What we learned Memorizing Psalm 1

So my mom and I finished memorizing Psalm 1. The first in a long line of Psalms we have chosen this year to meditate on. A couple of things we have learned from this chapter we thought we'd share with you. I hope to share a bit of what we learned from each chapter we meditate on. Hopefully you will find some insightful tid bits for yourself.

First, I found that I didn't quite understand what prosper meant in vs 3. "He will be like a tree firmly planted by the streams of water, which yields it's fruit in it's season and it's leaves never wither; and in whatever he does, he prospers." (-nasb, bold word mine) Before this it talks about not walking in the counsel of the wicked, standing in the path of sinners, and sitting in the seat of scoffers. After this it talks about how the persons delight is instead in the law of the Lord and that he meditates on it night and day. So here was my questions, if we are doing all of this as I think we are, why are we not prospering? So I looked up the Hebrew word for prosper. It is a verb tsaw-lay-akh and the first definition is to rush, the second is to advance, prosper, make progress, succeed, be profitable. The two that surprised me were to advance and to make progress. We are in a stage of transition as I have already written about and sometimes I feel as though we are not "prospering" and these helped me see that it could be the journey is important and not being prosperous in today's terms. We are moving forward and we are keeping God's word in our hearts and so we are prospering. My mom pointed out and helped me realize that the tree (us) has it's season to bear fruit and it's season to not bear fruit, but it never dies. Our last chapter in life was a fruitful one and now we are in a dormant period, like a tree, but we are not dead.

Second, my mom really benefited from the last verse "For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish." (nasb) Sometimes we can feel as though we are tiny and can be missed or overlooked by such a great and bigger than us God. This verse reminded her that we are righteous in God's eyes and that He knows our ways. As Psalm 121 also says, He will not let our foot slip and He watches over us both day and night.

I hope you can gain some growth out of what we have learned and shared with you. Do not be afraid of what you may learn in your walk with God and share it with others. You never know who you may help.

To Meditate for a Year

In an earlier post I referenced that my mom and I are memorizing the Psalms. I thought that I'd explain that idea a little more as I have found that others are interested in knowing what we do. Here is how it started and where we are at.
So every year for the past few years my mom and I try to come up with something to do with our walk with Christ together. Once we went through a Bible study on Proverbs 31. We used Discovering the Treasures of a Godly Woman: Proverbs 31 by Elizabeth George. This is a great study that is practical as well as Bible intensive. She used Scripture through out the Bible as well as Proverbs 31, of course. Understand that my mom and I live miles apart and study on our own time then come together with a phone call to discuss what we have learned. Another time we picked a few Psalms and memorized them together. This was an exercise that stretched our memories as well as our understand of the Scriptures. We discovered things together that we would have other wised missed. We would each find something pertaining to our lives or the other's life. We would look up words and ask questions. I enjoy sharing my walk with Jesus with her. She is a women with insight that I value.
Well, this year Christmas came and went and over New Years my parents came for a visit. Nailing down what we were doing this year was THE thing I wanted to accomplish. Turns out we both thoroughly enjoyed memorized the Psalms. We had a couple of verses outside of Psalms last year and those just didn't seem to flow. This year we picked out our Psalms again. It happened that we had a lot of Psalms picked out, and they were kind of all over the place. We got to talking and wondered what it would be like to memorize them in a sort of worship style. We examined them and picked an order that would be worship, recognition of God, prayer, and then praise. I have shared this idea with a couple of my close friends and one of them asked for our Psalms, so I decided to share this thought with others out there that may be interested in a different way to meditate this year.

Psalm 1, 42, 4, 27, 32, 114, 116, 96, 93, and 113.

Join us on this journey or make your own and share it with others. It is much more enriching to share your walk with Christ with someone. How do you share yours? There are many ways, share what you do in the comments below. I have also chosen this year to participate in Trades of Hope. This is a group of women reaching out to other women to empower them out of poverty. Everything we sell or host for someone else to sell help women around the world by providing a steady income. This keeps children in schools, provides a trade for them, and keeps them out of slavery (of all types). You can join this year too by going to
www.mytradesofhope.com/amyjosims

Cowboy Boot Birthday Cake

This cake was a lot of fun to make. This is a birthday cake I made for a friend of mine for her son. The boot is one cake and the fenced in yard is another cake. All the icing is buttermilk icing. The boot icing is chocolate. I made it chocolate with cocoa. This caused the icing to dry out so I had to make sure I added more water/milk to the icing. The light brown is also chocolate, but I added Nesquik instead. The cactus is made out of fondant and I used a toothpick to make it stand up in place. When I was done my husband suggested the crumbled graham crackers for a dirt look. I think it looks pretty good! If you have any questions just post a comment.

