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You’re Not “Stuck” at Home. You’re Having the Time of Your Life, Homeschooling, That is!

~ Bev Parker ~ Leave a comment

The Home Front Show

Hello and welcome to all parents who are suddenly at home with their kids.  As a veteran homeschooler I have some thoughts, tips and downright excellent ideas for you.

  1.  Begin every day with “The P.J.’s of Power – a psalm, a proverb, Paul’s wisdom from something in the New Testament, and Prayer, and Praise, and then some of Jesus’ words.  If the kids are readers and awake (this is a lovely time for all of you to catch up on sleep by the way), instruct them to do the same, take notes, and let it all be done in P.J.’s!
  2. Make this something they truly enjoy, perhaps all around the table first thing, along with hot chocolate, and begin teaching table manners and conversation arts at the table.  Best of all, you are teaching them to love and enjoy God!
  3. Have all hands on deck for meals

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Blessing Blockers from Richard Roberts

~ Bev Parker ~ Leave a comment

file:///C:/Users/Owner/Downloads/Blessing%20Blockers%20Checklist.pdf.pdf

This is hugely helpful, a download I found at https://oralroberts.com/

Enjoy and be blessed! That’s all for now because I want to go back and read and re-read this.

Dastardly Doubt, Get Out!

~ Bev Parker ~ Leave a comment

It’s time to get back to basics, or, as in the case of so many Christians, to go there for the first time. So here are some basics:

  1. God’s accepted currency is faith; Satan’s is fear.
  2. Faith works via Love.
  3. Love never fails.
  4. Death and life are in the power of the tongue–you will have what you say.
  5. You must receive Jesus’ gift of forgiveness, and pass it on without reservation to others.
  6. Sins ruins everything, and doubting God is sin.
  7. He wants you to receive the victory over sin Jesus bought for you at Calvary–He’s for you!
  8. The prayer of faith avails much!

These basics are all based in Scripture, and to believe otherwise is insanity leading to death, and calling God a liar. Doubting victory is calling God a liar. In fact, it is believing the great deceiver, the father of lifes.

Dress it up any way you like, call it common sense, prudence, or whatever you want–fear is a lie.

Watch yourself-we all have to, all the time, because our enemy is good at his craft. Watch to see what you’re thinking: do you immediately believe and accept the defeat and the negative, and doubt the possibility of victory?

Your experience, education, and opinions do not matter. What your pastor and best friend think is not the issue. The issue is the Word of God Almighty, and if you’re not going to go with that, prepare for devastation in your life.

Once the devastation comes, you can continue in the crud thinking–blame God, refuse responsibility, accept defeat, and do the woe-is-me mantra. Or, you can change your wicked ways.

That’s right. It is wrong, wicked, perverse, and purely evil to call God a liar, and call what the liar Satan puts out, the truth.

If things aren’t going well, and maybe never have, God isn’t the one who missed it. Maybe someone doesn’t want the responsibility required for victory in Jesus. Jesse Duplantis, in I Never Learned to Doubt, says, “Doubt doesn’t want the responsibility of believing–doubt always seems to want to pass the buck or shift the blame–but it’s not OK.”

If we don’t get it, if things haven’t gone for us the way we prayed, hoped, expected–again, God didn’t miss it. Believe it or not, there’s something we missed, or don’t know, or haven’t patiently and persistently and immovably waited on. There is a lie we’re believing.

I told my husband recently, regarding healing in America, “If I’m the last person on earth standing and believing that God is healing our land, I will stand. If I’m the last person on earth who believes He wants to heal and bless His children, that He cannot lie, that Jesus’ blood bought us free-indeed freedom, I will stand.”

The enemy of our souls wants us to think we’re the last and only one, that it’s up to us, that’s it’s too little, too late. Such a stupid liar he is, and certainly no match for the God I serve.

Come along with me. The only choice is faith, the only path is Love–the victory-bringing, blood-bought Love of Jesus.

Pray with me: “Father we repent of doubting You, of misunderstanding You, of being ignorant of Who You are. Help us, Lord, to trust and obey, to hear and heed Your voice. Cleanse us from the unrighteousness of fear and doubt, from the pride that says we can do anything at all apart from You. Amen.”

Let Us Now Be Good Company

~ Bev Parker ~ Leave a comment

The French Café tells us we can frequent Parisian coffee shops of our choice, perhaps because of “the landlord’s personality, the clientele, the ambience, or the décor.”  In a rural setting we are told the décor of old country cafes is frugal, but that, “they often create their own atmosphere of romance and poetry with a remarkable economy of means.”

There is something particularly satisfying about creating our “own atmosphere of romance and poetry with a remarkable economy of means.”  You don’t need a new French Press to make coffee.  Indeed you can brew a satisfactory cup boiling it on the stovetop!

