Christians Read

My husband enjoys keeping a vegetable garden. Twice a year he will till up the dirt and then carefully place various seeds and plants in that dirt. Before too long, we will begin to see vegetables begin to grow. Some of the things my husband plants include cucumbers, squash, potatoes, turnip greens, collard greens, green beans, peas, tomatoes, bell peppers, broccoli, cabbage, and so on.

We also have several fruit trees, citrus trees, and grapes. All of this is thanks to my husband’s hard work. He has the green thumb in our family!

As the saying goes, you reap what you sow. The Bible even references this in numerous verses across the Old and New Testaments. One example is in Galatians 6. I am using the New Living Translation here, so it’s worded a little differently. Verse 7 says, “You will always harvest what you plant.”

This is something important to remember in general, not just as it pertains to gardening:

• If we sow seeds of negativity, we will reap negativity. On the flip side, if we plant positivity, we will harvest positivity.
• If we sow seeds of judgement, we will reap judgment. However if we plant empathy, we will harvest empathy.
• If we sow seeds of hate, discord, and anger, then we will reap hate, discord, and anger. On the other hand, if we plant love, harmony, and peace, then we will harvest love, harmony, and peace.
• Those who spend money foolishly, will suffer the consequences. But if they are good stewards of their money, they will reap the reward.
• If someone continually eats poorly and doesn’t exercise, in time they could see negativity effects in their health. But if someone makes a habit of eating nutritious foods and staying active, then their body will be better off in the long run.
• If someone plays video games all day, every day, they cannot expect to have a productive life. But if they set goals and work diligently, then they will benefit in the years to come.

Keeping this truth tucked in our hearts will help us make better decisions. It will prompt us to be more responsible. And it will nudge us to spread the love of Jesus wherever we go.

But let’s look at this from a different angle. You wouldn’t plant cucumber seeds and expect to produce apples. And you wouldn’t scream at someone and expect them to answer you calmly. It seems pretty straightforward and logical, right?

Well, actually, there might be times when you reap something that you didn’t know you sowed. A few years ago when my husband’s squash seeds began to harvest, a tall sunflower had grown in the midst of the squash. The only logical explanation is that a sunflower seed had accidentally gotten mixed in with the squash seeds.

Could we accidentally be sowing the wrong seeds in life as well? Maybe we snap at someone and we don’t realize that our words came out harshly. Or perhaps we feed our souls garbage, but we don’t realize it’s wrong because that is what the rest of the world is doing.

It helps to be intentional about what we sow. And it starts by surrounding ourselves with the right nutrients. My husband often gets the dirt tested to see if it is lacking any nutrients. Then he will purchase appropriate fertilizer to nourish the ground.

Likewise we can feed ourselves the best nutrients. For example, fellowshipping with other Christians will help us grow good fruit. Earlier I mentioned Galatians 6. If we backup to the beginning of that chapter, in verses 1-3, Paul says, “Dear brothers and sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself. Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ. If you think you are too important to help someone, you are only fooling yourself. You are not that important.”

We should all have some “safe” friends who can gently nudge us when they see that we made a mistake. And in turn, we should be able to do the same for them.

But most importantly, we should also make sure Jesus is our main source of water and nutrition. When we feed ourselves wholesome things, we will have better discernment between right and wrong. Jesus said in John 15:5-8, “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned. But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted! When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my Father.”

In other words, it is essential for our own well-being and growth that we stay grounded in the Lord. When we do, we will sow and reap the best in life!

No matter how far I get in my writing career, the hardest part is always letting your baby go.  Allowing someone to read and interact with what you’ve written.  They might tell you that your baby is ugly.  Or your baby is unworthy and should go back into the dark places in the back of your drawer.  How terrifying that is to be bold and put your work out there for others to criticize.

When you’re seeking publication, agents and editors might tell you that your baby is ugly.  But when you’re published, ANYONE can say publicly how ugly your baby is and describe his flaws in detail.  This is the one thing I’ve discovered about writing and taking criticism:

If I BElIEVE in what I’m writing?  I couldn’t care less about what someone has to say about it.  I know why I wrote it.  You can assign ugly motive to me all you like, but that’s not why I wrote it.  And I know the truth. My motive was from a good place.  Was this person’s review?  Or was it just to criticize? I think this is a good lesson to take in life.  Does this person giving me feedback genuinely care about me?  Or do they have some other motive?

Over the years I’ve had a lot of people tell me THEIR version of Christianity should be mine.  Once I had a book cover where the heroine had a tank top on.  I was told that I was promoting promiscuity and I should never seek to call myself a Christian.  Okay, sure.  (At the time, I had NO say in covers either.)

It’s ironic that later my book on late-in-life virginity (What a Girl Wants) got purchased by a Christian singer who wanted to do a movie on that life choice.  The movie never got made, but you can see how people can read extremes into your words that aren’t there.  That’s because we all come to books with baggage. Our own baggage and backgrounds and it colors what we read and how we see the world.

No writer is for everyone.  I’m certainly not.  I’m for people who live a Christian life surrounded by atheists.  That’s my truth. That’s what is in my books.

