Something I Won't Do

I gave the Joy booklets to people I know. So for the most part, I can know who is most likely to be audience of this blog. Now is a good time to say this:

I pray about what I should write and I try to listen and be honest. I will not use this blog as a forum to try to take care of personal business or act like God is using me to tell somebody off. Example: if someone owed me money, I wouldn't write a post about it like "don't expect a harvest if you're in debt to someone." Ummm, that's not cool.

Because I want joy in my life and I want to bless others, I have to write with a pure heart. God won't use deception or manipulation to accomplish His purposes. If I can't write something without a particular person in mind, I won't write it. (As I'm writing this, I have everyone in mind.) Or how about this: if I am talking about someone, I'll put his or her initials beside the statement. HA!

Ok, back to serious. I pray about what to write. So I say in all humility, if something in a post hits close to home, please consider that God is using this blog to speak to you. I pray that He will. Peace.

You Might Have a Hard Heart If . . .

You can use this list as a starter to see if the words from Hosea 10:12-13 NLT

"Plow up the hard ground of your hearts" apply to you.

You might have a hard heart if . . .

You don’t acknowledge God.

You don’t want to help the poor.

You're constantly finding fault.
You will not humble yourself.

You’re the best person you know (YIKES!)
You don't Love Lucy.
You find it difficult to give/receive a compliment.

There are people in your life that you have not forgiven.

You think God won't forgive you.

You're never wrong.

You're arrogant (do arrogant people know they’re arrogant?).
You gripe, gripe, gripe

You won’t even cry during a Hallmark commercial.

No one can correct you or give you advice.

You're easily angered.

You don’t trust God or His people.

You're the only one you can depend on.

You believe God can, but you don't think He will.

You don't believe God can.

A certain person walked up to you right now, you would not speak to him/her

You need a crowbar to allow "thank you" to escape your lips.

Your favorite pet is a grudge.

You have a short list of people who you like or are willing to help.

You're not happy when family and friends are successful.

You give a compliment, but balance it with "constructive criticism."

Your nickname is Mr./Ms. Grumpy Pants.

Hmmmmm  . . .

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Nah, I'm not really that bad. I love Lucy. :-) I must admit that I do have some hard places in my heart.

This list is compiled from scripture and personal observation. Our hearts may not need a complete plowing, but there may be some stones that need to be removed before we start planting.

Something cool happened at church today. I asked a couple of friends to pray for me. One of them was a teenager. He didn't say many words, but he did pray something like this, "God smooth out the rough places in her life (or maybe he said heart.)

Wow! He had no idea that I planned on writing this post today. He didn't even know that I had this blog. That's what you call "praying in the Spirit." When you listen and allow God to pray through you, you pray the right thing. How awesome is that?

God knows what we need. I pray that you will see His love and faithfulness in your life through the remainder of these 30 days. I pray that God will show you the impenetrable places in your heart so you can break up the fallow ground.

I Forgot to Say . . .

Thank you! To everyone who is on the journey of joy with me. I expect that we will experience joy as we've never EVER known.

I am abundantly blessed with friends who love me. It's good to be loved. :-)

I have friends and family who may not believe the same way that I do, but they are reading the joy scriptures with me just because I invited them. I am humbled by that. I did not want anyone to feel pressured to do this, but I wanted to invite those who are close to me to participate. This is who I am and this is what I do. I felt that if I didn't invite people close to me – no matter their beliefs – I wasn't being honest with them. I don't share all of the details of my life with everyone. No one should. But this is something that I felt I must share.

So thank you and smooches. I'm praying for each one of you. I want you to have all of the best that God has planned for you. Yay joy! 

Grab a Plow! Part 1

So I prayed about how to start a garden. My grandmother had a huge garden when I was a child. I guess I didn't help much with it because I don't know a thing about gardening. I remember digging near the garden. I dug with that shovel like I was really doing something.  I dug until I hit an orange layer of soil. Shoooot! I was no fool. I stopped digging. I knew that red would follow the orange layer and if the ground was red . . . I would dig my way right into Hell. Phew! That was close.

