"My cup overflows with blessings..."

Psalm 23:5...That is the verse printed on the back of my newest, coolest t-shirt. I got it at the coolest place, too! This past weekend was our church's Women's Retreat. This was our third year to do one, but the first year to have it at the church. That kept the cost down, which was good for everyone. And for those who forgot to grab pillows off her bed as well as something to sleep in, it was easy to slip back home and grab stuff. Or so I've heard. Ahem.

When I walked in before our sound check, I was overwhelmed at how beautiful everything was. Look at that pink poof!

You really can't tell how pretty it all was. Pink zebra print and polka dot tablecloths, green and pink and orange flowers, and green shirts with brown on the front and hot pink on the back made everything so springy and girlie. I loved it.

Friday night started off with our main speaker, Karin, who is a pastor's wife from a church that is very close to the heart of our church. She spoke truth to my heart, and her words were like soothing oil to my dry heart. What a wonderful way to start out the weekend!

Throughout the weekend we had small group time, breakout sessions, giveaways, and worship. I can't decide what my favorite part of the retreat was! I was privileged to be a part of the worship team, so that's high on my list of faves. Any time I get to listen to 200 or so women lifting their voices loving on their Father makes my heart glad.

Lauren, who just happens to be one of my altos, was on our worship team. Here we are trying not to laugh hysterically...it was hard.

Because this is what we had just taken a picture of...

That's what happens at 11:00 p.m. when the delirium sets in.

When I get to serve in any capacity leading worship, I count it as an awesome privilege. I volunteered to help in whatever way our Director, Kam, wanted me to with worship, and the two girls who led with me sort of delegated me as the leader. I tried to convince them we would all three co-lead, but they would have none of it. As it turned out, that's exactly what happened. We each had our part, and I don't think that the ladies at the retreat saw me as the "Worship Leader." I think they saw us as the "Worship Team."

Guess which verse I'm reading here? It's 2 Corinthians 3:18, the verse I have at the top of the blog. Karin mentioned the fact that when we become Christ followers, we become holy. We can't work up to it or earn it. The same thing I've said here on the blog before. Just like the caterpillar has the same DNA of the butterfly, we are holy and righteous at the moment we are saved. What happens is we start listening to the lies the enemy tells us so that we will live defeated lives. When we start trusting what God says is true about us, we will start living life to the fullest!

Okay, didn't mean to go off on that tangent. But I'm glad I did. : )

Our Worship Team for the weekend. I love these girls! Lauren, Jennifer Begrin, and me.

I'm sort of getting ahead of myself, because I haven't talked about Friday night's Pit tables. Have you heard of Pit? It's only the coolest game around for loudmouths like me. You're dealt 9 cards with a "commodity" like corn, coffee, sugar, barley, etc. on each card. You want to "corner the market" on one commodity, so you have to trade cards to try to get all one commodity. As soon as the cards are dealt, someone rings the bell to start trading and it becomes sheer madness!

The calm before the storm at this table...

While the bedlam was going on at our table!

You have to yell how many cards you want to trade, so the whole lot of us are yelling different numbers all the while trying to figure out what cards to trade, sprawling over the table to grab traded cards. It finally ends when someone has all one set of cards and rings the final bell. I won the last hand I played. I like to go out on top.

We had the option of staying at the church on air mattresses (we have showers in our bathrooms in our Go Center, where retreat was), or staying at someone's home, or getting a hotel room, or just going home. Well, it wouldn't be retreat if I had gone home, so my sweet friend Vivian opened up her home to me and my friends Lisa and Stacey. We stayed up talking until 1:30, having to get up at 5:3o or so the next day. But the laughs we shared were worth it.

Me, Stacey, Lisa (poor girl's shirt was two sizes too big so she didn't get to wear hers! She got it fixed, though), and our gracious hostess, Vivian. Lisa and I are very close and get to hang out together all the time, but I don't get to spend enough time with Vivian or Stacey. These three made me smile a lot this weekend. Even though they kept me up too late. Hee hee.

I have to show this next picture just because it's too cute not to. JB and Mendi, another one of my beautiful altos (JB is one of my beautiful altos, too!), were posing and suddenly JB decided they should get all diva on me.

Can you say A.T.T.I.T.U.D.E? The funny thing is, neither one of these girls is like this AT ALL!

One of my favorite things to do as a Worship Leader is just stop singing and listen to the voices of those we're leading. There were so many beautiful ladies at this retreat, and I loved listening to each one. I can't wait till next year! (But I do want to rest now! )

I'll leave you with this profound picture. It sums up our weekend where no words are needed. Enjoy....

I smile BIG every time I see this!

What do you think?

Okay, today my sweet hubby played around with my banner that you see at the top of the blog. So, what do you think? I love the colors, but what do you think about the style of the title? He would call me every once in a while and ask me what I thought and after a gazillion changes, we ended up with this. I think he still wants to tweak it a little.

At one point I asked him to change the position of one of the butterflies, but he misunderstood me and ended up hanging it upside down. It looked like a bat. Hmm, not the look I'm looking for. So, what do you think? What other colors do you think would look good in this palette? Is that the word I want? Palette?

