Priscilla Shirer's Blog, page 78

Near the Finish Line

Only nine more days. Only nine more days. Only nine more days. 

Those are the exact words that I I keep saying over and over and over again in my head. Literally from the time I wake up in the morning, to the time I go to bed at night, I am repeating those words....Only nine more days until I am finished with Seminary. 

You would assume that as the second word in that sentence changes each and every day, so would my level of excitement and my energy level, but honestly that has not been the case. The closer I get to being done, the more tired I become.  The more unfocused I become. The more annoyed I become. 

I was venting on the phone to my daddy this morning and he appeased me for a while, but after I finished rambling the phone grew silent and he said so calmly, “Pooh, you are two steps away from reaching the finish line, so this is not the time to grow weary. Finish the race strong. You can do this.” 

Not even ten minutes later I was talking to a friend of mine who is about to close on her first new home. Her home buying process has been pretty lengthy and now she is finally about to receive the keys to her new home, which is super exciting! But this particular morning she was not as excited as I thought she should be. Instead, she was tired and frustrated. She had grown weary and she was ready for the process to be over. I appeased her for a while, but after she finished rambling the phone grew silent and I calmly said, “Girl, the hardest part is over! You are two steps away from having the keys to your new home in your hand, so this is not the time to grow weary. You got this.” ....The irony, huh:) 

Are you close to receiving something that you have been waiting a long time for? You were patient at the beginning, but now your patience is running out. You were excited at the beginning, but now you are wrestling with exhaustion and frustration. You have maintained a heart of expectation up until this point, but now you are slowly losing hope. 

This is not the time to grow weary my friend. You are almost there. Finish the race strong. You can do this. We can do this:) 

Galatians 6:9 tells us not to become weary in doing good, for at the proper time, we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Keep believing. Keep pressing. Keep trusting the Lord and let us keep stripping off every weight that slows us down, so that we can run with endurance the race God has set before us. 

Always praying for my sisters.

Antrenette

Lessons from Gideon

Hit the play button and let's have a little chat!

 

(Or click here: http://vimeo.com/40616611  )

So, what do you think? Let's talk! 

I'll be working on the Gideon bible study all day and stopping every now and then to read your thoughts and insights will be a refreshing and inspiring break throughout the day! Looking forward to hearing from you.

Priscilla

Little Pleasures

Yesterday I had one of those days where I got really frustrated with myself because I kept making silly little mistakes that ended up costing me a lot of time. I'm sure you all have never had that happen before =)

When I on my second trip to the store because I forgot a receipt that I needed, I decided to take a stop into Barnes and Noble. I needed a "break" - something that would give me a little pep in my step. Just enough umph to get me through the rest of the day.

So. . . I went straight to the magazine to search for the newest edition of Real Simple magazine. I have to admit that I do love a good sitdown read a magazine coupled with an Americano from Starbucks. 

While I browsing the magazine isle I came across this magazine that I have never seen before:

I didn't read through it all, but I was so surprised by how awesome this faith based magazine appeared. It was extremely well put together, looked super high quality, and totally geared towards believers in God! There were articles from well known speakers and authors giving their insight into spiritual matters, great ideas of things to do with the family, delicious looking recipes, how to save money and much much more. YES!

It's not every day that you come across really high quality looking things as such, and it just made me happy. . . and exactly the right dose of encouragement to get me through the rest of the day.

I think it's important that we as believers in God do things with excellence, don't you? I'm encouraged to want the same for the things I'm involved in and I hope you are as well!

Linnae 

My Questions. Gods Answers.

My three year old often asks me the same question over and over again. (Sometimes my 7 and 9 year old do too.) Within only a span of a few minutes the same inquiry escapes his mouth and reverberates in my overly stimulated ears.

 

“Mommy. Mommy. Mommy. Mommy.”

“Can I?  Can I? Can I? Can I?”

And while continuous questions can be bothersome, the only time I truly get unnerved is when the question being asked is one that I’ve already given an answer for. Don't they know by now that my answer isn't going to change; that once I've made up my mind on an issue there's no point in asking again?

Maybe one day they'll figure it out. 

Maybe one day I will too.

