A Slice of Church Life

Those who follow this blog know that my dear friend, over at Hope Springs, is expecting her fourth baby at forty years old. This past Sunday, Harvest Church joyfully attended her "Forty With the Fourth" party...

This is our Wendy...who is "Forty with the Fourth"...and adored by all at Harvest for her faithful friendship and continuity. This woman honors relationships, remembers details, and treasures all the little traditions that come with church life.


See the little desk? My daughters Hannah and Sarah purchased it at an antique store, painted the bottom that pretty blue color, and painted the top surface of the desk in chalkboard paint. Then they painted Ethan William Cantrell's initials, and glued them on the front. Sarah's husband Jonathan then painted a small Snoopy on the chair...wish you could see it - I forgot to snap a picture.


But I did remember to snap a picture of my gift...crochet baby booties

and a knitted matching scarf - so Ethan and Mommy can match this Christmas. Yup, I made them. ::perky sniff::


The Fancher's house was packed...inside and out.

Everywhere you looked, you saw a woman with child...

Where did all the men go?? Didn't they want to see all the cute baby stuff? Why are our men outside?

Oh well...let's open presents!

There's dad, on the left, with the "Joe Cool Dad" Snoopy shirt on...


Gathering everyone into the room for a time of prayer.

Friends like Joe Cool Daddy Doug and Wendy are worth the stickin' and the stayin'. I would not trade continuity in relationships for anything. You have to remain on your plot of ground to reap the harvest of the seeds you sowed. I feel so privileged by God to have "built houses, and dwelt in them, planted vineyards and eaten the fruit of them." God forbid that I build, and someone else inhabit. How sad if I were to plant, and another eat.

"Dwell in the land and cultivate continuity (faithfulness)...and verily, you shall be fed."

~Proverbs.

Legalism

The law was and is the school-master, ever pointing us to Christ. Legalism mistakes the classroom for graduation. Gentile legalists have taken the law and made it the end instead of the means. They live life, figuratively speaking, chanting their long and short vowel sounds, drilling their math facts, strutting their Geometry theorems...thinking that the Greatest Teacher of All is giving them a straight "A".

When the point of the law was to point us to the One who is not a ordinance, is not a law, is not a rule, but is a person.

The difference between living under the law and living under grace is the difference between being in school all your life, making straight A's...

...and graduating, falling in love, starting a family, and nurturing that family by all means possible. Legalist believers and Grace believers know the same things and do some of the same things - but only the Grace believer , who truly understands grace, is able to take what she knows and apply it to her relationships. Only the grace believer does what she does for the higher and deeper and better reason. Because of relationship.

And relationships are all that matter - loving God and loving the people He has placed in proximity to us in this life.

3-D Ultrasound of Timothy

This just in, this afternoon! Timothy will be here in less than a month, it seems. He could come anytime between next week and next month. Hannah went in today for another ultrasound, and this time it was the newer three dimensional-type...isn't he the cutest thing you ever saw?! He's makin' a "mad face", because the nurse jiggled him around and he didn't like it.

I found myself sitting on my front porch today, the realization dawning on me that it was a God-kissed day. The sun warming my shoulders, the sound of the waterfall that pours into the pond, caught up on all my work, my knitting in my hand, prayers for all of Harvest's new babies on my heart, a letter from my oldest son telling us that God is granting him favor and promotion, partly through his dad, and he knows that.

Tim emailed our son's drill sergeant awhile back - something most parents never do - and told him that we were praying for him, and that he could do "anything he wanted" to our son. (!!)

Drill sergeant, three inches from my son's nose, shouting to Josiah: "Atchley, you are different. I like you. Your dad wrote me and said I could do anything I wanted to you."

Josiah to DI: "That sounds exactly like this recruit's father, SIR!"

...and then he got a promotion, for his intensity and skill. Josiah said, and I quote from his letter, "as usual, God gives me favor through my father."

...and then he asked us to write out Scriptures for him, so that he can streamline his devotions and fit them in with his letter reading time.

