Stronghold of Pride

This comes from Beth Moore in her book Praying God's Word. Its in Chapter 3: Overcoming Pride.

My name is Pride. I am a cheater. I cheat you of your God-given destiny... because you demand your own way. I cheat you of contentment... because you "deserve better than this." I cheat you of knowledge... because you already know it all. I cheat you of healing... because you're too full of me to forgive. I cheat you of holiness... because you refuse to admit when you're wrong. I cheat you of vision... because you'd rather look in the mirror than out a window. I cheat you of genuine friendship... because nobody's going to know the real you. I cheat you of love... because real romance demands sacrifice. I cheat you of greatness in heaven... because you refuse to wash another's feet on earth. I cheat you of God's glory... because I convince you to seek your own. My name is Pride. I am a cheater. You like me because you think I'm always looking out for you. Untrue. I'm looking to make a fool of you. God has so much for you, I admit, but don't worry... If you stick with me you'll never know.

WOW!!! This spoke volumes to my heart! I am guilty of every single one of these statements! I am totally guilty of pride! When I first started this chapter I thought I really don't have a stronghold of pride. I would definitely say that that thought was totally blown out of the water!!! I highly recommend you getting this book. It is full of Scripture prayers. I have borrowed it from our church library, but I need to get my own copy. These Scripture prayers will be used for the rest of my life!!!

Morning Devotions!

I must share our morning devotion with you. We have picked up these daily devotionals for kids from our church. I have searched bookstores and online bookstores for a great daily devotional and had no luck, but have finally found one that is fabulous. They are short, but extremely good! I haven't checked out these websites yet, but it could be possible that you could get these devotional booklets off these websites. www.keysforkids.org or www.cbhministries.org They have 2 months worth of daily devotionals. They give you a passage of Scripture to read from your Bible and then they have a short story to read. They recommend after the story to read the passage of Scripture again. At the conclusion it has a couple of questions to go over. They have a key verse to learn. Our kids are young so learning a key verse every day is a little tough, but we will get there eventually!

Anyways, our devotion this morning was titled "Wonderfully Made". The passage of Scripture in Psalm 139:13-16. I will share it with you from Jaycee's NIrV Adventure Bible for kids. You created the deepest parts of my being. You put me together inside my mother's body. How you made me is amazing and wonderful. I praise you for that. What you have done is wonderful. I know that very well. None of my bones was hidden from you when you made me inside my mother's body. That place was as dark as the deepest parts of the earth. When you were putting me together there, your eyes saw my body even before it was formed. You planned how many days I would live. You wrote down the number of them in your book before I had lived through even one of them.

WOW!!!! Seriously how amazingly incredible are those verses. Read them over and over again. Let them soak in. I think so often we loose sight of this. We stumble around in our walk with the Lord. If we thought about this passage of Scripture everyday and read it like it should be read that these our God's own spoken words to us how much different our lives would be? God made me! God made you! We weren't just thrown together. He knew us before we were even formed. He knows our life. He knows every single day of our lives before we even lived ONE of them. WOW!!!!! How can we not fall on our knees and worship God our Creator. How can we not trust Him? How can we ever think our ways are better? I know many of us believe in Him, but do we believe Him?!?! This is what I am learning in Chapter 2 of the Beth Moore book Praying God's Word. Think about that, I don't just want to believe in Him I want to believe Him!!!
Here is one prayer that I know I will be praying everyday. "Father, so often I feel like the boy's father who first exclaimed, 'I do believe!' then in a flood of sincerity cried out, 'Help me overcome my unbelief!' (Mark 9:24) Please help me to overcome my own unbelief, Lord, so I can start taking You at Your Word." I don't want to believe the lies anymore that flood my mind. Just like this passage from Psalm 139 I want to take God at His Word that I am truly fearfully and wonderfully made. That He made me! Also, take that to every person I meet and every person in the world. EVERY SINGLE PERSON on this earth was fearfully and wonderfully made by God. So why do we choose at times, so often at times, that they are less than that? If we can truly grasp these words that are spoken by God, then we could "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and love your neighbor as you love yourself."(Matthew 22:37;39)

Hungry by Kutless

Living for You
Living for You
Living for You

Hungry I come to You
For I know You satisfy
I am empty but I know
Your love does not run dry

So I wait for You
So I wait for You

I'm falling on my knees
Offering all of me
Jesus You're all
This heart is living for

Broken I run to You
For Your arms are open wide
I am weary but I know Your touch
Restores my life