I can't imagine what I would have thought if I had lived in Alabama at that time instead of Illinois. There sure is a lot of red soil in Alabama. Just sayin'.

That was my gardening experience. I liked the greens, okree, and tomatoes from the garden.  That was all I knew. So now I want to plant a spiritual garden and I haven't a clue how to begin. I realized that the Word, of course, is the seed and the heart/soul is the ground or soil. But I wanted to relate this spiritual thing to a natural thing to help me understand it. So I prayed. My answer came soon by way of an audiobook -- Praying God's Word by Beth Moore. They read the scripture from Jeremiah 4:3

For thus says the LORD to the men of Judah and Jerusalem:

      “ Break up your fallow ground,
      And do not sow among thorns. NKJV

Eureka! That's how you start a garden. So I searched for that scripture and found it said more.

³ This is what the LORD says to the men of Judah and to Jerusalem:

   “Break up your unplowed ground
   and do not sow among thorns.
⁴ Circumcise yourselves to the LORD,
   circumcise your hearts,
   you men of Judah and people of Jerusalem,
or my wrath will break out and burn like fire
   because of the evil you have done—
   burn with no one to quench it.  

                                Jeremiah 4:3-4 NIV

There's the heart thing. Get the junk out or your hard heart. Soften your heart. Prepare your heart by letting it be for God, otherwise whatever good is planted in your heart will be planted among weeds that will choke its growth. I get it now. 

     But wait! 

                  There's more!

Hosea 10:12-13 NKJV says:

¹² Sow for yourselves righteousness;
      Reap in mercy;
      Break up your fallow ground,
      For it is time to seek the LORD,
      Till He comes and rains righteousness on you.
       ¹³ You have plowed wickedness;
      You have reaped iniquity.
      You have eaten the fruit of lies,
      Because you trusted in your own way,
      In the multitude of your mighty men.

The New Living Translation (NLT) version breaks it down like this:

 ¹² I said, ‘Plant the good seeds of righteousness,
      and you will harvest a crop of love.
   Plow up the hard ground of your hearts,
      for now is the time to seek the Lord,
   that he may come
      and shower righteousness upon you.’

 ¹³ “But you have cultivated wickedness
      and harvested a thriving crop of sins.
   You have eaten the fruit of lies—
      trusting in your military might,
   believing that great armies
      could make your nation safe.

I love that! "Plow up the hard ground of your hearts." That's something to think about.  I'd better get to plowin'

What Do You Want in Your Garden? -- The Story of Joy Part 2

Within the first few days of the new year I was reading a blog post. It's sad to say, but I rarely read a blog that is not food-related. Well, the blog that I was reading has a home and garden section. That day's post caught my eye. The blogger was writing about planning her garden. I do well if I can keep a plant alive for a few months weeks; I have no idea why this post caught and kept my attention.

As I read the post, an idea started forming. I began thinking about how God's word is a seed. For many years one of my favorite passages of scripture is the one I mentioned in a previous post:

²⁶Jesus also said, “The Kingdom of God is like a farmer who scatters seed on the ground. ²⁷ Night and day, while he’s asleep or awake, the seed sprouts and grows, but he does not understand how it happens. ²⁸ The earth produces the crops on its own. First a leaf blade pushes through, then the heads of wheat are formed, and finally the grain ripens. ²⁹ And as soon as the grain is ready, the farmer comes and harvests it with a sickle, for the harvest time has come.”                  Mark 4:26-29 NLT

So I often think about how to apply this scripture. Our pastor had been teaching on investing (planting seeds) as well. This was all fresh in my mind. As I read about planning a garden, I realized that when you plant seeds, you plant them on purpose. You know what you want to grow and what you're going to want to eat, so you only plant those things. This is a simple concept that I have been realizing I can apply to my life. I don't want brussel sprouts so I'm not going to plant brussel sprout seeds. I want spinach sooooo . . . you get the idea. Hmmmm, if the Word is the seed, I can plant a spiritual garden. I can consciously plant what I want. You know, "you reap what you sow." 

