Emptied and filled up...

You see the picture to the right entitled "Fall in Northern Michigan"... well, unfortunately not all Fall days are so beautiful... it is another gray, rainy, dreary day... ok, I may be boardering on complaining, so PLEASE forgive me... but I very much dislike this weather!!!!!!

We had a great, but very busy weekend with all the festivities at our church... it was such a blessed weekend... so many visitors, so many people coming to Christ for the first time... I feel so blessed to have been a part of it all. In my last post I told you about the "card board testimony" Luke & I were involved in... what our card said was "religion divided us" and on the flip side "Now Christ has completely united us"... that is it in a nutshell... we have been married for 18 years... for the first 15 years of our marriage we attended & were involved in 2 different churches, separately... so many people told us that would never work, but in spite of those nay-sayers we had a great marriage & we determined with God's help it would work! When God moved us to northern Michigan over 3 years ago... we saw this as a gift from Him to be able to find a church where we could worship together... we searched for over a year before we found the church we are now attending... we found it by "accident"... the lesson to be learned is that God has blessings waiting for you in the most unlikely places. We have received such positive feedback that we were willing to share our testimony in front of the whole church... we have been told by so many that they are now where we were & they see what work God can do to change hearts & lives for His good.

I have been known to be a little controlling ... so it has been hard at times for me to move out of the way & just let God do what He wants to do... a song that I just love that talks about this is "Empty Me" by Chris Sligh here are the lyrics to the chorus:

Empty me of the selfishness inside

Every vain ambition and the poison of my pride

And any foolish thing my heart holds onto

Lord, empty me of me so I can be filled with you

That is my prayer... God wants to do so many great things for me, His precious child, but I get in His way. How about you, what good things are happening in your life???

on a cold, wet, dreary day, but with a grateFUL HEART, carin