Posts Tagged With: love

Lunch Buddies

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Tamar

Hee hee hee!!! I am so excited that I get to blog today! I feels like forever that I’ve been able to come on here and talk to you all!!! I have been SOOO busy getting this next Bible Study up and running and ready. There has been so much going on here behind the scenes and I am seriously on pins and needles waiting to unveil it to you! You’re gonna LOVE it! It seriously is all I can do to contain my glee in this moment, deep breath… It won’t be too much longer, I hope.

I can give you this little peek behind the curtain, the new book/Bible Study cover and title:

Waiting front cover only

Ahhhh… there’s nothing like waiting on a Bible Study about waiting right? You know you love me!

Yup, the writing is finished, the proof copy has been sent to the editor, the front cover is done, it’s so close I can almost taste it! I love being able to see the finish line don’t you!

On Fridays I go to the school to have lunch with the kids. Today, as I was walking up to the school I was wondering if Anna would, for the third week in a row, forget that I was coming and bringing her forgotten lunch and get another one before I got there ending up with three lunches for the two of us. And it just made me think of all the times when we forget that our heavenly Father is bringing something into our lives. He’s coming with something big and exciting and we forget so we work on and worry about that very same thing only to see Him coming around the corner with His version of what we’ve been working on… and it’s SO MUCH BETTER than what we did that our version pales in comparison and we just want to hide it behind our backs.

Every time I have walked into the cafeteria carrying a lunch for my daughter that I know she will love and actually eat, and see her walking to the table with a tray filled with food that I know that she will not eat, God has tapped me on the shoulder and said, “you know you do that too right?” Siiiigh…

Why do we worry and sweat over things that He’s got under control? So often we think, “Oh! This and such doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere God must need me to do something about it. Maybe He needs my help…” No. He doesn’t need your help. He needs your TRUST. He needs for you to believe in Him to do what needs to be done that you can’t do. He needs for us to be still, silent, quiet, peaceful, calm, motionless, carefree, and know that HE is God, that He has it all under control and that when it is time for us to DO something He WILL let us know it.

Once upon a time… OK, all the time, I was worrying over my sins, I was worrying over whether or not I was doing the right thing and God stopped me and said, “I am a good Father, if you’re doing something wrong, I will tell you.”

Oh! He IS a good Father! And He DOES tell us when we’re doing something wrong or when we’re doing something right! We just have to be still enough to be able to hear Him!

Oh how I love being on this phase of writing! There’s nothing like being at the end of a season and looking back over the whole thing and seeing how it all unfolded right before your eyes but couldn’t see it until now. My season of “waiting” is over, I know it, I can feel it down to my bones. God is opening my eyes to so many things right now and it’s amazing. Time is rushing by like a freight train and the rush of wind as it passes is taking my breath away. All I can do right now is laugh. Laugh at God’s sense of humor and irony. Laugh at how perfectly it has all fit together. Laugh at how wonderful He really truly is, and know that I’ve only BARELY scratched the surface.

God’s got my back. I don’t have to worry or fear the future, because I know the One who holds it in the palm of His eternally merciful hand and He loves me enough to die for me. I am so blessed to know this God whose word always proves true. This God who proves His faithfulness to His people in so many abundant ways. This God who fills the earth with so many colors of His love that there is no way to count them all! Yes! This is MY God. This is MY Father who brings me the best lunch I could imagine, so I don’t need to worry about getting my own lunch because I know that His will be so much better in every way!

God bless you my friends! I have missed you!!!!

Categories: 365 Life, The Crazy Mom Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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: , , , , , , , , , ,

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. 🙂

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

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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Heart Hug

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Tamar

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – His good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:1-2

How does GOD want us to worship Him? What is worship that is pleasing to God? These are the questions I left church with on Sunday morning. We’ve had a lot of changes in our church over the last few weeks, with no sign of the changes stopping any time soon either. One of the many changes has been the style of music that we worship with. This change has caused a HUGE disruption amongst the members of my Sunday school class. Many of them have started “double church”ing, as they call it. Where they’re attending Sunday school at our church and then going to a different church to worship. We ended our class this week discussing the things that WE thought our worship service should include, the things we wanted… And as I climbed into our car to leave after service the Holy Spirit knocked on the door of my heart and whispered “What about what I want? What about how I want you to worship on Sunday and every other day?”

