Worshiping…In Spirit and In Truth

Hello my name is……

The other weekend James kept singing the song Hello My Name Is by Matthew West. It is a song that talks about those words that we let describe us. We all have to words that people have used to describe us; some of them are good and some of the them have broken us too. We sometime let them control our lives and let them make us who we are too. Sometimes Satan uses them to keep us down and it hinder us becoming the person God what us to be. Satan knows the best time to attack us. As a Christian we need to remember that those names should not bond us.

I know this is truly hard to do sometimes. When I was in second grade I was diagnosed with learning disabilities. In the generation before me, those with disabilities would be institutionalizing because it was thought they could not be taught.  I was raised in a world were I was taught that I was dumb, stupid and etc.  My parents were told that I would never graduate from high school.  Hmm, amazing, not only do I have a high school diploma but a college degree.

These names even followed me when I was in college; my mother went to a garage sale at my sixth grade teacher’s home. When my teacher recognized my mother, she told my mother “I was the dumbest student she ever had.”  There are times that Satan comes around and reminds me of those names.  Usually they come at time of great loss – like my mom’s death several years ago and now my father’s death.  Then there are the time when I am under great stress – which at time is part of ministry and being a pastor.

These are the times when Satan likes to whisper those words in my ears – words spoken long ago – words that haunted me for years.  For some, they think Christians can’t go through these times, but just check out the Psalms.  David struggled at times.

It is in those times that we need to remember the words from the end of Matthew West’s song.  These are promises that come from the heart of God’s word.

Hello, my name is child of the one true King 
I’ve been saved, I’ve been changed, and I have been set free 
“Amazing Grace” is the song I sing 
Hello, my name is child of the one true King 
I am no longer defined 
By all the wreckage behind 
The one who makes all things new 
Has proven it’s true 
Just take a look at my life 
What love the Father has lavished upon us 
That we should be called His children 
I am a child of the one true King

It is at those moments that I have to lean on God more for the strength to close my ears to Satan.  I will always have my disabilities and will always have to struggle with Satan’s lies. But as a Christian I have the power of God to withstand Satan, because I am a child of the one true King.

In the past three months, Dale and my life have changed. We have taken on new roles in our lives. In January our oldest daughter had our first grandchild.  I have heard about how great grandchildren are but the moment I held Robert, I totally understood.  When I held Robert, I did not have the responsibilities that I had with our children. I knew I had some responsibility for him but not his daily life. I could see how beautiful this child was. These verses from Psalm 139 came to mind at that moment.

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body
    and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!
    Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.
¹⁵ You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,
    as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.
¹⁶ You saw me before I was born.
    Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out
    before a single day had passed.

¹⁷ How precious are your thoughts about me,^[b] O God.
    They cannot be numbered!
¹⁸ I can’t even count them;
    they outnumber the grains of sand!
And when I wake up,
    you are still with me!

I never thought I would be that grandmother who wanted to show everyone pictures of my grandson. Even Dale does it.  Yesterday, he walked up to a complete stranger at work and showed them a picture of Robert.  Now, to be fair they had a two-month old in their arms.  It just seems natural to share the joy with parents of an infant.

Not only have we become grandparents, but we now have a boomerang child.   I have had friends whose children moved back home after college. Our daughter Anna graduated from college a couple of days ago.  We are trying to guide her in this new phase of her life.  One of the things we have tried to teach her is that any job is good to start with.  Once she gets established she can look for the job that she really wants to do the rest of her life. This is going to be time of adjustment for all of us.

With both of these changes in our lives Dale and I are willing to do the best we can with God’s help.

By now most of you have heard the news that tornadoes have ripped through Moore, OK – a suburb of Oklahoma City.  It is tragic news.  At the same time, we were getting some severe storms of our own, however not any where the severity of the storms in the Midwest.

Our prayers go out to the people of Oklahoma tonight.  Last night I was mentioning that I hoped to do more original writing. So these events got me to thinking.

The storm system that rolled through the Shenandoah Valley played around with our wireless internet.  I was quite annoyed that the storm messed everything up.  Finally I decided to reset everything.  This gave me an opportunity to go outside.  When I did, I looked at the sky.  It has been raining most of the night and grabbed my camera and captured these two photos.  One is of a rainbow, taken from our front porch.  The second is the silver lining .  Even as I write, blue sky is moving in as the sun sets.

While I haven’t wrote much about it, there have been some struggles going on lately.  I don’t write about them because I try to keep things upbeat.  Besides who wants to read a bunch of whining.

Today was fairly symbolic.  We received neat answers to prayer today and as I looked at the rainbow and then the clouds with the silver lining, God reminded me that He really does care about us.  Sometimes it seems quite stormy.  It is difficult to remember that when we are going through it that the sun shines above the clouds.

God gave us the rainbow today to remind us of his promises.  We were also reminded that behind every cloud, the sun still shines that every cloud really has a silver lining.