One of the best cups of coffee I’ve ever tasted was cheapo store brand coffee steaming hot out of a thermos.  I was in the back seat of my husband John’s truck, it was very cold outside, we were crossing a high mountain pass.  John was driving, my brother in the front seat with him, and my beloved, beloved sister-in-law sat beside me.  My sister-in-law is steady, to be depended upon to keep up her end of the positivity bargain at all times. I’ve been sharing meals with Liz since the seventh grade, and she hasn’t failed yet to be good and pleasant company, the kind of company that makes a meal a feast, in fact.

The flavor is enhanced by the setting and the company, so let’s all be sure we’re good company!

I was with good company last week driving with my daughter Rebekah and friend Pam when we got on that subject: politics–the fraudulent elections, disappointments being handed out by the Supreme Court (only Justice Thomas does not disappoint), traitors in Congress, small business woes, etc. Pam reached over and touched my arm. “I’m sorry,” she said, “for ranting about all that.”

But because she was ending all of it with her trust in God, with quoting and reminding us all of Psalm 37, with seeing all the good that is coming out of the bad (and there’s lots of it, especially in that Christians are humbly remembering who their Savior is), it wasn’t a rant. It was an air clearing and mutual exhortation among good company.

Keeping our eyes lifted doesn’t mean we don’t know what’s happening, or that we aren’t doing something about it. It just means we’re looking to our only hope. We’re keeping good company with good company.

Let’s enjoy life a little, and let me say it you and to myself again–let’s be good company.

Home-First Hospitality

~ Bev Parker ~ Leave a comment

Today’s Henri Nouwen Society offering spoke to my heart and I want to share it, then offer my thoughts, so please read beautiful Henri thoughts, and consider mine.

Henri:

Hospitality
Hospitality means primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines. . . . The paradox of hospitality is that it wants to create emptiness, not a fearful emptiness, but a friendly emptiness where strangers can enter and discover themselves as created free; free to sing their own songs, speak their own languages, dance their own dances; free also to leave and follow their own vocations. Hospitality is not a subtle invitation to adore the lifestyle of the host, but the gift of a chance for the guest to find his own.

Bev’s:

I read these beautiful thoughts on hospitality, made a comment, and then considered the comments offered, where one wise man said in a nutshell, “One-on-one hospitality is the cure for the world’s ills.”

Let it begin at home. Let us be open to the wounds and ugliness of each others’ hearts and personalities. Let us seek reasons and ways to bless and pray for–not the world first–those with whom we share our dwellings. Let us, as Henri exhorts us to, ” . . . offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines.”

Freedom. Let us emulate Christ by offering a “free indeed” hospitality. No, this doesn’t mean anything goes. Just Love.

Love doesn’t always keep still and quiet, any more than love mouths off in anger. Love abides in God, Who is Love, and seeks His ways, grace, understanding, wisdom, and even knowledge of what’s in the wounded and precious hearts with whom we live. Love is patient, kind, at peace, hospitable.

Hospitality is Love. Or is meant to be. Again, let it begin at home, where all good things begin and end, Amen.

Think on THESE Things

~ Bev Parker ~ Leave a comment

Let’s forget about forgetting about the negatives in the news, and let’s remember to forget the faults–the negatives, of those who matter–of our SIGNIFICANT other(s). Today is the perfect day to begin with our mates and ourselves and seek “like-mindedness” where it counts most–at home.

Division is running amok, rampant throughout the earth. Let us “Just Say No” to divison at home, beginning with saying “No” to finding fault with our mates. This means we look at what’s right, pray about what’s not, and let God have a go (unhindered by our “help”) at healing our beloveds (that includes ourselves).

I’m not talking about revving up our rah-rah engines with some positive confessions and personal improvement strategies, and telling our mates it’s time to get with our program, our GREAT new program! I’m talking about simply taking God at His word via knowing what His word actually says. About us and everyone else we’re given to love. About seeking to see with His eyes.

The Word of God doesn’t say everyone except our mate is fearfully and wonderfully made, to be loved and cherished, forgiven, set free, blessed. We are created to be as our Creator–blessors. We are not to take stock and find others, or ourselves, wanting. The Blood of Jesus took care of that. We must beware of the perversion in extending blessing to everyone on earth except our mate.

There are deep things in all our hearts, things that need healing, things that will never see the light of freedom without the power of God’s love. Anyone can look for and find fault. We are not to be “anyone”. We are to be the champion of our mate’s heart. Let us look at our mates as our first order of Love business, our first call of Love duty. And let us remember that the first order of business in Love, is Loving.

A Sack Full of Poison, aka “Meds”

~ Bev Parker ~ 2 Comments

We were shocked and appalled at the deterioration in my uncle when he came to visit. His dull eyes and countenance, shuffling gait, and inability to follow the conversation were noted, and then understood, as he pulled out a sack rattling with numerous bottles of prescription meds.

