Joyful Home

  Good evening folks. It has been a while and I'm not exactly sure why... I've been doing the year bible with Pastor Jasmine from Regeneration Nashville and it has brought up some old Born Again feelings that I'm falling in love with again - reading the word all over the place.  What do I mean by that? One of the bibles that I own has footnotes and sometimes it gives a detailed description of what you're reading and other times it lists other verses that is similar to meaning or subject. I would jump all over the word of God and then feel such closeness with Him. He is bubbling this back up in me. I'm not sure why I stopped!  I've been reading Esther for the last month or so and asked my dad to come along with me and read it, too. We have been reading a chapter a day! Chapter 1 we concluded that King Xerxes is pompous, capricious, and prideful. He led his kingdom with such pride by showing off all his wealth and such. But what grabbed my attention was the fact t...

I am sure you know the verse, "Your Word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path," Psalm 119:105. Well today the Lord shed some light on it! (No pun-intended, laughing at myself).  Since I stopped the Hal Higdon training, I was off a few days from running because my family needed some help getting some wood split. That right there is a workout in itself, so I decided to take it a little easy on my body and quite frankly, I wasn't hearing from the Lord or a nudge to run. So I laid low.  This morning I was feeling a nudge from the Lord to run and to my excitement I felt like I needed to run to Hadley (4 miles)! I was excited and was careful to not block myself from this success by self-talking myself down. So I made sure that I was super close to the Father before the run, during the run, and after by praising Him. Sometimes He will place a song on my heart and I'll sing it the whole time and other times He will have me praying for people. This time, He was r...

There I was minding my own business when I started to get this excitement to get back into marathon training. It has been a desire of mine for some time now, but it wasn't the right timing. I could tell. Recently I have been trying 1 mile here and 1 mile there, then I tried 2.5 miles and I thought, "okay, I can do this." Although it is at a slow pace, but who cares, it is me and Jesus! I ended up running a 3.2 mile and I was so elated that when I came in from the run, I was smiling so big and said to Caleb, "I DID IT! I RAN 3 MILE WITH NOT STOPPING!" And I had absolutely no issues with my body and the breathing was easy! I asked the Lord if He could still be a part of this... then I brought it up to some friends that I was going to train for a marathon! I took myself off guard, not them! I was like, "Whoa, God are we doing this!?"  I went for an afternoon run later that week and saw a stick and two leaves that were smiling at me as I ran past it and th...

I just finished the Attributes of God study from The Daily Grace Co. and it was an incredible study of getting to know the Lord. Afterall, He knows me, right? I knew some of the attributes but not all of them. It was fun to get into a deeper dive on omnipresence. What a beautiful opportunity He has given me to be able to sit in His presence. I am in a relationship with the Lord and I need to get to know Him so that I can understand what it is He likes, desires, and expects from me. It's been a beautiful journey. My dreams have been indicating that I am scaling rocks and jumping from one cliff to another with skill. At first I was scared, but my inner-man (Ephesians 3:16) had confidence and told my mind that I can do it with ease. So the second dream, I was scaling smoothly. In my awake life, I did a little research and found that I am under the shelter of Christ. I'm in hiding and the perfect example of this is from my favorite passage of scripture - Moses and God in the crevic...

God has been showing me a different view about fall recently and it's been a super amazing experience. Usually there has been such a push to celebrate Halloween and that's fall. However, this year has been different for me. I forgot and quite honestly, didn't realize how beautiful fall was until I went for an early morning run and saw some townhomes entryway full of leaf decorations, scarecrows that were PRETTY not scary, some pumpkins in their natural state, and corn stalks. It was sweet and immediately made me smile. I thanked the Lord for that visual and the reminder/revelation of what fall really is! This isn't just from my standpoint, but I believe there are others that are starting to see the true value of Harvest! It was meant to be beautiful, cozy, calm, loving, read-a-book-snuggle, fires and s'mores. Evil has changed it to dark and death. They have twisted so much of God's creative seasons. For instance, the witch hat. Did you knooooow that the witch ha...

Exodus 33:13-14 - Now therefore, I pray, if I have found grace in Your sight, show me now Your way, that I may know You and that I may find grace in Your sight. And consider that this nation is Your people." And He said, "My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest." That is my prayer for my life and yours; that we allow God to show us His way, that we come to know Him intimately (not surface level anymore), and that we would find grace with Him. All of this prayer is wrapped up in one bow - His presence will be with us and we will find rest! Psalm 32:8 - I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.  When I spent my quiet time with the Lord, I noticed that there were several things that were holding me back due to fear. Fear of the enemy coming after me because of my past. But there was a revelation that I was taught from the Word of God that said that when Jesus resurrected and came back to fellowsh...