So I wait for You
So I wait for You

I’m falling
I’m falling for You
Jesus You’re all
This heart is living for

I’m living for you

I have written in my head many posts to share with you about where I am right now in my relationship with my Heavenly Father. Every time I sit down to type I just can't seem to put it into the right words. Last night as we were driving to church we were listening to Kutless' album "It is Well". This song came on. Immediately my spirit began to rejoice. This song exactly describes my heart at this very moment! These last few months have been the hardest months in my life. They have been wonderful, but definitely hard. I am thankful that my Lord is so faithful. He never leaves us or forsakes us. All we need to do is cry out for help and surrender it all. I have never been more in love with my Heavenly Father! He is definitely all I live for! I am so hungry to know more of Him. I am so thankful that He has turned my heart towards Him. So thankful that He has opened my eyes to see His goodness, His love, His grace, and His mercy. Most importantly, so grateful to Jesus Christ for giving up His very life for me!!!! My prayer is that each one of you will not only know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, but You will come to understand everyday the love that God has for you!!! I have been a Christian for a vast majority of my life and I believe the Bible and have seen how God has worked in others lives, and now I praise the Lord to see God's work in my life!!!

I am currently reading Beth Moore's book Praying God's Word and I am only in chapter 1, but its a fabulous book! How could it not be, when most of it is all Scriptures from the Bible. This quote from Beth Moore, is very fitting for me; "The giant step in the walk of faith is the one we take when we decide God no longer is a part of our lives. He is our life." I have taken that giant step in saying God I don't want you to be a part of my life anymore. I don't want to include You only when I feel like I need to include you, I want You to be my life!!!! I want more of Him and less of me every minute of every day!!!!

Our beautiful princess!!!

I have had my camera over a year now and I am just now trying to figure out how to make it work really well! I still am at a total loss as what some things mean. The manual is really like a foreign language to me. Oh well, hopefully one day I will be able to get it figured out!!! Along the way of trying out different things we had a little mini shoot of Jaycee. She was into posing for the camera that day so I figured I better take advantage of it! Enjoy the pictures! Some turned out pretty good and some didn't, but I couldn't tell why they came out that way! Its definitely the camera operator and not the subject of the photos though!

Over the weekend...

we celebrated our special little guy's 3rd birthday! Really, I can't believe my baby boy is already 3!!! We just had a simple little party here at home. About a month or so ago I thought about planning a big day full of family fun. But a week and half before his birthday I decided to go with a family party here. Thankfully that was our plan because our first day of Spring arrived with SNOW!!!! Friday the 19th the kids played outside all day long and Jackson was actually in shorts because the high was in the lower 70s. We woke up on Saturday morning to cold temperatures and snow!!! Sadly, due to the weather several of our family members weren't able to attend the party. Nevertheless, the festivities continued. Jackson LOVED every minute of it! We had a Dale Jr. NASCAR cake. Then I used red, white, and blue colors to finish off the decor for the party. He got his first scooter from my parents! He's already quite the little pro on it. Of course, he has stolen a few rides on his sister's that she got for Christmas. He also got a pretty neat little Smart Fit Park mat. You can hook it up to the tv and do active movements along with learning colors, shapes, numbers, and letters. Both the kids love it!!! Also, he got a map puzzle of the United States. They can tell you what state they live in and then where their cousins on each side of the family live, too. They can also tell you where each member of our family was born. Crazy that not one of us was born in the same state. (Byron-Idaho, Dana-Oklahoma, Jaycee-Texas, and Jackson-Washington.) Jackson also got the disc-dodger guns. We had discs flying all over the house. Those guns produce lots of giggles and laughs so they are totally worth all the time spent finding the missing discs! Earlier in the week he received his Nana and Papa package in the mail. Oh how we love our "Nana Packages"!!! He got an inflatable lagoon to play with once the weather gets warm. The kids will love keeping cool with that during the summer! He LOVES the cartoon series Auto-B-Good and got a book of Auto-B-Good. He also got a VTECH motion game of Wall-E. It was a super great day for a super great little boy!!!!










Jackson,

I thank God every day for giving us you. What a treasure you are! You are such a fun loving little guy! I hope and pray that you never loose your love for life. That you will always make the best out of every situation. You are our little warrior! You would stand, defend, and protect any of us. You love us all fiercely! The bond between you and your sister is beyond amazing!Your sloppy kisses and bear hugs can melt mommy's heart at any given time. You have quite the sense of humor and love to make people laugh! You are all boy! Here is a list of your favorite things at age 3: guitar, NASCAR, backhoes, tractors, trains, CARS, dirt, your 2 blankies, Bo your blue puppy, singing, pestering your sister, wrestling your daddy, and snuggling your mommy!