I came home that afternoon and pulled out my books, filled with questions about how GOD wants us to worship I started by opening up my Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament words and found that “proskuneo” is the most frequent word rendered “to worship”. It is used of an act of homage or reverence to God, Christ, man, idols, the Beast, etc. Proskuneo is from the Greek words “pros” meaning  “toward” and “kuneo” meaning “to kiss”. I find this particularly interesting since I find worship so personal. Just the idea that when we worship we are kissing toward the person, thing or god that we are worshiping.

In Romans 12 Paul encourages us to be LIVING sacrifices, to live our lives in a continual state of dying to ourselves and allowing the LORD to live through us. To allow Him to pour His love out on others through our skin, our actions, our words, our deeds. But what does this have to do with a Sunday worship service? As all the changes have been occurring, and I have to be honest, I have not been happy with all of them, I have been talking to God a lot about all of it. Wanna know what He told me? “This is not about you.” The Sunday worship service has NOTHING to do with what I want in the music or the theme or the lighting, the feel, the layout of the room or the altar, NOTHING about me. A “worship” service should be all about bringing GOD glory. What does HE want? What does HE want it to look like, feel like, sound like?

You know what I think? I don’t think He cares about any of those things. What He cares about is those hearts that are being lifted up to Him in worship of Him. Through this change I have learned something about myself. I can worship God to ANY style of music. Even the kind that makes me want to fall asleep. How? Because it’s not about the words I’m singing, or even the music I’m singing them to, but rather about how my heart opens up to the LORD when I’m singing them. THAT is what He is seeking, THAT is what He longs for day in and day out. For my heart (and your heart) to open up to Him. To His word, to His touch, to His Truth.

When my husband and I started writing True Intimacy we did not have open hearts. They were closed to each other and they were closed to the LORD. When your heart is closed, just like a door or a window, nothing can come in and nothing can come out. And the things that are inside become stagnant from lack of use. Things like love and caring for others, when unused become weak and useless. When your heart is closed the things inside become dusty and rusty. Making it harder the next time you want to actually use them. BUT, when your heart is open things can move freely from the inside out and vice-versa. Now, this also means that there is a higher likely hood that someone might come along and hurt your heart, this is true. But it also means that there is an even higher likely hood that someone might come along and hug your heart. Have you ever had your heart hugged? I have. It’s when, even though they aren’t actually touching you physically, it feels as if everything inside you is being hugged. Like your heart is going to explode from all the love that is being poured into it at the moment. God hugs my heart often, usually through my family and my soul sisters. Through the things that they say and do and just being with them, loving God with them. Sharing Him with them, telling them what He’s been doing lately and hearing what He’s been up to in their lives as well.

So I guess, as I work through this, I’m discovering more and more that what, I think, God would like to see in a worship service is community. A place where fellow believers can come together and hug each others hearts. Where they can share God with each other, lift each other up in prayer together and shout praises to Him through words and song.  The songs that are sung, shouldn’t matter, just that they are sung with open hearts ready to give and receive God’s love in whatever form He chooses for it to take whether it be reproof or acceptance. Open to hear His word spoken, open to the idea that these hearts aren’t perfect and are in need of a savior who is willing to do anything, including die an excruciating death, to make sure that these hearts get purified and forgiven.

He loves us so tremendously, HOW we worship Him shouldn’t matter to us. Just THAT we worship Him.