All this to say, what people say about you has little to do with you.  Let them have their opinions.  It has no bearing on you.  Although once I did let my baby soar and he ended up in the Middle East.  He sent me this picture along with the words, “I’m fine, Mom.”  The last picture he sent me with those words, he was hanging out of an airplane over Okinawa.  On second thought, maybe we should put a leash on our babies…

My husband and I consider the mountains our home away from home. We try to visit the area at least once a year. Our favorite spot in particular is Cades Cove in Tennessee. There is always a lot of wildlife that we see there. So I wanted to share with you some pictures from our trip earlier this month. We took around 2,000 pictures and it was difficult narrowing them down. But here are some of the best shots of wildlife in particular.

Our favorite animal we look for are the black bears. Here is a mom who had two cubs.

We also saw another mom with three cubs. But we were not able to get all four of them in the same picture. Here is mom and one of the cubs.

We also enjoying seeing the deer.

Here are two different (but not great unfortunately) shots of a mom and baby deer. The baby still had wobbly legs.

We also see a lot of turkeys. Here are only a couple of the many pictures we captured of them. The first one is a mom and baby.

The horses in Cades Cove are not wild. They are used for horseback rides and carriage rides.

We also saw elk on our trip. This was not in Cades Cove though. This was close to Cherokee, NC.

I hope you enjoyed seeing these pictures, as much my husband and I enjoyed taking them!

Recently I have done a lot of pondering on the importance of reading our Bibles. Many Christians make this a priority, but many do not. There was a time in my life when I did not make it a priority. But now that it is a part of my daily life, I can definitely see how I have changed for the better because of it. Here are just a few reasons why reading the Bible is essential.

The Bible is one way we get to know God. When we became Christians, we entered into a relationship with the Lord. In our earthly relationships, we get to know other people by spending time with them. Let’s say you are dating someone. You wouldn’t say you are dating that person and then never actually get together with them. You want to meet up at a restaurant or a park, so you can have some face-to-face time. You want to learn about this person, their likes and dislikes, their quirks, their childhood, their character. Reading our Bible is similar in that we are spending time with God. We are learning about His character, we see the different things He has done in the past, and we get to know what’s important to Him.

The Bible also helps us in battle. The truth is that we live in a fallen world. And as Christians we are going to see adversity. Much of it, I believe, comes from the enemy who wants to bring us down. So we have to be prepared. When a young person joins the Army, he goes through training. In the beginning he has to go through boot camp, which gets him into shape quickly. But even when boot camp is over, he doesn’t cease to keep his body in shape. He doesn’t stop his target practice. He has to stay sharp and ready in case of a battle. The same is true for Christians. We have to be ready every single day. Our enemy doesn’t stop, he doesn’t take a nap, he doesn’t declare peace. So we too need to be on guard at all times, and the Bible is our weapon.

The Bible helps us make decisions. We make thousands of decisions every day. Some are seemingly not important, such as which outfit to wear. But other decisions are important and we don’t necessarily know the best route to take. The world bases their decisions off of their wants, their feelings, and what everyone else is doing. But, as Christians, we are not of this world and we shouldn’t make our decisions in the same way the world does. The Bible gives us clear guidelines on how we should live, what we should do with our money, how we should treat other people, and so on.

Based on these three points alone, it is apparent to me that the Bible should be a part of our daily lives. Reading our Bibles is a privilege and a treasure. And I am so thankful that the Lord has given us this precious gift.

Right now, the church has a terrible reputation in American for being unloving and unkind to sinners.  I mean, we all fall short of the glory of God, so we don’t want to put anyone out, right?  Wrong.

In 1 Corinithians 1:6-8, we are to treat sin as a yeast that will infect the entire loaf of bread. “Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough?  Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” 

This is personal for me.  I’ve seen men cheat on their wives, BRING their girlfriends to church and still the church did not confront them. I’ve seen two church employees have an affair (one a pastor) and rather than confront the sin publicly and lovingly, the pastor swept it under the rug for legal reasons.  The problem with that, besides the fact that it’s unbiblical, is other marriages started to be infected within the church.  It didn’t go away.  It spread.

My prayer for the church is that we would stop looking at the outside of people and start to judge the content of their character. When sin is present in the church, we have a moral obligation to confront our brother or sister, but we worry so much about offending, often we don’t deal and a splintered church is the result.  Especially when there are victims of these sinners within the church.

“If your brother sins against you, go and confront him privately. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two sisters along, so that every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, regard him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.…” Matthew 18:15-17

Why have we forgotten the last part of this Biblical advice?  Why do we ignore sin and choose “not to judge?”  The result of the above scenario is that a good woman left the faith because she was judged for her husband cheating and her “harsh words.”  The husband is still there. Divorced a second time now.

I heartily believe God cares more about a soul than he does a bad marriage to a wayward spouse.  I can testify that this woman tried desperately to keep her marriage together while her husband portrayed her as crazy and “controlling.” This friend doesn’t have anything to do with me or the church today.  I remind her of what the church did to her, that they chose to believe her cheating husband over having mercy on her.  They chose to blame her subtly for his sin.

I understand that the church is just people.  And people are flawed.  But I do wish that we would take confrontation more seriously and be more kind when someone is hurting.  I know in this day and age where it’s offensive to have a separate women and men’s room, confrontation isn’t an easy subject.  But it’s an important one. Souls are at stake.