 

Far too often, I spend time asking God about matters that He has already spoken about. In His holy Word, He has listed his emphatic and unchanging decisions and I shouldn't expect that He will change his mind just because I keep bringing it up. No matter how fervent the prayer or pious my kneeling position, I can't get a different answer out of a God that hasn't changed since the beginning of time.

I might as well stop asking and . . . start reading.

Gideon has some great questions one day after meeting an angel who assured him of God's nearness despite crippling attacks by their enemy. He asked, "if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us?"  Makes sense. I'd want to know the same thing.

 

But instead of answering, the heavenly visitor seems to ignore his inquiry while moving on to other topics, "Go in this your strength and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian".

 

Huh? I asked you a question buddy. What's the answer?

 

But the angel didn't seem to want to waste time answering questions for which Gideon should have already had the answer.  A prophet, the bearer of God's Word in ancient times, had passed through their town recently and had given Gideon, and all his countrymen for that matter, the answer that they needed about the resolution to their troubles. Gideon need only to recall what He had heard instead of searching out new information.

 

Just like my three year old.

Shoot.. . . just like me.

 

No need to ask Him about some things. He's written down his response in eternal ink.

 

 

You ever ask God a question he's already answered?

What was it? 

What did you discover that He'd already said about it?

Priscilla

The Countdown Begins Now

So, I'm going to let y'all in on a little personal secret...I'll be turning....

30 YEARS OLD in exactly 80 days!!!  

Up until this point I have been a little nervous about leaving my twenties.  I mean, I"ve been in my twenties for the last ten years and I jut don't know how to feel about turning the big...30.  But now I am bubbling over wiht excitement!  But there is just one small problem...I have absolutely no idea what to do!  Ha!

July 5th is the big day, so I definitely have time to plan something.  But for some odd reason I am having a hard time coming up with ideas.  Here is what I have come up with so far:

1.  Take a cruise with my closest friends.

2.  Plan a party at a nice hotel.

Ummm...That's all I have.  Sad, I know.  So I really, really need y'all's help!  What did you do on your 30th birthday?  What are you planning to do on your 30th birthday?  What are som amazing ideas of what I should do???

I hope everyone is having a great week.  Can't wait to hear from all!

Until next time, 

Antrenette

P.S. Shaquwonna Jones is our Easter Egg Hunt Winner!  We LOVED all the answers that came in...Shaquwonna's was the first to come through! Shaquwonna, expect an email requesting your info.  For the rest of you, it was a BLAST playing with you!!!

The Sun (Sneaky Thing)

I’ve missed you guys this week. YOU are extremely important
to me. I so value the time I get to spend “talking” with you in this virtual
living room that we call home. We’ve become friends and just like any other
relationship that matters, conversation keeps us going. So, with my travels out
of the country this week (leaving me little to no internet access) I was unable
to connect with you at all. . .not via blog. . . .not on twitter. . . nothing.

So I’m a bit virtually needy today . . . and forever
grateful to our Annetta for holding down the fort while my family and I have
been away.

The rest has been good though. . .for me. . .for my family.
. for my calloused typing fingers.

Speaking of callouses. . .

The sun. . . we got more than a little bit in the past week.
The Lord blessed us with gorgeous days of fun, sun-filled activities. The
brazen rays stung our shoulders, noses and flip-flop clad feet until the skin
on my little one’s faces was burnt and wrinkled. Jerry and I spent a large
portion of our evenings nursing their tender skin with Vitamin E oil and some
green colored gel we found at the store that promised soothing relief for parched
and scalded skin.

It was sticky. . . . .and green.

Needless to say, the boys didn’t seem to mind this minor
inconvenience and braved the bold sunlight every day. The more adventure the
better.

Me and Jerry enjoyed it too. . .while taking every
opportunity we could to find relief in the shade. Our best efforts weren’t fool
proof though. The sun left its mark. A stinging salutation noting its arrival
each day was left on our skin too. The sun seemed to laugh at our sunscreen,
visors and tinted glasses opting instead for a razor sharp punch line to add to
what he thought was a very funny joke.

Whenever he ducked behind some cloud cover we looked to the
heavens and sighed in gratefulness – glad for the brief and much needed canopy of
relief. In fact, in those times when the clouds creating an awning, we stayed
outside longer, uncovered and unafraid of the sun’s effects. Since it felt so
much cooler we just assumed our tarnished skin was better off.