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Show and Tell

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Tamar

There is no life, no deed, no word so small that it doesn’t leave an imprint on the world around it.
There is no miscarried or aborted baby that doesn’t leave behind a trail of its existence. There is no smile that doesn’t leave a trace on the heart that it smiled to (or from). There is no word spoken in condemnation that doesn’t rip through the souls of the people who heard it. There is nothing so small that it doesn’t leave behind it a point of impact.
There is a song I used to sing in Sunday School when I was growing up that conveys a poignant message we all need to heed. “Oh be careful little eyes what you see, oh be careful little eyes what you see, for the Father up above is looking down with love oh be careful little eyes what you see. Oh be careful little ears what you hear… Oh be careful little hands what you do… Oh be careful little lips what you say… Oh be careful little feet where you go… For the Father up above is looking down with love of be careful little ________ what you do.”
Every action in this world has a reaction, every pebble, no matter how small, leaves ripples in the pond that last far longer than the impact of that single pebble. EVERYTHING you do makes a difference, it’s up to you what KIND of a difference you’re making. br
Picking up the paper towels that someone left on the floor on the public restroom may not seem like a big deal, but it is, especially to the person who has to come in and clean those restrooms! (I’ve been that person before, it’s not a fun job.) Letting that one sarcastic or disproving sound escape you’re lips instead of keeping your mouth clamped shut leaves a scar.
Sometimes we leave bigger impacts than we expect. We’re big fans of Mythbusters at the Knochel house. Once, when they were testing a myth on knocking socks off, they prepared an explosion to see if they could knock the socks off some mannequin legs. The explosion was…. a bit larger than they expected. The shock wave that spread across the ground was amazing to watch in the video. The wave of that explosion went all the way over to the neighboring town, shaking walls, setting off car alarms, and knocking dishes off shelves, it was huge! Men, set off an explosion in your marriage today, send out a shock wave that will shake the town, SHOW you’re wife how much you love her. Vacuuming the living room when your wife asks you to, without complaining and groaning, HUGE IMPACT! (That one is certain to earn you some big man points in her book.) Taking the time to place your hand on the small of her back as you pass by her in the kitchen while she’s making dinner, KABOOM. Bring her flowers or even a chocolate bar from the gas station, HELLO, was that a dish dropping to floor in shock as you walk in the door?
Women, you can do this too, COMPLEMENT your husband. SHAZAM! Say thank you to him when he does what you asked him to do, even if it took him all night to do it. Men feed on praise, FEED THE BOY! Show and tell each other how much you love one another, it will have a HUGE explosive impact, one that reaches much father than just the walls of your house.
“But wisdom is proved right by her actions.” Matthew 11:19b
“Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please the sinful nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.” Galatians 6:7-10
“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13

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Unquenchable love

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Tamar

“If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all thing. Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13

As I laid wide awake in bed thinking last night I kept pondering about this relationship that I have with Christ and how often I call Him Daddy, but yet really think more of Him as a husband than a Father. So often in scripture God referred to Israel as His bride and wife and woman, and in the New Testament it even tells us that the Church is Christ’s bride. But how often do we think of ourselves as Christ’s bride? And I asked Him if I could write about being His bride. He said “Sure”. 🙂 I love Him! So, as I sat down to actually start writing this morning, I checked my Facebook homepage first… avoiding the inevitable question, “What am I going to write about today???” The second post down was a link to a photo that instantly caught my attention and a story that captured my heart.

The picture was of two marines guarding a flag-draped casket standing at the front of a barely lit church sanctuary the night before 2nd Lieutenant James J. Cathey’s funeral. Now that image alone is stunning, but that’s not what first caught my attention in the photo. It was the deceased soldier’s pregnant wife Katherine on an air mattress in front of the coffin getting ready to sleep next to her husband for the very last time. Just typing that puts tears in my eyes. The thought of the last night I sleep with my husband, never knowing if it’s the last time. The dedicated wife barely left her husband’s side from the time his body returned stateside until it was buried in the ground. She refused to leave him until the loved ones around her convinced her to sleep.