Jackson, my prayer for you above everything else is that you will come to know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and that you will become independently dependent on God. I truly believe that if you become a follower of Christ your footsteps will be ordered by the Lord. That God will give you strength when you are weak, wisdom in your decisions, love for God and love for others, and a passion to do God's will. That you will come to understand how much God loves you. That you will know that He knew you before you were even formed in my womb. That He placed you where you are for His glory and purpose. I pray that your dad and I will do all that we can to make sure that you know God. You will also know we are your biggest supporters. That we will love you unconditionally. We pray that God will give us the strength, endurance, patience, grace, and mercy to raise you up to be a Godly man. Its such an honor to have you, Jackson, as a son. I couldn't have asked God for a better one then the one He gave to us! Happy 3rd Birthday, Jackson Alan Lohrer!!!!

Pictures!

I thought I would share a few pics from my camera! Its been a very long time since I have posted any pictures! Nothing too exciting, but I still can't believe how big my babies are getting! This Saturday Jackson will be 3!!! The first birthday we celebrated in this house was Jaycee's 3rd birthday and we are now celebrating Jackson's! WOW!!!! How time passes by so quickly!


My precious babies!

Jackson with his awesome stick gun!!!

Jaycee loves to pose!!!

Jackson getting his NASCAR boys ready for the first race of the season!!!

Let's go racin' boys!!!!!!!!!

Its getting easier!

We have had a food eating issue with the kids for a while. I am glad to say that we are making quite the head way now. Don't get me wrong we still have our days, but the kids understand the consequences of their choices now. Jaycee is at a wonderful age because you can now somewhat reason with her. You can lay it out for her and she can process it and then make her choice accordingly. Most of the time she will make the choice to eat which in some cases helps with Jackson. If he sees his sister eating the food and not complaining then he will follow her lead. Our main eating meal around here is lunch. Byron is able to come home every day for lunch so we consider this our big family sit down meal. If the kids eat their lunch then they usually get a small snack during the afternoon. If they choose not to eat at lunch they go down for a nap and then are not allowed a snack for the rest of the day regardless if they eat their lunch later and also dinner. We do make exceptions at times, but for the most part this is the rule and the kids know it now. If they do well eating throughout the whole day they are rewarded really well at night.

Here is a list of things that the kids enjoy eating now. I know that some of you will be amazed that our kids are just now eating these things, but at least they are now. I have forgiven myself finally of not doing better when the kids were younger to make them eat things. I really made myself feel guilty over that, but I now take it as a learning tool and we are all doing much better with the food issues now.

oatmeal, turkey sausage, scrambled eggs, turkey and cheese sandwiches, pizza, spaghetti, many different types of casseroles, hot dogs, peas, corn, strawberries, grapes, cantaloupe, pears, bananas, a variety of nuts, yogurt, pudding, chicken nuggets, chicken fried steaks, grilled cheeses, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, chicken noodle soup, potato soup, burritos, protein bars, granola bars, and Jaycee now likes hamburgers. We haven't won Jackson over to the beloved hamburger, but I am sure by this summer it will become a favorite. Cooking has become so much easier too, b/c I am less of a short order cook now!

What a Day!

Yesterday that is! A couple of nights ago I woke up and heard this alarm going off. I went through the house trying to see if one of the clocks had gotten set that was causing this obnoxious beeping sound. I had no luck the sound was not inside our house. I looked out our kitchen window and saw a truck over in one of the local oil field yards doing some work. I thought okay the noise must be coming from there. I was a little annoyed by the fact that they would have an alarm making that much noise going off at 5:00 in the morning. Around 5:30 a.m. this alarm is still going off. So I check once again on the truck and it was no longer in the oil field yard. The alarm was actually coming from our back yard. Oops! I had to ask for forgiveness for being annoyed and for blaming it on someone else. We have an aerobic system set up on our septic tank and the alarm was sounding to let us know that something wasn't right with our pump. Anyways, Byron was able to at least silence the alarm. After lunch that day he put in a call to the number on our pump to ask them questions. They said they would be out in a day or so to take a look at it. For the next 2 nights Byron had to go out to turn the alarm off again!

