What is Church?

What is church? Is it a place you go to on Sunday? Is it a way you do a meeting? Is it a group of people? What is church and how should it be done?

This was the biggest question that was brought to the attention of our family when we read the book, “So You Don’t Want to go to Church Anymore?” by Wayne Jacobson. We had always thought that it was a bad thing when we missed church, or that we were wrong when we just didn’t want to go to church.

I have felt so guilty over the past two years because I have dreaded going to church. There was only one girl who I was friends with and who seemed to be interested in talking to me. I wasn’t getting much out of the sermons, but that probably had more to do with my attitude than with what was being said.

We wanted the church to be the center of our lives and to be making strong friendships within the church, but that wasn’t happening. We were getting frustrated and discouraged, and that is when God brought this book into our life.

What is church? That was one of the major question that the book asks. What do you think church is, and what does the Bible say church is? I have to tell you, this was hard for us to accept at first. Church is not the meeting that we have come to see it as. It is not the singing of hymns and listening to a sermon, though that can be a part of it. Church is getting together with other believers, pure and simple. I understand that this may seem crazy but read your Bible to see if what I say is true.

My family is now on a journey to put what we have been convicted of and put it into practice, and in the upcoming days and months I will share more of this journey with you. If you have any questions, I would be happy to answer them.

When God Calls

Have you ever been called by God to do something big? Has he ever sent you out on a quest for his best? Has he ever set you out on the adventure of a lifetime? Has he ever moved you and the people around you, so that there was no doubt in your mind that it was God’s hand at work? This is something that has been going on at our house for the past couple months, but I wanted to wait to write about it.

You see, God has started us on an amazing adventure. Though, I have to admit, it is such a radical change that it is scary as well as exciting. God used a book called “So You Don’t Want to go to Church Anymore?” By Wayne Jacobson to radically change the way we have always viewed church. It made us (my entire family) re-think our entire lives and ask the question; Is this a biblical way of doing this, or is it just what most Christians say is the right thing to do?

It is amazing what your life looks like when you ask that question. For us, it especially made us look at how we do church. I will tell you about that tomorrow.

For the next few days I will be sharing about the journey that God has been taking us on. The hard realization that we needed to radically change what we were doing, the pain in letting go and changing, the excitement for the future, the fear of failure, these are just a part of the adventure. It isn’t just my destiny, the plans that God has for me, that I will talk about, but that of my entire family.

What Should I Post On (I can't think of anything so I will just ramble)

I am sure all of you bloggers can understand this. I seem to be going through a time where I just don’t seem to have a lot to write about. Not a lot is going on, and I seem to have a lack of inspiration on what to write. I don’t want to leave my blog blank so that no one comes, but at the same time I don’t want to post just for the sake of posting.

So, is there anything that you would like me to write about? I really would love some ideas.

Farm Life; Say Hello to Sun Stream!

Meet the newest member of the animals on our small farm; Sun Stream, the baby horse. Several friends have asked to see pictures so I decided to take the time to upload them to my blog. Enjoy.



Sun Stream



Sun Stream and her mama, Starlight.

Writing Saturday; How do you edit a book?

Okay, so you have written a book and now you come to the most daunting stage, editing. This can be scary, because it seems like an overwhelming task, but here is the way I usually do it.

Step 1; I go through my book and find all the errors that I can and fix them. This can take a while, but the more you do it the quicker and better you become at it.

Step 2; Have a parent or sibling go through the book to find spelling, grammar, and story errors. They often will find things that you have missed and help you prepare your book for the next step.

Step 3; Ask three or four people you know to read your book. Make sure that you ask people in different age groups to read it; this will help you get some different perspectives.

Step 4; Taking the information that your friends have given you, make the necessary changes to you book.

Step 5; I like to call this step the polishing step. If your friends are willing, have them read your book once again and polish the last rough spots.

Step 6; Enjoy your finished book!

My Computer is Back!

I am back online!!!!

I have my computer back! I will now resume my daily posts! I can’t tell you how much I have missed being able to post and hear from all of you.