Pinch me. All this, and Jesus too. Try and tell me that grace isn't the central theme of the gospel, and thus, the central theme of our lives here on earth...try and tell me that life is about something other than the grace of God, and I'll think you a potential heretic. It is such heresy, to not believe in a God of All Grace, who gives More Grace, and who sits on a throne of Grace, surrounded by a rainbow, one of the symbols of Grace!

This "living of the gospel" thing is the hardest, simplest, profoundest, most wonderful thing I've ever experienced in my life, and ever will experience.

Oh, nothing but the blood of Jesus! Not my good looks or education or work ethic or any such thing...only Jesus, all for Jesus, because of Jesus.

Best Organizational Strategies for The Top Producers - Those Grace-Girls

You can't give a cup of cold water to one of God's children, and not be rewarded. All my grace-girlfriends are big-time producers, and hard workers.

"I outworked them all, yet not I, but the grace of God in me..." the well-known words of the apostle Paul, my all-time hero, other than Jesus...well, and other than my husband. I know that sounds cheesy, even though it is true.

There is something about a life that is animated and empowered by the grace of God. You often work very hard, and get very tired, but it feels like an effortless doing. What it is, actually, is maximum effectiveness with minimum human effort.

This state of being, this effortless doing, is The Art of Living in Grace, and is a harder, artful nuance to achieve than powering one's way through life in a perpetual state of active doing.

I'm by far no expert. But when I'm in the flow of Grace, I know it. I know it, because my days become fluid, like water, and I simply flow. I respond to the topography of my life, moving around obstacles, inhabiting my moments receptively and effortlessly. A lot gets accomplished. A lot.

Here are a very few things I have learned from these seasons of grace, lessons I hope to inhabit until they become INward HABITs ~

~ Just get started. Say yes to the thing. A thing once begun, is half done. Do it. Get started. Now.

~Get rid of clutter. Self explanatory.

~Surround yourself with joyful people. Just because you are in full time ministry, you are not obligated to spend too much time with anyone who is a drain on you. Spend the majority of your time with people who worship a Big God, believe He gives More Grace, and who make you feel like a Special Lady. Everyone else can take a number.

~Don't be available at a moment's notice. It is impossible to maintain a creative spirit if you are overly accessible to everyone.

~Don't waste time talking about your problems with someone who can do nothing about them. Unless you are speaking to a Praying Woman, you are better off casting all your cares upon The One who cares for you.

~Take out your emotional trash several times a day. In my home, our medium-sized kitchen garbage can has to be taken out several times a day. Your emotional well being, particularly in times of stress, is no different. Keep short lists, hold no grudges. Stop several times a day, on the inside, and do a heart-and-body scan. If you sense tension or emotional negativity, speak to your soul! Get that trash out of there, before it stinks up the place! If you find you have to empty the trash cans of your heart several times a day, that just means you are a busy, caring woman, who gets a LOT done, and touches a lot of lives, every day. It's normal.

~Practice the Presence. Our God is a reservoir of relaxation. He is our hiding place...our little cabin in the woods...our cottage on the beach...He is vacation for the spirit, accessible to you twenty-four times a day and more. Run into His presence often.

When it comes to accomplishing things of eternal value, a legalista can't hold a candle to a grace-girl. A grace-girl can do all things through her revelation of Christ - and in direct proportion to her revelation of His great love and greater grace.

This Grace Preaching is Nothing New

In the words of the great Prince of Preachers, Charles Haddon Spurgeon:



"I have chosen you out of the world."
-- John 15:19

Here is distinguishing grace and discriminating regard; for some are made the special objects of divine affection. Do not be afraid to dwell upon this high doctrine of election. When your mind is most heavy and depressed, you will find it to be a bottle of richest cordial. Those who doubt the doctrines of grace, or who cast them into the shade, miss the richest clusters of Eshcol; they lose the wines on the lees well refined, the fat things full of marrow. There is no balm in Gilead comparable to it. If the honey in Jonathan's wood when but touched enlightened the eyes, this is honey which will enlighten your heart to love and learn the mysteries of the kingdom of God. Eat, and fear not a surfeit; live upon this choice dainty, and fear not that it will be too delicate a diet. Meat from the King's table will hurt none of his courtiers. Desire to have your mind enlarged, that you may comprehend more and more the eternal, everlasting, discriminating love of God.