What to do or say? Experience says there’s nothing to be said or done. God, also known as “my doctor” has spoken. But then my uncle got a break. His son said, “You’re coming home with me and we’re getting you off this crap, or I’m taking you to the nursing home right now.”

My uncle chose to go home with his son and within weeks he was off the meds, onto right eating and supplements, and was his old (brand new!) self.

I liken this sack full of meds and the exponential damage done as one insult is added to yet another; one side effect is “treated” with yet another poisonous cocktail; this ruining of the body’s inherent ability to heal itself if given time, nutrition, nature’s remedies and most of all prayers of faith; I liken all this to torturing a free-market economy with the deadly “cure” of socialism.

It aint natural, and it won’t work. It never has and it never will.

What God Says, Not What Man Says God Says

~ Bev Parker ~ Leave a comment

God doesn’t say to give thanks for everything. He says “in” everything to give thanks. This is so we are not overwhelmed and overcome by evil. This is for the protection of our hearts and minds.

Following is from today’s devotion in Kenneth and Gloria Copeland’s Faith to Faith.

In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.– 1 Thessalonians 5:18
Notice that this scripture instructs us to give thanks in all things, not for all things. When tragedy or temptation strikes, we are not to thank God for them. He is not their author. He’s the One who provides our way of escape from them. And that’s what we’re to thank Him for.If you read the four Gospels, you’ll find that Jesus never gave thanks for sickness or death. Instead, when He encountered them, His response was to overcome them by God’s power. So give thanks as Jesus gave thanks—not for Satan’s activities but for the victory God has given you over them.

Dastardly Division

~ Bev Parker ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday my daughter and I went to Wyoming where there are fewer mask-querades than in Colorado, and while there joined a coffee shop meeting of Wyoming conservatives. These were fine folks, but there was no mention of God. These were, I thought beforehand, good, salty, no-nonsense Wyoming git-er-done types. Christians.

But, in fact, they are like so many of us, handicapped. In the parking lot I saw anti-Colorado bumper stickers. “Colorado is Wyoming’s Mexico” and a few other uncomplimentary offerings prepared me for the remarks of the man next to me. In a nutshell, he said, “We hate Colorado.”

There was a question about Mark Gaetz’s motives in coming to Wyoming’s “Impeach Liz Cheney” rally, as in, “Why did we get an outsider?” I thought we were all Americans. More division. How does the great evil of socialism win over freedom? With division.

(Socialist “intellectual” Bhaskar Sunkara praises Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn for promoting “a renewal of class antagonism” which is essential for the thriving of evil in society.)

Back to the meeting in Wyoming: One of the attendees belittled another conservative in attendance (better than behind his back, maybe?) in front of everyone; later the speaker said about Cheyenne (where we were), “I hate this city.” Could it be that in judging the bringers of division and crassness, we become divisive and crass? More divided?

I’m asking these questions in prayer this morning, along with the question, “What is the new song You want us to sing, Father?” I was reading and re-reading Psalm 96: “Sing unto the Lord a new song.” Certainly that precludes the same old, same old, melodies of anger and defensiveness. Of division.

So, let’s think a bit about this. How far have we gotten with division? More to the point, how far have we gotten with disobedience to God? Perhaps we should begin our song with words straight from His Word. Just like David, let us sing Psalms.

Pondering and praying a bit more, I asked, “Do we stop going to fear-filled churches as a means ofprotecting ourselves from fear, even as we stop going to division-filled political gatherings to protect ourselves from division?” Or are these examples of the classic throwing-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater mistake?

“Father, You promise us wisdom for the asking, and I’m asking for wisdom. Surely there is no other source.”

Some things are so obvious we look right over them. We go to the TV for answers, and politcal gatherings for good company, and when it comes right down to it, if we’re not keeping company with Jesus, if we’re not doing the “Seek ye first” thing, we’re without a hope.

“My hope is in You, Lord. Amen.”

Opportunities Here, There and Everywhere!

~ Bev Parker ~ Leave a comment

To trust. In God. What other option do we have? Faith in God is the only sensible choice. The Bible tells us to “choose Life” and it’s time to do that, and do it literally.

Choose Life. I read today (from Jay Sekulow) that over 40% of all deaths worldwide are abortion deaths. The choosing of death. I pondered this horror, and I said to my husband, John, “I wonder if God’s waiting on His people to care more about the blood of the innocents than about our own sweet asses.”

“You know,” I added, “People don’t talk or think about abortion because it’s too horrible.” Well, Dear Reader, it’s time to say “Enough!” to the walking around puddles of blood running in the streets. God help and heal and forgive us all.

I prayed for our hearts, that whatever fears, whatever evils lurking within be exposed, repented of, changed. Let us choose Life in every way we can possibly choose Life. Let us choose the soul-cleansing Blood of the Lamb, and the power therein.

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