Happy New Year!

How exciting a New Year can be! A fresh new start, and with the reality of a New Year most people have a long list of resolutions that they intend to stick to: losing weight, exercising more, paying off debt, being a better person, etc.  You may even have a list that looks similar to this. These are all great, and things we should strive for but I am not a fan of making a list of resolutions.  Don’t get me wrong, it is great to have goals and work toward those goals, I have many myself, but there is a stigma attached to New Year’s resolutions and many people never follow through.  Working at Weight Watchers, I see it every year.  The first week of January there is standing room only in the meeting rooms, but come March, the newness has worn off and the resolutions fade as the year progresses.  Why is this? 

Resolutions can be shallow without God’s divine guidance!

I have had my lists of resolutions before, too, but what the Lord has shown me has taken on new meaning.  Throughout the last several years, the Lord has taken me on some amazing journeys to know him more.  Some of these journeys have been quite painful -- just being honest here -- but they have been completely necessary to bring me to a place of complete and utter dependence on him! As you can see these journeys, I can attest, were AMAZING!  What the Lord would show me was that everything I do needed to be bathed in prayer and given to the Lord for wisdom and discernment.  When I depended on my own strength, I would fail miserably, but when I put my faith & trust in Christ to follow through on his plan, goals were met and he received the glory! That totally changed me!

I am so excited to enter 2011!  As I have taken a long walk this past week looking back on 2010, I can only give praise to my God! This has been a very busy year for me and my family and the Lord has stretched me so far out of my comfort zone in many areas of my life.  But all praise be to God for all the wonderful things he has taught me!  When I began 2010 I had no idea what was in store, and I admit if I had known, I probably would have run away kicking and screaming! Lol!  God is the one that holds the future.  He knew what was in store for me, but allowed me to hold to my faith and trust him completely to go in his footsteps.  What a journey it has been! I have seen his face and clung to his Word to get me through every curve and turn I encountered.  My God is so good!

Now as I begin 2011, I enter with such peace that whatever God has in store, I will trust and have faith!  I want to seek my Father’s face even more! I want to grow so much more in love with him this year than ever before!  That is why I don’t make “New Year’s Resolutions”.  You see for me, every day is a new day to love and follow my Lord!  I can wake up every day and have my goals and my plans set, but it is all about him.  Every day I will wake up and commit that day to him and commit to do his will.  I have to die to myself.  I am an old wretched sinner, and daily I have to deny myself and allow the Holy Spirit to fill me to overflowing! 

If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

-- Luke 9:23

Oh, the joy that comes from allowing God to rule your day! With Christ in our lives, every day is a fresh start and daily we need to deny ourselves, pick up our cross, and follow our Master!  His ways are perfect and his mercies are new every day!

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.”

-- Lamentations 3:22-24

Welcome 2011!  Our family has already sat down together and looked back at 2010 and prayerfully considered our goals for 2011; where we have been and where God is leading us individually and as a family in all areas of our home, our personal lives, our ministries and our relationships with our great Lord! What we have concluded is this: 2011 belongs to God and we will strive to do his will and further his kingdom!  We want our priorities to be in line with his.  Because he is the Giver of life and all that we have, all that we are, is only for him and his glory!

I love to sing to my God! Sometimes in the quietness of my home I give my Lord a personal concert and sing praise to him for all that he is!  When I sing, it is to an audience of One! All for him and him alone! And one day I will stand in his presence and be able to sing to him face to face and proclaim his GREATNESS! Woo-hoo! Can I get an AMEN?

One of the songs that I sing to my Lord is one that has become my anthem of prayer for 2011.  May the words be a prayer to you, Lord:

It's all about You, Jesus,

And all this is for You,

For Your glory and Your fame,

It's not about me

As if You should do things my way;

You alone are God and I surrender... 

to Your will!

Abba Father, it really is all about YOU! I surrender every fiber of my being to you! May my life reflect the beauty that is you so that others may come to know you and your will be done!

I pray that 2011 is full of blessings for you and your families! We serve an AMAZING God and he loves you so much! No matter what this year holds, we can have faith that HE holds this year in his hands! He is in control! I can’t wait to see the blessings unfold and his glory revealed in every passing day!  

For His glory in 2011~

Allison Jordan

SHBC Praise Team

12/19/10 worship set

Joy To The World *choir Christmas special
The First Noel
Silent Night
Hallelujah God Is Here
Everything Changed

Shoofly!

