This morning I am trying something new. I will be speaking to a women’s group at my home church. I will be sharing about the book Own Your Life by Sally Clarkson, and what I learned from it as I read through it in 2015. I am so excited to share the truths Sally has taught me, and a little bit about the amazing testimony Sally has lived out in which you can see God evident.
My intention is to encourage others to own their life and live out their part of His story by sharing quotes and stories from Sally’s book. This book has impacted my outlook on life and challenged my purposes as a mom, a wife and a child of God.
I wanted to share a small section of my talk with my readers here on my blog.
Sally would tell her children,
“I believe God has given you the capacity and the ability to grow strong inside, to live courageously, to have great faith, and to become a person of considerable influence in your lifetime. But I cannot make you strong and good—you will have to choose that for yourself. I will love you, and help you in every way. But I cannot make you a great person. You will have to decide that you want to be excellent of character and then make the hard decisions to become the best you can be, to follow hard after God, and to live into your potential. You have a choice to make!”
God has created us with the potential to live a purposeful, meaningful life that is spiritually strong and vibrant. But we have to choose to follow Him, to believe Him, to live for Him. If we follow hard after Him, God will make our life count in ways we can’t even yet see.
In the book, Sally commissioned, “may you be blessed in the chasing after Him in your own life, and may you see evidence of His strong support for you.”
And I know that if she would meet us in person, she would commission the same thing to each one of us too.
Since I read this book in 2015, and really throughout a lot of my life, I can look back and see how God has 100% filled my memories with evidence of Him. (Or as she says in her book, I can see God’s fingerprints.) It seems like in every moment of every day God is showing me something else about Him through an every day happening, whether through mothering . . . or gardening . . . or being a wife . . . or through His nature. I just need to keep watching for it.
I am the type of person where if someone is explaining something to me, I need application. I need to see how it would play out in my own every day life, or what it would look like. Otherwise I usually get in a dead zone and can’t make sense of it. I wanted to share some specific examples of how God has shown His evidence to me, just in case you need personal applications too! Hopefully these stories will spark some memories in your own life!
I was making tea the other week with my 4 and 6 year old. As I put the tea bag in the hot water, and they watched the water change color, I felt God talking to me and I shared with the kids about how when we fill our lives with the Word of God, we are like that tea bag in hot water. The Holy Spirit just flows out of us and colors everything around us.
God is evident in my life.
One day my 3 year old daughter was being very emotional. Not uncommon in our house, and not something I always knew how to deal with. I still don’t. But one time in particular I remember feeling so lost on how to connect with her. She suddenly blurted out, “Why don’t you just hug me?!” God quickly got my attention.
God is evident in my life.
On an early morning this fall, I heard a hunter shoot a gun and all the birds started flying away together over our house. They were so loud, squawking at each other. So, so, so, so loud (maybe it seemed louder because my kids were still sleeping!!!). I reflected on how they need to communicate with each other in order to work as a team. I thanked God for the geese that interrupted my quiet time.
God is evident in His nature around me.
The Cocalico Creek flows through our backyard. If you are familiar with the Cocalico Creek, you know that it floods very quickly. And after a storm, our backyard looks awful! The creek is muddy. Its flowing fast. Debris is coasting through it. It is OUT OF CONTROL. But after waiting overnight or even just a few sunlight hours, it goes down and in the morning, its a peaceful stream again. How breathtaking it is! Sometimes my life seems out of control but over time, that peaceful creek always comes back again.
Again, God is evident in His nature.
My son learned the song “In the Bulb there is a flower” in his Pre-K class last year. I recently reflected on how God used those words to remind me that mothering toddlers is hard, life struggles are hard, but this is a season. In the cold and snow of winter, there’s a spring that waits to be!
God is evident in my life.
A few weeks ago, the verse in Psalms stood out to me, like I never heard it before . . . “When I am afraid, I trust in You.” I must have talked about it or said it out loud that morning to my daughter who just turned 4 years old. Later in the day, she wanted to dust (oh how I love that girl! Secretly, I think she likes to use my little swiffer duster reach tool, but I’m still thankful!) She was in the corner of the living room using it while I was in the kitchen, and I overheard her say, “Oh spider I am afraid of you . . . but I will trust in God!”
God is evident in my life.
If I am ever tempted to think I am a failure as a mom (which happens so often!), I remember how one time my 5 year old son didn’t want to sit next to great-grandma at the dinner table when she was visiting from Florida. He marched off to the basement.
I didn’t have the time or energy to go after him, as I had a table full of guests, a toddler to help and a baby to feed.
He came back a few minutes later, after we started, and whispered in my ear how he didn’t want to sit there. I whispered to him that sometimes we need to do things we don’t want to do. He marched off again. This happened one more time and I started to worry that Great-Grandma really thought I should make him come NOW.
I’m so glad I didn’t act on that thought, because I would have missed out on a huge opportunity to see God evident in our lives!
The next time he came back to me, he whispered, “mommy I talked to God and I want to do things His way.”
You see, in the weeks before I had been saying a prayer, “Help me God. Fill me with peace. Show me your way.” He had overheard me and we talked about it. A few days later, I helped him to use it with his anger. To my complete shock, he remembered it and put it to use!
I was so humbled.
I smiled, and I asked him if I could serve him some food.
Like Sally tells us, God is evident in our lives, He strongly supports us, and we will be blessed in our chasing after Him!
Tomorrow, I will continue with another way God has helped me to see His evidence in my life since I started reading Sally’s book, Own Your Life.
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