Oh, one more thing...Lisa posted on her blog another section out of TrueFaced that I love. It's a "letter" from God's Heart. Go read it now!

added May 1, 2008...Please be patient...if it looks funny, we're still working on it...of course, you may think it looks funny and it's the final product...just don't tell me ANY of it looks funny and you'll be safe! : )

More about Grace

I know I promised more fun posts, and I'll get to those tomorrow, but I wanted to explain some more about the grace thing. I hope no one who reads these posts will think that I don't think we need to "work" on our sin. Well, "work" is not a good word, because I don't think we need to work on it. I think we need to let God work on it. However, it almosts sounds too easy like that. That we don't have to do anything except sit back and do whatever we want to because, well, you know, that grace sure is a powerful thing and I'm covered, so why bother worrying about becoming more Christ-like? The passage in Romans 6 comes to mind:

"Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it? Or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death?"
Romans 6: 1-3 New Living Translation

We still have a job to do, even covered by all that wonderful grace...we have to repent of (turn away from, change our minds about) our sin, asking our faithful Father to once again cover us with His grace and forgive us. This is not something you do once a year. This is an ongoing process to keep our hearts clean before Him. Do I do this? Sometimes. Sometimes I'm so good at repenting I'm doing it a hundred times a day! (In case you didn't catch it, that was a joke.)

Here's another thing: a lot of Christians beat themselves up because they aren't as mature as they think they should be, or they measure themselves to other believers, or they can't get rid of a stronghold. Well, in case you fall into one (or all!) of those categories, here's some verses you need to look up, keep in your Bible, and refer to every once in a while...

Ephesians 1:3-5, 7-8
Ephesians 2:13
Ephesians 3:6
Ephesians 5:29
Isaiah 43:4

These verses tell us who we are in Christ. Will we still struggle? Yes, until Jesus takes us home. But we don't have to live defeated.

I know this is a lot to take in, and I don't convey my thoughts as eloquently as they do in TrueFaced, so you need to read that book! Just my personal opinion, though. :)

Grace

How many times have you had something less than desirable in your life, like a bad habit, or a character flaw, or something like that that you've told yourself "If I just try harder, I can beat this!" Or, "I'll get it right tomorrow, I promise!" Or, and this one is sooooo easy to do..."It's not my fault! It's because I didn't have June and Ward as my parents!" (or some such version of a less than perfect family...you fill in the blanks)?

We can wear oursleves out pretty quickly "trying harder" to fix what's wrong with us. And when we don't see results, or those results we do see are derailed by the next bad day, harsh comment, or hormone flare up we're back where we started: exhausted, and added to that, discouraged by our lack of willpower. It's a pretty sad state to be in. We feel like failures because we can't fix it.

That's because we can't fix it. We just don't have it in us. Pretty depressing, isn't it? Well, that is until you find out that the Solution is just waiting for us to ask. It's called Grace. The grace of God. Grace is what we receive when we trust Christ as our Savior, but it doesn't end at the moment of salvation. God keeps extending His grace to us so that we can trust Him with our lives, bad days, bad habits, bad whatever, and all.

Trusting God (in TrueFaced, it's called Living in the Room of Grace) with who He says we are in Him is the only way we can live victoriously in this life.

Because I don't want to make this post any longer or I'm afraid you'll stop reading, I'll close and continue tomorrow. And after that, no more heavy stuff for a while...if you know me you know I'm all about the fun!

More 'splaining

I was inspired to title the Blog "Butterfly Genes" by the section of chapter two of TrueFaced that compares Christ followers with caterpillars/butterflies. The term "butterfly genes" doesn't actually appear in the book, that's just an interpretation. Anyway, did you know that a caterpillar’s DNA is the same as a butterfly's? Click here to see it explained by a scientist. Pretty cool, huh?

And no, I didn't ask the question. I wouldn't even begin to guess what prompted someone to ask this. Oh, wait, I wonder if it was the authors of TrueFaced? Anyway, the quote on the sidebar comes from that section. Here is the passage in full:

"Nature provides many examples of this incredible discrepancy between who we appear to be and who we truly are. Consider the caterpillar. If we brought a caterpillar to a biologist and asked him to analyze it and describe its DNA, he would tell us, 'I know this looks like a caterpillar to you, but scientifically, according to every test, including DNA, this is fully and completely a butterfly.' Wow! God has wired into a creature that looks nothing like a butterfly, a perfectly complete butterfly 'identity.' And because the caterpillar is a butterfly in essence, it will one day display the behavior and attributes of a butterfly. The caterpillar matures into what is already true about it. In the meantime, berating the caterpillar for not being more like a butterfly is not only futile, it will probably hurt his tiny ears!

"So it is with us. God has given us the DNA of godliness. We are saints. Righteous. Nothing we do will alter this reality. God knows our DNA. He knows that we are 'Christ in me." And now he is asking us to join him in what he knows is true!"(Used by permission of NavPress. TrueFaced by Bill Thrall and Bruce McNicol, pp. 47-47. Copyright 2004, all rights reserved. 1-800-366-7788 http://www.navpress.com/)

Now, we're not talking everybody here. When they say "us" or "we" they mean people who have trusted Christ as their Savior. The title of "saint" came at a very steep price...one that neither you nor I could ever, ever hope to pay, but that Jesus paid willingly with His life.

I will 'splain more later. I think this is about all I can write without it becoming just too much to comprehend. Tomorrow, it's all about grace, man.