Isn’t it very annoying when you sit down to eat and there is a fly just buzzing all around your food?  After I went to the grocery store one night, I left the front door opened a little too long unloading groceries and I let a fly in.  Now, flies are one of the nastiest varmints alive, and when seen in my home, don’t have a very long life span.  Flies love to land on your food and I don’t want to even think of where that fly had its last meal.  All I know is that they are disgusting and carry filth that is transferred right onto our dinner.  Last summer, Ben and Callie had a lot of fun trying to get a fly that had entered our home.  He was very pesky and they got a work out trying to swat him.  It took so long in fact, that they named him, “Peter”.  Why “Peter”, you ask?  I have no idea!  Leave it to my children to come up with that! Ha-Ha!  Well, “Peter” eventually lost the battle to the wonderful “fly swatter” but many of “Peter’s” friends and relatives have come and gone.  Such a nuisance!  We now have 2 fly swatters in the house to doubly attack those pesky, little creatures.

I started thinking about the verses in I Peter 5:8-9.  “Be self-controlled and alert.  Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.  Resist him, standing firm in the faith…”

We have to be alert at all times!  Satan is looking for our vulnerability to attack!  He reminds me of that little pest that buzzes around but we have to stand firm in our faith.  If we lose our focus on Christ, Satan can land right on us with all that filth and disease that he carries and make us “sick”. SHOOFLY!!!! As we stay self-controlled, alert, and firm in our faith; we can use our giant “swatter” and wipe him out.  God has given us everything we need to swat him out.  He has given us direct access to him 24/7 (Eph. 6:18  “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.  With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.”) and his Word that is alive and active (Heb. 4:12 “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword…”).  Both of these are great weapons in the godly arsenal that we have been armed with!

My prayer this week is to be alert and focused on my Heavenly Father!  That is where peace abounds and where we can flee the devil!

Have a blessed and “varmint-free” week!

~Allison Jordan

SHBC Praise Team

12/12/10 worship set

Joy to the World (Unspeakable Joy)
Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee
Glory In The Highest
Hallelujah, Light Has Come
*ladies ensemble

Basket of Blessings

I love to hear stories of how God has blessed people!  I’m sure you have experienced that in your own life as well.  I can’t tell you all the times I have been totally amazed at my God and how he blessed me just at a moment when I didn’t expect it.  Those are special times! I’m not just talking about monetarily, but in any way; an unexpected note of encouragement, a kind word from someone, a prayer answered, seeing your children do for others without being prompted, etc.  I could go on and on about the different ways God has encouraged my soul through a person, his creation, his Word, or many other avenues.  The bottom line is, he is the Master Encourager and blesses us far beyond what we could ever deserve! But let me ask you, how many times have you missed it? You may be saying, “Miss it? I don’t get many blessings.” Well, that my dear friend is where you are wrong.  Please forgive me for being utterly upfront and blunt here.  But the fact is; if you don’t feel as though you are as blessed as someone else, then you are just missing it.  God blesses each of us differently and in ways that bring him glory and honor. 

There was a time in our family, just a few years ago, when there was a lot of negative things, valleys, if you will, that we were facing.  As Matt & I spent much time in prayer together seeking God’s face in dealing with these trials, we felt God telling us to focus on all the blessings in our lives and give him the burdens.

I Peter 5:7 “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”]

So, that is exactly what we did.  We put a “Basket of Blessings” in our living room and encouraged each other, and our kids, to write a blessing that we experienced from God in the basket and to celebrate God and all the ways he loved on us that day.  We would read them aloud and give God the praise for what he had done.  Ben & Callie (before Caleb made his entrance to our family) were younger then and the sweet things they would write truly touched my soul!  What we came to realize is that our attention to the trials began to diminish.  Not the trials themselves, but the attention and anxiety to it.  You see, just the smallest of “good” things, started to turn into the biggest of blessings!  I remember my sweet Ben putting a note in our “Basket of Blessings” one day when he thought I wasn’t looking.  That precious note read that he was glad that his mommy didn’t have a headache that day and that God made her feel better.  What a blessing? My sweet son recognizing God’s blessing on his mom!  It really became something special and we started taking to heart the many things God was doing, that once before we had, so selfishly, been too consumed with the negative to notice them.  Our verse of prayer during that time was:

Phil. 4:6-7 “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Wow! How life changing when you allow the Word of God to be your prayer!  The Word transformed our family and we began to see our situations turning around.  As we took each and every opportunity to give God the thanksgiving he deserved, we began to love God in a deeper more meaningful way. God didn’t turn every one of our negative situations around the way we thought they needed to go, but he transformed them into the way he intended them to be and we found ourselves completely and totally at peace!  

