed to this day, according to the word Elisha spoke. 2 Kings 2:21-22

I have to tell you no sweeter words could I have read today. The leap of my spirit when my eyes fell on the word “miscarriage” was physically noticeable. In the last few weeks I have felt surrounded by infant death! Two miscarriages (one at only five weeks and the other at 7 months), a cousin’s daughter born with intestine problems fighting for her life, another relative through marriage trying to adopt and hitting dead ends… it’s just been too much. I mean, it’s one thing to be surrounded by death, but the deaths of infants, well it just seems so wrong.

Yet God is Sovereign and just and wise and I know that He knows best, even when it doesn’t feel good.

So today as I was just getting started in my reading I got a text that the relative through marriage was on a plane home with her “officially theirs” baby! We were so excited to hear that her waiting and dead ends were over! Hooray! But then a column of reading later there it is! The Word of the Lord that Elisha spoke, “from now on neither death nor miscarriage”! I believe that not only was that a word for them then, but that it’s a word for me and my friends and family now! Why else would God have paired it with a PERFECTLY timed text like that? That news of great joy could have come at any time but God wanted me to receive it WHILE I was reading; which (I might add) was at a much later time of day than normal… coincidence I think not!

Yes. While there may be naysayers out there who would chalk it all up to coincidence, I refuse to do so. My God has perfect timing and He knows how to use it. He really is an awesome God!

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Give a book bible button

I wanted to make you aware of some ministry updates. I am very excited to announce that I have a Mother’s Day speaking engagement scheduled for May 11th. I would LOVE to have books on hand for the women to buy, and even some to give away as gifts. However, the current funds in the ministry account are running drastically low. If you are able, I would love for you to prayerfully consider giving a book or Bible to someone who can’t afford one. If you are able, please click here!

Categories: 1 Kings, 365 Life, Waiting, Writing Through the Bible in a Year | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

It’s all About Attitude

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Mrs Knochel

As a stay at home mom and nap-time writer (who doesn’t usually get a nap-time to write anymore) you could say I’m a busy gal. There are always dishes to fold and clothes to unload, kids to shuttle from here to there, a husband to tend to, church activities and Bible studies to do and attend, loved ones to care for, friends to love… *wipes the sweat from her brow*… it’s a lot to handle for one girl. I’m positive you can relate! With everything tugging at us from all sides how is a modern mom like me supposed to get everything done without forsaking my relationship with God, my daily quiet time? He is the only way I can get through my day, so how can I fit it all in? I know that I need to build my day around Him and not the other way around. I also know that we all make time for the things we want to do. BUT sometimes the things we feel we have to do start to push everything else off the calendar square. Our priorities start to get skewed.

When doing anything, our heart attitude is what matters most to God, because it is our heart attitude that drives our actions. (Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.) Lets pretend for a moment that we’re planting a garden. Our heart attitude is the seeds that are planted, our actions are the outward appearance of those seeds, and the end results of our actions are the plants that come from the seeds. If I plant a heart attitude, or seed, of “I have to” do this, rather than a seed from the “I want to” do this attitude, then the plants that spring up from those seeds will be completely different. Although the outward appearance of the seeds, or the actions themselves, were the same, the end results are drastically different. From the “I have to” attitude we generally glean very little from our time with God. Usually because we are much less open to receiving a word of insight or comfort or instruction from Him; we are simply going through the motions of religion. However, from the “I want to” attitude we glean much more from our time simply because we are more open to receiving and it has meaning to us from the very beginning.

I feel like I need to add another attitude phrase. The “I have GOT to” do this attitude. Honestly, that’s the attitude I have walked into my quiet spot with today. I spent a good deal of time last night snuggled in bed working on writing a morning prayer for myself based completely on scripture. I ended up with about 10 scriptures, all very long, and the more I read the more of them I wrote down, until I realized “Lord, if I could, I think I would simply pray the WHOLE Bible over myself every morning! They’re ALL good!” And at that point it was 11pm, my husband was climbing into bed with me and I decided I would work on it tomorrow. Famous last words right!?!

So this morning I jumped out of bed and hit the ground running, packing lunches, making breakfast, dressing kids and walking Gabe out to the bus – practicing memory verses because we hadn’t had time to read any because the egg stuck to the pan; I immediately came in and started Anna’s morning movie (the only TV she gets during the day) and then started attacking the disaster in the kitchen from the weekend, then bounced to my computer to look up something they had mentioned on the radio; but then, the phone rings, it’s my prayer partner Tammy to pray, so I get up, grab my Bible and get on the floor to pray; but she can’t pray long because she’s volunteering at the Crisis Pregnancy Center today so I jump back up to finish the dishes I’d started earlier – but at the same time I’m feeling pulled to finish the new page on the website I’d started before the phone call, and well, there’s that morning prayer I said I’d finish today, and, WOW, I haven’t even prayed ANY morning prayer yet today, let alone write one; and then there’s that blog post I’ve got rolling around in my head that I’d like to start writing down, and I haven’t had my snuggle time with Anna yet – she’s a physical touch love language so, I’ve got to get that in there or she’ll be all over me later… AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! GOD HELP ME!!!!!!! I grabbed my Bible, notebook and pen and fled to my bedroom, closed the door, breathing “Lord, protect Anna and keep her out of trouble while I’m in here!” (remembering what happened to the Israelites while Moses was on the mountain with God for 40 days; no golden calf messes here please LORD) and flung myself on the floor in front of our mirror with all my prayer notes at the bottom, praying “LORD! HELP ME! WHAT DO I DO FIRST??????”