How are all of you doing? I have not felt well the past few days but seem to be getting over…whatever it is I had. I just felt very tired, weak and achy for the past three day. As I said though, I am feeling much better today.

Thank you all for your prayers for rain. We Got an inch and a half at our house this week! Praise God for his blessings! Have a great day

Another Little Update

My computer is getting some repairs done on it, and the family computer’s internet connection is off and on. Sorry that my posts will not be regular until my computer is back.

What has been going on in your life? A lot has been going on around our house the past few weeks. God is starting us on the next part of this great adventure called faith. I will fill you in once I get my computer back and can stay online for more than five minutes at a time.

Have a great day.

There is a Time

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:

a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

Computer Repair

My computer is about to be sent off to get repaired so I will not be able to check anything on my yahoo account for a couple days. If you have a submission for Meditations of His Love, leave me a comment and I will give you an email address to send it to. This is going to be a challenge for me to be without my computer. I spend a lot of time working on writing books and various other things. Please pray that I will spend my days doing constructive things. I do not want to sit around doing nothing.

I will talk more about it in the days to come, but you could really be praying for our family, we are in a time of transition and it exciting and scary at the same time. There are a lot of changes in the road ahead and for those we need prayer. I will share more soon. I better go before I lose all of you with my rambling.

Chickens; Proof of Creation

I bet none of your creation versus evolution courses taught you that chickens were overwhelming proof for creation. You don’t believe me, do you? Well, here are some things that we have learned about chickens that prove that they could not have survived if evolution is true.

1. Chickens will lay their eggs anywhere, even though we make nesting boxes, they seem to love putting them on the ground. The problem with this? They lay their eggs in easy places for snakes, possums and any other egg-seeking creature.

2. As if to announce to cats, snakes and any other nearby creature, baby chicks peep loudly so that anything and everything will hear them.

3. Chickens have no brain cells; at least I don’t see any signs of it. We have had so many laughs. When my brother goes inside the coop and closes the door, the chickens will run around and around the coop looking for him. They do this every time, year after year; not one of them has figured out that he goes inside the coop, even when he leaves the door wide open!

4. Chickens have no ability to defend themselves. They will scatter into the woods if you let them out, even though their best chance for survival is in a group. Some of them have bright color and they are the ones that always like to be out in the open.

5. Chickens snore at night. That’s right; if you go out at night you can hear them making all sorts of noises. I guess this is to help the raccoons find them easier.

There it is - five great reasons to believe in creation.

Writing on the Weekends; Castle Picture

I did this for Writing on Weekends from Jessica’s blog Literary Pursuits.

Castle Tranquility seemed to be chiseled out of the on which it stood. Its grey stone and sun backed tile roof seemed to have been shaped out of surrounding bits of nature. Its stone walls had vines growing here, and moss there. The trees grew right in the middle of the large courtyard, and right up against the wall, as if they didn’t know that the castle had always been a part of the landscape.

Yes, Tranquility castle looked at one with God’s creation, but today, inside its walls, evil is lurking in the shadows. A most unnatural event is about to take place in the peaceful place.

Gladwin walks stealthily down the hall, careful not to wake anyone else this early in the morning. He clutches a dagger close to his side, not wanting it to scrap against the wall and wake someone. At the very end of the stone hallway, he slowly opens the door leading to Christopher’s room. As soon as it is opened wide enough, Gladwin steps in and closes the door behind him.

The dying embers in the fire place provide little light to navigate by, but Gladwin had lived in this castle long enough to know were Christopher’s bed was in relation to the fire. Slowly he made his way to the sleeping boy and leaned over him in the dark. Then quickly put his hand over his mouth and at the same time put his knife at his throat.

“Quiet!” He commanded as loud as he dared, as he felt the boy squirm and a fight against his hand that then suddenly stop when he felt the dagger at his throat. “Listen to me carefully if you want to live. Get dressed and get your sister out of the castle as fast as you can. Within an hour’s time you better be far from here or you will be dead. I don’t have time to explain further. Just get your sister and no one else, take your horses and get out of here.”

******

Christopher and his sister raced down the only pathway down the mountain. What had the just escaped? What was going on that had forced them to leave the only home that they had ever known?