Apparently, I was wrong. At some point this week, I learned
that the negative effects of the sun are often at their peak when it sneaks
behind some clouds. And while I’ve not done a Google search to find out why
(remember my international internet dilemma), I am amazed that when we felt
better about being outside – when the wind was cooler and the sun’s heat more
bearable - the damage caused could have actually been much worse.

Gee. .  .I wish I knew
the science behind this news.

Do you?

Is there something about the filtering clouds that causes
the UVRays to gain potency?

Maybe. . . .

Or could it simply be that because the heat feels less intense
we stay out longer assuming that we are being unaffected. Hmmmm.

I’m thinking that the latter might be at least part of the
reasoning I might find when I touch down on US soil again and get wired back
into the internet. Sunscreen isn’t applied, precautions aren’t taken,
sunglasses are removed, visors are left at home (or at least on the park bench
near by) when it seems like shade is the mainstay of the moment. All the while,
the sun is sneakily peering through, doing what it does, under the guise of
shade.

My week in the sun has got me thinking about the enemy’s
attacks on us. He’s sneaky, you know. Sometimes you can detect him right away.
His plan is obvious and plain – so conspicuous you wonder if he’s lost his
historically proven creativity. So you gird yourself for spiritual battle -
preparing yourself to stand firm and strategizing on how you’ll resist his
attempts. But then, just when you think you’ve got him all figured out, he
sneaks his activity behind some ingenious cover that shields the brazenness of
his strategy. The heat is lessened, the stark reality of the situation
shielded. So, you stay longer, get involved more or participate more fully
because . . . everything seems ok.

You aren’t sweating at all.

You don’t feel damaged or exhausted from energy expended.

In fact, there’s a strange sense of relief on occasion.  So, gradually, you stop standing guard and no
longer slather yourself in the defense of God’s Word and intimacy with Him.

Then, since you’ve left yourself unguarded, unexpected damage
is done and you get back home to find that your soul is shriveled up from the
heat you didn’t even know you were subjected yourself to.

Praying for you today . . .praying for myself – that God
will help us to know what we’re getting ourselves into. That’s he’ll cause us
to see what we’re standing under...even and especially when we can’t feel or
see a thing.

Praying that we’ll always be on guard. Prepared and purposed
to thwart our enemy’s crafty acts.

 . . . .even Satan disguises himself like an
angel of light . . .2 Cor. 11:14

 

P.S. We have a winner of the Easter Egg Hunt!  We'll let y'all know who it is on Monday. 

Keeping Up With The Times!

About 8 years ago this little social networking site started called Facebook...Have you heard of it?  Well, while YOU have been writing on walls and gathering friends, we've been blogging and emailing and tweeting.  In short, we're catchin' up with you and all YOUR friends by joining the "fb" world!  Whoot!  Be so very proud!  

Since we're brand-new in this realm, we actually need a little bit of YOUR help...Do you have Facebook?  Take a peek at our page:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Going-B...

Fun eh?  Priscilla and our team are loving hearing more from YOU in real-time!  So take a sec and "like" the page and pass it along to your friends...we promise to keep it loaded with the latest and greatest from our headquarters.  

 

Hope to see you on our wall soon....

 

The GB Team

 

P.s. TWO Easter Eggs posted today...if you have NO idea what we're talking about, play catchup HERE! Also, we've gotten a ton of emails with just one of the hints...IN ORDER TO WIN:  be the FIRST to email us 6 of the 8 hints...in ONE email!  So, list them (with the key word)!  Whoot!  Game ON!!

An Apple a Day...

*Phwew!*  Not to sound melodramatic or anything, but around 2pm yesterday afternoon, I wasn't so sure I'd make it back to see y'all....EVER!  I spent 10am-5:15pm at the dentist.  Yep.  You heard me right, everyone's FAVORITE place!  I'd gone in to have a tooth cleaned out and filled so they could put a crown on it.  So, my sweet dentist started drilling..and drilling....and drilling...when she was driling for over 2 hours, I awoke from counting the ceiling tiles and saw the concerned look on her face.  She pulled down her mask and said the dreaded words:  "I think we're gonna' need a root canal."  Oi vey.  I think the panicked look on my face spoke volumes, for right after she declared it was impossible NOT to do a root canal, she just said, "Um, but I'll try to keep drilling and see what needs to be done.