Cathey’s comrades thought of him as invincible, and never expected him to be the one to not make it out. Which just reminds me of another man, thought to be invincible and prepared to rule the known world. But His story didn’t end the way his friends expected it to either. No, Jesus’ death caused quite a stir as well. No one was expecting it, even though He had warned them all plainly several times, they all paid no heed to His prophecies. They just didn’t get it. And Jesus, just like Cathey, had a woman who refused to leave His side as well. She was the last one to leave the cross, and the first one to return to the tomb at the first chance she got. Mary Magdalene. She was so torn by the grief of her loss that He chose to appear to her first, in the garden, to ease her mourning and reassure her that He was just fine, alive, and very well indeed.

These grave-side stories are especially touching on this Veteran’s Day as I sit typing this on my couch watching our American flag waving patriotically in the breeze on our front porch. But I’m forced to ask more. I’m drawn to dig deeper. What’s the point of it all? Why does love like this matter? Why should we care? Because it’s what God has called us to. God is love and He has called us to be like Him in every way. He has called us to love one another deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Are you so desperately in love with the LORD that you’d refuse to leave His lifeless body just so you could lie next to Him just one more night? Do you love your spouse that much even? Love isn’t just a feeling, it’s a choice. One that we make every moment of every day. Love is an action, a verb, it’s a way of living. These days “love” has gotten so incredibly watered down that we’ll even say we “Love” that sign on the side of the road.

That’s not love. We’ve allowed our society to become too much a part of us, to warp us into thinking and saying that we love things that we don’t really love. As Christians, people should know that we follow Christ by the way that we treat them. By the way that we treat each other! Do you have an unquenchable love for the God you worship? How much are you willing to do for Him? How far will you follow Him? Step outside your comfort zone today, SHOW someone (maybe even your spouse) how much God loves them. Stop for that car on the side of the road, even though it might make you a few minutes late. Give the homeless person a couple bucks instead of ignoring them (leave the judgment of what they do with that money up to God, He just calls us to give). Feed the birds in the park. Smile at a stranger and say “God bless you!” or “Peace be with you today!” Pay for the person behind you in line at the drive through. Make a difference in one person’s life today by doing something seemingly small. But realize that small thing to you, is HUGE in their eyes. You never know, by doing that one small thing in the name of Jesus, it has the potential to change their entire lives. It may just change their perspective of Christians in general, and maybe even God in general. You don’t know what they’re going through, maybe this morning they prayed that God would send them a sign that He’s really listening to them. And maybe God has set it up so that YOU can be that sign for them today! How cool would that be??? When you bless, you are blessed as well. Because God loves you, go out and show someone else that very same love today, it may just save their soul, you never know.

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(The Cathey’s story has been told in a Pulitzer winning article by Jim Sheeler for the Rocky Mountain News and photographed by Second Place Newspaper Photographer of the Year Todd Heisler. Since I personally did not take the photos and therefore do not have ownership or permission (yet) to share them here I will only be including the links to them for you to see, but I strongly encourage you to click on them and view these extremely moving images and read all the captions under them.)

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Labor

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Tamar

“We always give thanks to God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers – continually remembering before our God and Father you work of faith and and steadiness of hope in our Lord Yeshua the Messiah.” (1 Thessalonians 1:3 The Tree of Life Version)

OK, so I wanted to try my hand at writing to a theme today. Usually I just write whatever the LORD puts in my head, but yesterday, sitting in church, listening to the sermon on work, I felt the Holy Spirit tug me and tell me to stretch myself a little and start things from a different angle today. When we talked with the pastor after the sermon he mentioned that when he does a topical sermon he always starts with a word search through the bible to see what the scriptures say on the topic. So naturally, that’s where I started too. There are 115 individual scriptures in the New International Version of the Bible that have the word “labor” in them. I didn’t even get past the first 8 before I didn’t want to look at them any more! Almost every single one prefaced the word labor with the word “hard” or “harsh”, how depressing! So I decided, maybe I should look up the Webster’s definition of labor, maybe that might be a little more inspirational for a devotional blog… nope! According to my Webster’s New Basic dictionary and Thesaurus labor means: “(n) exertion of the body or mind; task; pains of childbirth, workmen collectively. (v) work hard; strive; maintain normal motion with difficulty; esp. of a ship, be tossed heavily.” I seriously thought to myself, THIS is what we’re supposed to be celebrating today??? Are we crazy??? And now that I’m thinking about it more, most of us celebrate Labor Day with a day OFF from laboring! Now, that doesn’t make sense either. So how do I write something inspirational and hopefully uplifting about a topic that is so depressing?