Writing Saturday; Great Websites and blogs

As a writer, I am always looking for good resources to research my books and to help me improve my writing skills. Here are some of the websites and blogs that I have found helpful and a little bit about them.

Encouraging Emerging Authors.
This is a website I found recently, and it is really good; right now they are doing a lot on poetry. I don’t have a lot to say about this blog as of yet because I found it just last week.

Literary Pursuits, is done by my good friend Jessica. This blog is great for stretching your mind and writing skills. Jessica gives a writing prompt every weekend (this week it is a picture) and you write a short story and post it to your blog. Make sure you add your name to the list so that others can read your work. It is a lot fun, and I can’t wait to see what all of you write about.

A Writers blog, is another one of my favorites. She is an amazing author and she even sometimes posts chapters of the book she is working on.

Random Thoughts, is done by my good friend Arianna. She also posts on writing on a regular basis, and she just finished doing interviews with a bunch of bloggers who write.

Where the Map Ends, has a lot of really great writing tips by a published author. He is really into fantasy and stuff like that, but most of his tips are useful for any genre.

For research, I start with looking things up on Wikipedia. This is not a Christian site, but it is clean (at least all the pages I have read are); I use it a lot to look things up.

Do you know any great writing blogs or websites?

A Little Update

My older sister and her kids are down here for a visit! We are having so much fun that I wish they didn’t have to go home in a few days. Oh well, I will just have to enjoy them while they are here.

It has been fairly quiet around our house the past few days, a nice relief from all the excitement we had on Monday. Thank you all for your prayers and encouraging words, they meant a lot to me.

Well, I better check my email and then get back to my guests. Have a great day!

What a day

Yesterday started out fairly slow for me. We were all tired because we had been in the sun a lot on Sunday so we got up late. Mom had some errands to run in town, so she and some of my siblings left while the rest of us stayed home to recuperate.
Then it happened, around two o’clock we heard a gushing sound in the kitchen. Mom ran to see what it was and found that the pipe that took water to the sink had broken and water was spewing everywhere. We ran to the end of our driveway and shut the water off to the whole house.

For the next hour we were busy, checking around the kitchen and Mom's sewing nook to see how far the water had gone and drying everything that had gotten wet. Dad rushed home from work to come to our rescue. He and Mom fixed the pipe, and we all sat down thinking that this had been just a crazy day; little did we know that it wasn’t over yet.

While all the excitement had been going on, none of us had thought about the fact that the gate was standing wide open. It wasn’t till almost eleven o’clock that we someone noticed that the horse was gone. We spent about an hour looking before we found her, making it about 11:45 before we got to bed.

There was one bright spot to this day though: three baby chicks hatched. What was your day like?

A Big Happy Birthday to…

My three sisters that were born in July!! All of you are getting so big, and tuning out to be such amazing girls. I praise God that he gave me each of you.

Happy Birthday!!!!!

Happy 4th of July!

Today, about 230 years ago, the Declaration of Independence was adopted. Here are some of the words from that great document.

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Guest Writers

Would you like an opportunity to write about what God has been teaching you? We are looking for guest writers for our blog, Meditations of His Love. In two weeks we will be posting three guest posts, and one of them could be yours! Here is what you need to do.

1. Write a post that about five hundred to seven hundred words long on what God has been teaching you.

2. Send your guest post to me, Sarah, at thedestinyofone(at )yahoo(dot)com along with your blog or website address, if you have one.

3. Hopefully you will be picked and your post will appear on the blog, along with a link to your blog/website. Now that sounds easy, doesn’t it?

Have fun writing about what God has been teaching you! I am looking forward to reading your submissions.

A Celebration

Today, we are celebrating an amazing event, one for which I owe my very existence to. Today, my mom and dad are celebrating twenty years of marriage! Happy anniversary Mom and Dad!

I just want to thank God for bringing my parents together and placing me in this special family. I want to also thank my Dad and Mom for being a great example of what marriage is supposed to be. I don’t know why God chose me to have this blessing, I don’t deserve, but I am grateful.

Happy anniversary Mom and Dad!