 Or as the Message Bible says it,

What a person plants, he will harvest. From Galatians 6:7

Verses 7 and 8 in the New Living Translation says it like this,

⁷ Don’t be misled—you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. ⁸ Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit.

The Denise version of verse 7 is this: Don't be ridiculous. God has set things in order so that seeds produce one thing and one thing only. There is no way you're going to grow spinach from brussel sprout seeds. You are going to get spinach from spinach seeds.

What do I want in my garden? One thing that I want in my life is more joy. I will plant seeds of joy in my life on purpose.

About a week and a half later, I had to drive to Alton/St. Louis. Driving is good thinking time for me. I was listening to a minister and sometimes when I am in the atmosphere of listening to the Word, I have inspired ideas. That's when the idea came to make the Joy booklets and share them with others. This was no big deal because I have made and shared scripture booklets before. The big deal part was adding the blog to it. I could list reasons why I was not in the least interested in doing the blog portion. But I believe this was a God-inspired idea and I shouldn't argue with Him. :-)

As I am planting seeds in my own life, I felt that I should sow into the lives of others as well. That's how I ended up making Joy booklets and giving them to people who are special in my life and/or those to whom I felt God was leading me to give. I didn't have enough for everyone who is special in my life, though. But I am glad to be able to share with some. That's the thing about seeds . . . you plant one, but more than one fruit comes from it. My expectation? I expect to be able to sow more in others' lives. One seed  . . . much fruit. Pretty cool, huh?

Don't Postpone Joy – The Story of Joy part 1

I had been thinking about joy a lot. I kept thinking 2011 is going to be a year of joy. One mid-December morning as I was driving, I stopped behind a car with a plain white bumper sticker that said, "Don't postpone joy."  I thought hmmm, that is talking to me.

The sticker made a good point. Why wait until a certain time to be joyful, why not now? Why say, when I make more money, or when I have a new job, or when I get married or unmarried (God forbid) I will enjoy life. Today is a good day to enjoy life.

When I went back to my hometown on Christmas Eve, I ran into a friend that I had not seen for yeeears. Well, when I returned home to my mom's, a couple of hours later, my lightning fast brain realized  . . . I had run into Joy (the name of the friend). Coincidence? I think not.

My mom had Christmas cards on her coffee table and one of them had a cute "joy" with a peppermint O in the center. I asked it I could have it. I guess it was at this point that I decided I would collect joy. Then Mom said she had an idea for a project called "Joy to the World." But I'm not supposed to tell anyone about it. So ssshhh. ;-) Wow! Mom is talking about joy, too. On the way home from Alton, I stopped at the after Christmas sales and picked up a couple of joy ornaments to add to my collection. Oh, I already had a joy Christmas postcard on my cubicle wall at work. My coworker/friend who likes to put pictures of HER family on MY wall (try to figure that one out) had posted her sons with a joy and love greeting (but we don't care about love right now, focus on joy). Some one at work was walking around giving Christmas cookies and asked if I wanted one, you know which ornament I took. I think I have established the pattern by now. So I removed the other family pictures (that weren't MY family) and made my joy wall with the postcard, plastic-wrapped joy ornament cookie, and joy ornaments. I was trying to create an atmosphere.

I had already begun the practice of wishing family and friends a joy-filled and prosperous new year when I spoke to them on Christmas. I was planning 2011.

 I need some more joy on my wall.

Let Joy Begin

Today is the first day of our 30 days of Joy. It's easy; we're reading the Joy scriptures everyday and allowing the Word to take effect. The word of God is a seed that we're planting in our hearts. In this case we're planting seeds of joy, so we expect a harvest of joy. 

It's like Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is like a farmer who scatters seed on the ground. ²⁷ Night and day, while he’s asleep or awake, the seed sprouts and grows, but he does not understand how it happens. ²⁸ The earth produces the crops on its own. First a leaf blade pushes through, then the heads of wheat are formed, and finally the grain ripens. ²⁹ And as soon as the grain is ready, the farmer comes and harvests it with a sickle, for the harvest time has come.”  Mark 4:26-29 NLT

We may not understand how it happens, but voilà, our lives are filled with joy. Yay joy!