When you have mounted as high as election, tarry on its sister mount, the covenant of grace. Covenant engagements are the munitions of stupendous rock behind which we lie entrenched; covenant engagements with the surety, Christ Jesus, are the quiet resting-places of trembling spirits.

"His oath, his covenant, his blood,
Support me in the raging flood;
When every earthly prop gives way,
This still is all my strength and stay."

If Jesus undertook to bring me to glory, and if the Father promised that he would give me to the Son to be a part of the infinite reward of the travail of his soul; then, my soul, till God himself shall be unfaithful, till Jesus shall cease to be the truth, thou art safe. When David danced before the ark, he told Michal that election made him do so. Come, my soul, exult before the God of grace and leap for joy of heart.

Happy Anniversary, Timothy!

The love of my life, at his desk. I snapped this picture just now, so you can see what I see. Cute, cute, cute!

I was shopping the other day, thinking about my man and our upcoming anniversary, and heard an old 80's Styx song...

The headlines read
These are the worst of times
I do believe it's true
I feel so helpless
Like a boat against the tide
I wish the summer wind
Could bring back Paradise

But I know
If the world turned upside down
Baby, I know
You'd always be around
My my

The best of times
Are when I'm alone with you
Some rain, some shine
We'll make this a world for two

When I'm alone with you
Everything's alright
When I'm alone with you
You brighten up the night
When I'm alone with you

That song's been stuck in my head ever since. Never, in my lifetime, have there been such doom and gloom prophecies from the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and preachers and Bible teachers. And I probably agree with them. Our world is in a very precarious place.

But I have the rare luxury of knowing that if it all came crashing down tomorrow, the man I am married to is resourceful, hard working, and most of all, he loves me with fierce passion. Not only that, but he's just easy to be with.

We prefer each other's company. When you have that going for you, nothing seems quite so dire or scary. I'm blessed - God has poured out rich grace upon us.

Happy Anniversary, Papaw! Happy Anniversary, love of my life! Together, I have the mental image of us turning our sails to catch the wind, and those sails billow, taut and strong, as our boat picks up speed and we head straight into the next 24 years, where things get better and better.

"Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be, the last of life for which the first was made..."

Megan and Gabbi Grace's Baby Shower - and the significance of the number four

Here are our FOUR expectant mommies...from left to right, you see our youth pastor's wife Kelly (she is hatching Jeremiah), you see the Queen of the day's festivities Megan (she is hatching Gabriella Grace), my sweet almost-forty friend Wendy (who is hatching Ethan) and my daughter Hannah (who will give birth to Timothy Paul any day now!)

Our Megs, feeding Gabbi Grace. (By the way, that is my mom in the background, to the left...isn't she incredibly young looking?)

I couldn't resist snapping a shot of Megan's decorating style (the shower was held in her home)

Isn't this the prettiest cake set-up you ever saw?

Piles of presents.

Interestingly, Harvest Church is expecting four babies. My dear friend Wendy is turning four-ty (forty), and expecting her fourth. I just turned 44, and have been married 24 years today. (Another post forthcoming...I rarely post twice in one day...)

In Biblical numerology (as opposed to occult numerology, the demonic counterfiet to the God Who Created Meaningful Numbers), the number 4 means...are you ready for this?

....Creation! God set four into His creation (the directions N, S, E and W, the elements of earth, wind, fire, water, the four seasons, etc. etc. there is more, but you don't want me typing out the entire Biblical commentary...)

I didn't know that, when I declared my word for 2010 - "Create". Before I researched the significance of the number four, I heard the Lord, in my prayer time, saying to me, "I am going to hover over you, by my Spirit, and you will be doubly creative."

44 years old. 4 babies coming to our church. 4, 4, 4 popping up everywhere.

Very exciting.