Happy 2009!

Happy New Year! We're actually still awake at 1 a.m. Sad to say that we (my husband at the moment) are working on the Brown family Xmas gifts. We get with his family this weekend. Ha! Malachi was up screaming with us for a while so RB had to take over this project. Have I mentioned that I have a great husband? (By the way, we had a great anniversary celebration last p.m.! My sweet Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Barbara offered to keep our kids at their house in Arlington while we went out! We came back to our house, cooked steak and creme brulee, and watched a movie! Dinner together in our QUIET house - this was a gift. And our kids had a blast with their great uncle and aunt! They LOVED it and I really felt like my aunt truly enjoyed being with my kids - this was a huge gift to me. My children can't wait to go back!)

We celebrated tonight with our friends, the Gravitts and the Butlers. It was lots of fun to just hang out together out of the context of Op Camp or Mighty Men. Our boys love the Gravitt boys and they had a sweaty Wii-fest and watched "Man vs. Wild" all night.

Here's a simple, but profound, revelation that the Lord showed me this week as I enter a new year. One of my "resolutions" (Randy and I have decided that we don't like this word) for 2009 is that I would become a woman of prayer. I started reading Graham Cooke's book Crafted Prayer again the other day. Here are some quotes that I've been pondering:

"We should not be using prayer to find God - that is what thanksgiving is for. The Bible is clear - it is not with prayer that we enter His gates, but with thanksgiving."

"We can thank God first, in every situation, because every problem we encounter comes with His provision attached to it....Our heart may be all over the place, but there is a central place of truth where we gather - in the goodness of God."

His point is that we often come up against something and immediately start praying what we think should happen, etc. instead of entering the presence of God with thanksgiving and waiting on the voice of God to see how He wants us to pray. Cooke says, "We need to plan to enter God's presence with our thanksgiving, not our prayer: Thank You, Lord. I don't know how You're going to work this thing out, but I know You will. I praise You. I worship You. And once we've come into His presence, we need to be still and listen to the heart of God."

Anyway, just been thinking a lot about how gratitude prepares the way for God to speak and move. Stillness. This is a TOUGH one for me. But one thing I read in my Karen Mains book was that she learned a long time ago to shut up and just sit with the Lord. This is what I want to learn this year. I want to drown in Scripture and hear what He's saying from moment to moment. I long for my spirit to be quiet enough to HEAR. Really tired of trying to function in my flesh! Verse that I was meditating on this a.m.: "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble." Cooke points out that when we are hidden in God, the enemy cannot find us. Yeah! I love my Warrior King!