Brag on God Friday

I'm so glad you are here! I hope during your visit you get a glimpse of God's heart for we become what we are gazing at. I pray that God refreshes you and gives you readiness to persevere in what He has for you today.  

My desire is to be a blessing to you in helping you know God more and make Him known so I've made these Resources available to you and have the Missional Living blog tab for practical ideas of how to live on mission right where you are. And currently I am writing my way through Judges sharing glimpses of God's heart and character for a weekday devotional. To check out the entire series so far head on over the the Judges Devotional.       

"Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD, so the LORD delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for forty years. A certain man of Zorah, named Manoah, from the clan of the Danites, had a wife who was sterile and remained childless. The angel of the LORD appeared to her and said, "You are sterile and childless, but you are going to conceive and have a son." Judges 13:1-3

If you've been reading for long, you probably know our oldest kids, the boys are adopted. They both have incredible birth stories and I just think adoption is one of the greatest things. Austin and I had always wanted to adopt but wanted to wait until after we had some kids biologically and felt more like we knew what we were doing. But God had different plans. We tried for 2-3 years to have kids but couldn't. And not just that we couldn't, but nobody had any idea of why. Test after test would come back "normal". And I must say the every two week cycle of, maybe we are pregnant this month to have a big let down and then 2 weeks of hope building to get let down again was not the worse part. For me the worst part was the "we don't know what's wrong." It seemed like if someone just knew what was wrong, then we could move forward to fix it or would at least know to accept that we couldn't have kids. But nobody could tell us that. They all just said, "I don't know". Many times I said to Austin, "Honey, I'm so sorry, you married a dud."

So when the angel of the Lord, aka Jesus, appears to Samson's mom, and says, "You are sterile and childless" that is just so stinkin awesome! Have you ever felt that? It's like when you are really upset and someone just repeats back to you what you said, something like, "So you feel ____________."  You could have just said those exact words, but there is just something about someone else saying it. They understand and it is like a surge of relief, "Yes! You get it, Yes! That is exactly how I feel!" 

So how beautiful that Jesus knows, He truly understands what we are going through. When He says, "Come to me and I will give you rest for your souls..." Mt. 11:28 it's true. When we take our heart to Him, He knows, He understands and we can find a surge of rest for our mind, will and emotions (the things that make up our soul).

I guess, I better just wrap up the infertility and adoption situation. God did beautifully miraculous things to put Asher and Uriah into our family, the coolest birth stories ever really. And turns out He really wanted them to be the oldest kids in our family. Because then when we were in process of another adoption (embryo adoption, which is very uncommon, and over 500,000 babies need adopting, we wanted to be part of the solution) we got pregnant. Shock of all shocks. Austin actually made me take two pregnancy tests because he didn't think I did it right. lol! (Seriously, how hard can peeing on a stick be?!)  Anyway, after 9 years of marriage, the Lord opened my womb. And now we are left with the question of, "Can I have kids or not?" But after seeing how God brought together our family, His way is the best and if He gives us more kids biologically, His grace will be sufficient. But our hearts are to adopt again in the future.

Will you join us in glorifying God?

"Tell the nations about his glory. Tell all people about the wonderful things he has done." 1 Chron. 16:24

Each Friday, I love to give others and opportunity to ban together to show and tell how incredible God is. If you've written something that glorifies God (gives us a glimpse of His character-which could be a whole lot of things since everything good thing and every gift and ability is from Him) I would love to have you link it up below. (Just click the link and follow the prompts)  

I just humbly ask that you please let your readers know by including a link at the bottom of your post (or somewhere on your side bar) or put my button code (found on my side bar or the Brag on God Friday Tab) so they can find these other great people glorifying God and we can continue to grow as a community. Thanks! 

You are chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, people who belong to God. You were chosen to tell about the excellent qualities of God, who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light."2 Peter 2:9  

I'm linking up with Spiritual Sunday's