So what do you do with this devotion?  Well, I encourage you to begin to put the negative talk, thoughts, and actions away and begin to transform your thoughts to our Wonderful Lord and all the ways he DOES bless you!  If the words or thoughts that consume you are “I don’t have enough of…., I need more of…,I wish I could…” then it’s time to STOP!

God’s Word plainly says, 

Phil. 4:19 “And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.”

Not according to “my glory” but “His glory”! What a difference a pronoun makes, huh? It really is all about Him!  There are so many things in our lives that can discourage us and bring us down, but it’s time to give God our burdens and entrust him to take care of them in his time!  I encourage you all to have your own “Basket of Blessings” and see how life changing it is when our attention becomes focused on our Lord and his glory! 

Enjoy the rest of your blessing–filled week and prepare to be amazed!

For HIS glory~

~Allison Jordan

SHBC Praise Team

12/5/10 worship set

Christ Is Come
*choir Christmas special
O Come All Ye Faithful
Angels We Have Heard On High
When The Waters Rise
*special by Leslie Ortego
Healer

What do you want for Christmas?

Well, it’s no secret that I love to shop!  One of my favorite shopping times of the year of course is “Black Friday”!  Just saying that gives me chill bumps!  Now, shopping on “Black Friday”, for me, is not just about being the first to get the “goods”, I love it for the sport of it! Yes, it is true!  I love the crowds, the bargains, and the craziness that it brings, but most of all because it is the big kickoff for the holiday shopping season!  Ahhh! It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Just makes you want to break out into song, huh?

This “Black Friday” shopping was probably the most fun I have had! What began as just an evening stop on Thanksgiving night to Toys R Us with Matt & my sister to pick up some good bargains for Christmas, turned into an all night shopping adventure around Wilmington meeting lots of interesting people and laughing till my sides hurt! My poor husband hung in there with us all night and was such a trooper!  If you are one of those brave souls who ventures out on “Black Friday”, you know the chaos that is all around. People frantic to get the perfect gift at the perfect price for their loved one for Christmas.  Some people camp out with tents & sleeping bags for hours on end just to guarantee their first spot in line to get their prized possession.  In many of the lines we stood in, you would catch people’s conversations asking each other what they wanted for Christmas.  Even upon our return, our kids were asking each other what they wanted for Christmas.  That is a very popular question right now.

So, I’m asking you, “What do you want for Christmas?”

Here we are on December 1, 2010, officially beginning the Christmas season.  Christmas decorations are up, or are in the process of going up, and all the holiday parties are underway.  The countdown has begun and the shopping frenzy has already commenced, but I found myself, many times over this past weekend, asking myself, “What do I want for Christmas?”

It could be very easy to get materialistic in this society and find all kinds of things that would fill up my Christmas list, but as I ponder the desires of my heart, there is only one gift that could satisfy and bring such contentment.  That gift came in the form of a baby, born in a lowly manger.  His name is Jesus!

Luke 2:10-12  “I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

My gift is the Messiah! Any gift that I will receive on this earth, although can be very special to me, can never compare to the gift that was born 2000 years ago in a humble stable. That precious gift was the gift of LIFE!  I accepted his gift of salvation many years ago, but the gift continues to bring such peace and overwhelming humility that just makes me fall deeper in love with my Savior!  You see, when you accept him as your gift, this is the gift that keeps giving. On a daily basis, the gifts I receive from my Lord produce so much gratitude.  His gifts include; grace, peace, provision, love, mercy, compassion and many more that I could go on and on.  You see, he tells me in his word that he wants me to live a full and abundant life.

John 10:10 “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

Will I exchange gifts with friends and loved ones this year? Of course, and those will be fun times with gifts chosen specifically for that special person and done with much love.  But in response to question laid on my own heart this weekend, “What do I want for Christmas?”  Well, I want more of my Jesus! Sweet Lord, Almighty God, the Great I Am, Everlasting Father, Jehovah!  That is what I want, that is what I need!

There is a song that has been dear to my heart and says exactly what my desire is this Christmas, it is my Christmas prayer…

I've touched the hem of your garments 

And I have felt the leading of your hand 

But today, my eyes look much higher to see the face of the great "I am" 

So more of You Jesus, more of your face, more of your glory in this place!

What a glorious Christmas this will be!  More of my Jesus!  Imagine what this world would be if everyone desired this same precious gift for Christmas.  My prayer, this December, is that this joy he gives me will spread to those around me and his glory will SHINE!

What do you want for Christmas?

Blessings~

Allison Jordan

SHBC Praise Team