Welcome to the annual Christmas tour of our home! You will see that compared to last year, a lot of things have remained the same, but there are some new decorations, and some decorations have been removed.
Category: holiness
I used to long to have a voice to sing. I used to love to even have some sort of voice that would allow me to sing in the church choir. Instead, I have nothing. I can’t hear music, I can’t hear tone, and when I sing my 2-year-old asks me to stop with his hands covering his ears. It makes me sing very very quietly during worship time at church, to be honest.
There’s a woman I know who is young – maybe 21-years-old or even younger. She has three children by three men and has never been married. She lives with her mother. Her current boyfriend does not live with her, but he does spend the night often. She gambles regularly. And, she is deeply spiritual. You won’t find someone who talks about Jesus Christ more than her.
In observing the diet, I will eat only vegetables, fruits, and unleavened bread that does not contain any ingredient that is not made directly from a vegetable or fruit. For instance, I am going to make tortillas out of fresh ground flour and coconut oil (instead of shortening or beef tallow). When I make a salad, I’ll flavor it with olive oil (cold pressed) and lemon juice. I will only drink water. I will allow my kids to eat dairy, but I likely will not be preparing meat for them.
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This chapter was by far the longest chapter in the book, and it was so clear that I had a, “Duh!” moment reading it. Early in the chapter, Stormie says, “When you pray for your husband, especially in the hopes of changing him, you can surely expect some changes. But the first changes won’t be in him. They’ll be in you…God sees things we don’t. He knows where we have room for improvement. He doesn’t have to search long to uncover attitudes and habits that are outside His perfect will for us.”
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Hundreds of pastors, music leaders, choir members, church goers filled the rooms of our church. They came to meet each other, find old friends, meet new ones, get encouragement, revivement, counsel. And the speakers did not disappoint. They were simply astounding. I cannot even describe it. I was disappointed when I had to leave, sad that the two days were over. I would love to have it go on day after day, even though I understand that it simply cannot. We’re not called to stay amongst ourselves, preaching and practicing holiness — we’re called to be out in the world, living it.
“Rejoice in the Lord always, I will say again, Rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4). You’ll notice that it doesn’t end with “…unless you’re doing something extremely important.”
The Easter holiday is barely removed from its pagan background. Easter even gets its name from the pagan goddess of spring, Eostre. The myth has it that she rescued a bird whose wings were frozen from the winter wind by turning it into a rabbit. Because the rabbit had once been a bird, it could lay eggs. And there you have the modern Easter Bunny and Easter eggs.
One of the tenets that we live by is best said in Romans 14:2-17. What you eat, and what we eat, what we feed our families, is a choice. When we are criticized for our choice to follow God’s dietary laws with respect to eating clean real food, it always strikes us as kind of strange. There is hardly a more personal choice in the world than what one chooses to consume.
Outside of the odd critic, we have received a lot of questions about why we choose clean real food, and especially with respect to pork and bottom feeders, so I thought those two needed some specific explanation. This post will focus on pork.
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