Maybe I should just start at the beginning. That’s what God did. If we look at the Garden of Eden and the very first thing that God gave Adam to do, He put him in the garden to “work it and take care of it” (Gen 2:15). But this job wasn’t labor, it wasn’t rife with toil or harshness. It was a labor of love! The ground had not been cursed yet, and was therefore easy to work. There wasn’t even sweat involved in the work. But then that serpent of old slithered in and ruined everything! He tempted, they ate, they were ashamed and hid, and then… in walks Daddy. Of course, like any good parent knows, He doesn’t really have to ask “what happened here”, because He already knows, He can see the evidence all over the ground, their faces, their fig leaves, but most of all… because He’s God. They offer Him their feeble excuses for what they’ve done and then their punishment is doled out:

“16 To the woman he said,“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” 17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Gen 3:16-19)

The very first appearance of the word labor in the NIV is in the curse for the woman and birthing children, it will be labor. Curious, I looked up the original Hebrew for this verse and found that it can also be translated as worrisomeness, labor, pain, toil or sorrow. Now please, moms out there, tell me, how many of you have birthed a child and NOT been plagued with worries, pain, toil and sorrows ever since your child was born? The physical pain of birthing that child may have concluded at its delivery, but all the rest of it certainly hasn’t stopped since! Just this week my four-year-old has shed blood 3 times in a four-day-span and the worry that I have been wrapped up in as to the cause of all this blood shed has eaten me up inside! Yet, I also don’t know a mother out there that wouldn’t say that all of this labor of mothering is anything other than a labor of love. It’s hard, totally not glamorous, but completely worth all of it!

I have to admit, in the last 2 years I have been laboring. I’ve studied hard, researched til my brain hurt and written until I thought my fingers were going to fall off, all for the sake of spreading the good news that Jesus saves! Not just our souls for eternal heavenly purposes, but for TODAY and the life that we were created to live! I can’t even begin to count how many hours I have spent at my desk pouring over the scriptures trying to find the understanding I felt I needed to be able to tell people in an informed manner what God can do for them. I filled an entire book with the knowledge and insight that I gained from the Holy Spirit. And I OFTEN referred to True Intimacy as a child or a baby. I labored, like many people would never understand, to birth that book. The concept in it and the rationales behind them. Many never written out, but simply there in the background of the page, written in red between the lines.  When it became very obvious that it was not God’s plan to immediately publish True Intimacy in a 3D printed format, I have to admit, I was crushed, but obedient and went the direction that God led me; this website. Creating it, praying for it, learning (the hard way) how to put it together and work the programs, to even writing and posting daily, it’s all been hard labor. But every second of it has been worth it, my labor of love for my creator and for you. Through this entire process I have said “people need to know about this!” and that’s why I’ve been writing. Not for the money or the fame of being a “published author”, although that has certainly been part of the dream, but for the simple fact that God delivered my husband and I so completely from the bondage of past sins that all I wanted to do was tell the world that Jesus saves! That Jesus frees! That Jesus loves! That God cares… about YOU! And honestly, if I never see a penny from royalties to the things that I write in His name I’m perfectly fine with that as long as the good news is being spread and read! And really, I think that’s the whole point of labor. Laboring in love for the people around you who will benefit from your toil. Putting our selfishness aside and putting those people first. When we make a dinner for someone who is home bound, it’s still labor, but the labor isn’t as toilsome when done in love, don’t you think? Perhaps that is because our hearts are lighter and therefore our burden is lighter as well. I don’t know. I just know that when we’re laboring for someone else to benefit it seems a lot less like labor and a lot more like love. 🙂

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