Now, you are caught up to yesterday. The people showed up around 8:30 in the morning. They began to check things over. Well, they told us not only was the air compressor blown on the pump, but that we also needed to have our septic pumped. Do to the high levels of nastiness, it had caused the air compressor to break. They repaired our air compressor, but we knew we needed to get the septic pumped because we didn't want to have to repair the air compressor again. After paying the people $260 to repair the air compressor, the person told us it would cost around $400-$500 to have our septic pump. So obviously not the way you want your day to start out knowing that you could possibly shell out over $750 in a day to something that you had not expected to be dealing with that day. Well, Byron put in some phone calls and our good friends Brad and Allison have a vacuum truck business. They do a lot work in the oil field helping haul water and then cleaning up messes and so forth. They also will pump septic tanks for people, too. Byron told Brad that if it was something that he didn't want to do just let us know, Brad said not at all they would do it. They came over yesterday afternoon and pumped our septic tank. The best news of all is how God blessed us through our friends. Brad didn't charge us a thing!!! Byron kept offering and Brad wouldn't accept it. Byron told him we would take them out for lunch or dinner soon and Brad said that worked! I know in the morning Byron and I wasn't thrilled with the news, but we both turned it over to God. Knowing that God cares for us and that He provides. We knew that even if we had to pay over $750 that God would work things for our good. God blew us away by using our friends to bless us in a remarkable way! God is so good!!! We are also thankful that we found out this way instead of our septic backing up into the house. With the events of yesterday we also learned how the aerobic system works and how to maintain things better to keep it working well. We are praising God for His provisions over our life and bringing us through a stressful day.

Is it really March?????

Wow, February flew by quickly!!! I am so glad to see March's arrival. Hopefully, that means that this crazy winter weather is long behind us. At this point the local weather man is delivering that for us. The week looks like each day we will be climbing up in the 60s with lots of sunshine! HOORAY!!! We have a few chances for showers later on this week, but the numbers are slim on that happening! It finally looks like Spring is upon us.

Saturday was a perfect day in my opinion. It was bright with sunshine around the mid 60s in temperature and the trees were still. We spent the day at my sister's. Byron and the kids hadn't seen Amy, Michael, and the girls since Christmas. They had an open weekend so we took advantage of it. We got down there a little before lunch. Michael made hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch. They were delicious!!! The kids played indoors for a while and then went to the backyard to play on the trampoline. Later that evening we ate at a Mexican restaurant close to the Ft.Worth Stockyards. We played several games of Twister which was lots of fun. I hope that my sis doesn't post on Facebook all the pictures of us playing Twister, though. I guess since I don't have an account anymore I shouldn't be too concerned, huh?!?!?! It was a really great time just relaxing, laughing, and visiting together. The kids were exhausted by the time we left that night.

March is looking pretty busy at this point. We have several birthdays to celebrate this month, including Jackson's 3rd birthday. I am still debating on what we should do for his birthday. For the next 2 weekends the state tournament for Oklahoma basketball is taking place. So I am sure we will be making frequent trips to Oklahoma City to take in all the basketball games. Which we are really looking forward to seeing some great games and great teams play!!! I LOVE MARCH MADNESS!!!

Hopefully, through the busyness I can find time to blog. I really do think of blogging more often, but I just never seem to get that done. Maybe I will get better about that, but I guess only time will tell.

Other news, Jackson is doing super great with going potty. I think I can claim he is fully potty-trained! He woke up Sunday morning and first thing he said when he came into our room was "Mom, I need to go poop"! HA!HA! I took him into the bathroom and he did just what he said he had to do. He has now moved into wearing his underwear everywhere we go. Before I only allowed him to wear them at our house and at my parent's. Also, the past few mornings his pull-ups have been dry. I think the light bulb has finally come on in his head! HOORAY!!!

Jaycee is just so precious! She is really growing up. Its so nice to be able to talk and reason things out with her. We have had no problems with her toys anymore. She will have her bedroom in utter chaos everyday, but she cleans every single bit of it up most of the time without us saying a word. She is just a happy content little girl. She amazes me too for her passion to know more about God. She sings songs about God all the time. She actually "writes" her own songs. She will sit at the table with a piece of paper, scribble down "words" as she thinks of things to sing about. Then she will come to me with paper in hand and sing her songs! They bless my heart so much. It humbles me in my walk with the Lord, because it brings me back to having a child-like faith. That I don't need to worry about the things of this world or how I try to figure out in my own mind what God might do, but all I need is to have faith and trust that God will work everything out for not only my good, but for my family's good! How precious our children are and what a blessing they truly are from our Heavenly Father.