An “I have GOT to” attitude… you know… those moments when I have GOT to pray or I’ll explode from being pulled in a million different directions at once. The attitude that comes around when you realize, hey, I didn’t have my “preventative” time with God earlier so I’d better do it NOW before things get worse.

So, in light of how the last 5 hours of my life has been, I have concluded that A) my life is a run-on sentence, and B) my morning prayer can still be based on scripture without being the whole scripture! And it was at that moment, like a breath of fresh air sweeping through the room, that God pulled the string to the light bulb over my head and BOOM! There was my scripture-based Busy Mom’s Morning Prayer!

Which I will share with you tomorrow. 🙂

Hmmmm…… maybe my day wouldn’t have felt quite so crazy if I had taken 30 seconds to start my day with prayer instead of jumping straight into the day…. we might just talk about that tomorrow too. 🙂

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

The Name

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Mrs Knochel

What IS it about a name that can get people so riled up? Why is it that when I say “Obama”, hackles start to raise, or if I say “Mother Theresa”, you might start to calm down. What about “Hitler” or “Mickey Mouse”? I think it’s because there are a lot of things attached to any name. Just like keys attached to a key ring, ideas, a face, statements, and ideals are attached to names. The name of Jesus gleans many different reactions depending on the person’s relationship with Him and the statement just made about Him. Someone who doesn’t know Him may be curious or cautious. Someone who’s had a bad experience with a Christian in the past may express anger or resentment. With myself, at the mention of the Name of Jesus, an intense sense of peace and joy washes over me and a smile usually creeps across my face – if the statement is simply His name or His truth. But when I hear His name used in a derogatory way I have an intense anger and a defense reflex rises up in me. Hmmmmm…… you want to know how I picture the Enemy’s response to the name of Jesus? I picture them with looks of absolute fear and terror on their faces as they flee in seven different directions!

In John 15:20-21 Jesus tells us to “Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. They will treat you this way because of My name, for they do not know the One who sent Me.” There is POWER in a name. (Jeremiah 10:6) Moral of the story, when you take a step, any step, into Enemy territory in the name of Jesus, expect a battle!

The Enemy will use whomever he can to get to you too, the closer the better! Three years in a row, at harvest time, I have had 1) a very close friendship shatter, 2) a close family incident, and 3) another slightly more distant family incident all because of my bold faith. The past two years it’s been my family concerned for my sanity of all things. Because they’ve thought that I’m too overboard with this “God-thing”. It’s interesting to me, when the first incident with my family occurred I played a bit of Bible roulette (Pray about your situation and ask God for advice then open to a random page and see where your eye falls), and God gave me Mark 3:21. “When His family heard about this, they went to take charge of Him, for they said, “He is out of His mind.” Now, if Jesus’ family, who was present on the day at the wedding when He turned the water into wine, and His mother was quite present on the day of the immaculate conception, would think Him crazy enough to feel they needed to come “take charge of Him”, then of course my family will do that too when I start preaching and ministering in His name! In fact, how could I expect anything less?

Jesus tells us in Luke 12:49-53 “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed! Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” Jesus didn’t come so that everyone would agree… in fact His death caused even more arguing on the earth. And it’s certainly been that way ever since! The life of a disciple of Christ is not going to be like a ride on the lazy river at Holiday World, it’s a battle in the War of Words!

Jesus warns His followers while traveling one day that “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters – yes, even his own life – he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty-thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26-33) Jesus is telling His followers both then and now, that we MUST put Him first ALL the time or we can’t be His disciples. We have to be willing to leave absolutely positively EVERYTHING to be with Him and follow Him every single step of the way, all the way to the cross and beyond. Following Christ, costs some people their lives!

But Jesus also gives us some reassurance too. Peter starts the conversation in this instance, saying to Jesus, “We have left everything to follow You!” “I tell you the truth,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields – and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.” Mark 10:28-31 I can not tell you how closely I have lived this verse! I am still on good terms with my blood family members, but I’m not in nearly as close contact as I used to be with them. But the loss I had with my blood family I have more than doubled in the sisters that I have gained in Christ! The Lord has completely surrounded me with more love from people that I now call family. Some of them I’ve never even met in person before, but yet there’s a tie, a bond there that you simply can’t see or explain other than, we have the same heavenly Father. It’s simply amazing!

Listen to “At Your Name” by Phil Wickham

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If God has used this post to touch your life, please prayerfully consider giving a gift of love, and/or sign up to be a prayer partner by emailing Prayer@TamarMinistries.net.

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

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