Happy Homemaker Monday

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Today:
April showers ( downpours)   bring may flowers,  if I get them planted!
Pretty dreary day!
42 degrees....  think I'll stay in my jammies!

Right now I am::: 
I am enjoying my coffee and  yogurt sweetie brought to me....  I love him!!!He's the best!!!!!

Thinking and pondering::: 
I know, I need to  transfer my  summer/winter clothes....   one of my most dreaded  chores....  this would be the perfect day to  get into it....  we'll see!

On my bedside table:::

Fresh Power by Jim Cymbala

Experiencing the vast resources of the Spirit of God

On my tv tonight:::
I started watching  a PBS  series, The Manor House on Amazon Prime....  I really like it...  it is  an Edwardian reality show....   Imagine  living  in a manor house in England for 3 months,,  either upstairs or downstairs...living    exactly as it was  then....  quite the  wake up call  to the  downstairs  folk!   Sort of  a Downtown Abbey   real life experience!

Listening to:::

rain  spilling down the downspout by the  porch by my window, actually a rather  wonderful sound.  Except for the temperature I love a rainy day....

On the menu for this week:::

bbq pork 
home-made chili
stuffed porkchops
chef salad
pizza

On my to do list:::
laundry
  investigate the closet and   make some considerations 

  read

defrost the  ground beef

    Plans for this week:::

take scads of bags our church collected last month to the  food pantry

healing prayer class

Work on the  Garden Club scrapbook committee.....  we are  finishing  up  December and January... I have typed  captions through march and  gotten photos developed

Mid week service and choir

A lite Ladies luncheon here    to plan for our  service project next week 

extra choir in prep for  Easter services

What I am sewing, crocheting, knitting or creating:::

no time this week   for crafting

My simple pleasure:::

My virtual tour of  Britain....  through the words and eyes of  Susan Branch...  in her marvelous book...  A Fine Romance...Falling in Love with the English Countryside!

Lessons learned:
Obedience is... the very best way... to show that you believe!!!
  from the  song my daughter learned in  preschool 25 years ago...  Putting that into practice  is where the rubber meets the road....  in the spirit realm!

Looking around the house:::

Just  wanted to share  my entry in last week's horticulture exhibit...   a clipping from the  bloodroot plant  that has such a sweet history...  in  the early 70's my mother,  grandmother and I  walked through the woods  behind grandma's house, and I saw blood root for the first time...  I thought it was so lovely.

source
that  I  asked my dad  to please get me some  to take home..
 He  took the shovel and  divided  some for me and put it in a box  for me.. I planted it in my yard  when I was  23...  and it  delighted me each spring for 14 years until we moved to this house, 26 years ago....and it has continued to  bravely   delight me  ever since...  so last Wednesday I snipped a bud  and  took it in  the house to  prepare it for  showing..  but alas, my bottle was too  large...  so I filled the bottom of the bottle with dried beans and then it  fit perfectly...  anyway, after  very carefully transporting it to the show,   I  am so  very  ecstatic to announce, it won me the blue ribbon in my category.... my first blue ribbon at that!

From the camera

For my daughter's    interest,   I    gave  my 4th and final   devotional at the Club meeting last week on The Secret of the Garden...

Prayer List:::

Our  home, family,    church,  and  nation

Bible verse, Devotional::: a powerful message today from

THE POWER OF GOD'S WORD

Luke 8:11, "Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God."

LUKE 8:11-15 

It is through the reading of the Word and the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit that Christ in His fullness is known. What a privilege it is today to have God's Word in our own language. Six hundred years ago there was no English translation of the whole Bible. Thanks to the efforts of John Wycliffe (1384) and William Tyndale (1523), today we are able to read and understand the writings of the apostles for ourselves. Men gave their lives to bring us God's Word. We should take advantage of this wonderful privilege. 

The piece of armor known as the "sword of the Spirit" is the only piece of armor that has the ability to cut, wound, and hurt our enemy, the devil. It's not the Bible lying on your coffee table that makes the enemy flee, but it is the Word of God hidden in your heart, activated by the power of the Holy Spirit, and spoken in an appropriate situation. It's similar to what is spoken when Jesus said in John 6:63, that "...the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." The Word by itself doesn't make us free. It is the Word we know and speak that will deliver us (Jn. 8:32). 

Why is the Word so effective? It's because it is the WORD of God. It has authority, because it is indeed the WORD of God. God's Word supersedes all authority of the church, of reason, of intellect, and even of Satan himself. 

It is the Holy Spirit that wields this Word as it is spoken in faith. Speaking God's Word in faith brings the Holy Spirit into action. In Luke 4, when Jesus was tempted of the devil for forty days, it was the Word of God, that Jesus used to defeat the enemy in the time of His temptation. Jesus constantly met His temptation by quoting from God's Word as He repeatedly stated the phrase, "It is written." Likewise, the Christian soldier must avail himself of God's Word by placing it in his heart, so that the Holy Spirit may bring it forth at the appropriate time to accomplish a complete and total victory. It's yours!