So I sat like this for 8 hours:

Now, one MAJOR fact I'm leaving out?  My dentist is one of the many students at a dental school in the great state of Texas.  This means, when she said she was going to do a root canal on me, she was about to do her FIRST ROOT CANAL EVER.  I didn't say anything at the time because I didn't want to freak out anymore than I already was.  I just let it slide in the convo on our way out the door after 5...and she sheepishly said, "yea, that was my first.  I flew it like a G though, didn't I??"  HA!   

There are a MILLION spiritual applications I could draw from today, but there's really only one that kept coming back and back again...my dentist swabbed a numbing paste over my gum...then came round 2.  She pulled out a needle that was clearly 1 foot LONG.  She gave me about 6 shots of this....which I didn't feel.  Then she came back and pulled out the entire nerve in that tooth.  Now that tooth will never feel again.  I think we're like this with sin...we let a little pet, "innocent" sin numb us just a little...then when a "bigger" sin comes along, and we should know better, we don't really even notice it.  Pretty soon, those bigger sins have numbed us to the point that all sense of feeling is lost.  Forever.  Until Jesus supernaturally restores our feeling.  

So...I've just got TWO questions for you today:

1.  Have you grown callous to feeling conviction over "pet" sins?

2.  Do YOU have any FUN stories you'd like to share from the dentist?  I could sure use some encouragement before I have to go back!

 

Love y'all...AAANNNND, DON'T FORGET TO LOOK FOR EASTER EGGS TODAY!!!!!  THERE IS ONLY ONE EGG POSTED TODAY...

:)

 

annetta

Easter Egg GIVEAWAY!!!!

Hey there bloggers!

Hope the weekend finds you plump from chocolate, cheeks sore from laughing and heart warm from worshipping our Lord!  Here are a few of my favorite (non-spiritual) things of Easter!

 

We in the GB office aren't willing to let Easter go QUITE so quickly...much like those baskets of candy still sitting half-eaten on your kitchen counters, we are still reminded of our Lord's death and resurrection this day.  Wow !  It came and went so quickly!

Meanwhile...Our friends at Dayspring have given us a basket of goodies to share!  If you look below, you'll see the bags and journals and coffee mugs that they've so creatively put together.  And we want to share it with YOU!

Here's a few...sassy mugs and calendars and stationary...

 

....AAAANNNNDDD SUPER cute bags to tote around...

 

 

....and how fun are these leather journals?!

We want to give this ALL away to YOU!  SO... 

How about a good ol' fashioned Easter egg hunt?  Ok, maybe it's a little less ol' fashioned and a little MORE "2012"...Here's the scoop...

Over the next 3 days we'll be putting hidden links around on our website!  There will be 10 total.  They will look like THIS.  Are you getting it?  In each "EGG" LINK there will be one of our favorite Jesus thoughts from Easter...We want YOU to find these EGG-link-messages and send 'em back to us!  The FIRST one to get ALL 8 Egg messages, WINS! ANNNNNDDDD there will be a few honorable mentions for those that find ALL the links...The Egg Link looks like THIS:  CLICK HERE.  Ok.  That's your first freebie!!  

OK.  RECAP:

1.  Find 8 eggs (2-3 posted each day!)

2.  Write down what is on each egg link.

3.  Email us your list: info@goingbeyond.com

4.  We'll announce the winners, here on the blog, Tuesday, April 17th!

Remember, each day, I'll add 2 more links somewhere on the website...your task?  Find 6 and get back with me!  WAHOOOOO!!!!!

Let the games begin!  And for those movie junkies like myself..."May the odds be ever in your favor..."

xx

 

Annetta & The GB Team

A Much Deserved Recognition!

As I've mentioned before I am an avid blog reader. You can't get enough good information about ministry, business, style and delicious food! 

This morning I was catching up on my reading and found a post about "20 Women Leaders Under the Age of 40" that you should know about, and low and behold, look who was listed first......

YES! I love that! I by no means want to embarass Miss Priscilla but I just had to share because obviously we love her so much and think the world of her. I think the WHOLE WORLD needs to know about her and the message the Lord wants to give through her.  

God is using her in a mighty way and I believe there is SO MUCH MORE to be done through the ministry.

So, join with me in spreading this word. Such a blessing and encouragement!

Yay Priscilla!

Linnae