Classroom Cake

This is the cake I made for our Wednesday night class. I taught the kids in grades 3-6. They were a great group of kids. The fish and bread in the basket represents the favorite lesson we did. Everyone brought something to eat (fish crackers, bread, basket, outside games, blanket to sit on). We went outside and read the Bible story of Jesus feeding 5,000 people with only five loaves of bread and 2 fish. The chain represents a paper chain we had made in the classroom. Every time we met they would tell me something they did that week that reflected what they had learned. By the time we were done with the semester our chain (fondant) stretch from one end of the room to the other. They were very excited to see what they had accomplished! Finally I put the names of the three teachers on the basket and the students names on the blue part of the cake. I used the big pretzels to make the basket 3D. I laid them down and covered them in chocolate icing. I was a tastey mix of sweet and salty!

I hope I sparked your creativity today!

First Cakes I Made

So I noticed that I don't actually have many cakes on here so here are the beginning cakes that I have made. These first two are during my cake decorating class.

This cupcake one was done for our daughter when she turned four. I really found I enjoyed doing cakes like this. I used butter icing. To get the shape of the cupcake I used piping gel to trace the shape onto wax paper then gently pressed it onto the cake. The dots and writing are also done in pipping gel.

This cake is the second one I did. It was for our son. These flowers look beautiful. I think that flowers are fun, but they are time consuming and I don't really feel as creative as I do with unique cakes.

I hope you enjoy these birthday cakes. My writing gets better with time. I made the flowers with butter icing. Medium thickness. They writing was thing and so was the icing of the cake.

To make the icing of the cake smooth I used facing material. Place the smooth side down on the cake and gently smooth with hand or angled spatula.

More cakes to come, wedding shower, birthday cakes, and a baby one too!


www.mytradesofhope.com/amyjosims

Decisions and Hope

Last night my husband and I put the kids to bed and sat down to read some Scripture. We haven't really made the time these last couple of weeks. We have been spending some wonderful time with family. It was great having them over for Christmas and New Years. It seems that every year my mom and and I make a plan to do something with our walk with Christ together. This year we are memorizing certain Psalms in order of prayer, recognition of God, and praise. Our first one to memorize is Psalm 1. This is what I was reading last night. This is the first verse, "How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers!" There is a reference here to Proverbs 4:14, so I flipped over there to read it. This talks about how important it is to listen to instructions and keeping your feet from evil. I prayed this for my kids. My mom prays for her grand kids so I think I may suggest this to her to pray over my kids and nieces and nephew.

After I had finished praying I realized something about our own situation. We do not stand in the counsel of the wicked, stand in the path of sinners, or sit in the seat of scoffers. Yes we sin, we also have Christ's sacrifice that we have accepted so that we have forgiveness. We are blessed. Right now we have many decisions to make and set backs to consider. This makes it hard to remember we are blessed regardless. Currently, my husbands classes for his Masters did not work out this semester. We need to decided if he is going to declare another degree program or change the one he has been working on. This impacts us financially. He did get a job online, blessed. Another decision is that a church in Minnesota has reached out to my husband and wants to get to know him for a job. After all we have been through in our last ministry position we have many things to consider about getting back into paid ministry. The nice thing about this one is that it appears he would be doing what he loves and would not be the senior minister. Here the elders are the shepherds and share the load of leading the church. If this is really how it is set up I think it would work out. We are going to have a call conference in the future to learn more about them and they about us. Even with all of this chaos going on, we are blessed. Regardless of what we decided we will be blessed.

This is what I think of when I think of blessed. I think of Job who was blessed physically after his trails. I think of Paul who had everything taken but still praised the Lord, He was blessed spiritually. I think of myself and my list of things I have seen God do in my life. I have things listed in the physical and spiritual sense.
I was given the power to forgive (previous posts)
My mission trips as a teen: money raised, safety, lessons learned
Perfectly timed gift of $10 from a professor's wife in college
My husbands mission to Uganda: pens (story in itself), articles he now writes, safety, and money raised
Boxes of food that would appear in our kitchen during ministry
Always had a place to live
Safety during a youth group trip to Colorado
Jobs have been provided just when we needed them
Redeemed relationships with my parents (story for another time)
Mother in law did not die due to recent medical issues, in fact she is back to work and doing better
My daughter was provided a new coat
Found doctors that has helped my husband with his medical issues
I have grown a great deal spiritually because of a dear friend of mine
Our daughter fell off a bike close to home, busted her chin. Husband carried her home. A friend drove by just then and helped me take the bikes home.
Have had great gardens
I have started a business with Trades of Hope
Our daughter mimicks me with Bible reading, copying of Scripture, and memorizing
Our son has the most adorable honest prayers, and he wants to pray
My husband found Scripture in Hebrews that provided hope to him and us during this time of transition
I am learning about depression, to better help and understand my husband
My husband has found it theraputic to write about what he has learned
He has also found it theraputic to do mathematics
He has an article that will be published
He passed the first half of his teaching certificate
Groceries always seem to be on sale just when we need to save a penny or two
I did not get fired when I did something pretty dumb at work
Our daughter sent a picture to her Kindergarten teacher, she got a letter back
Current teacher for our daughter is helping her with math
My husband and I communicate and listen to each other
We still see our adopted son and son to be wife, even though we moved
Our van still works with no major needs
Discovered in time that my current degree is not what I wanted
My husband cooks and clean while I work (he is a great cook, too)
Discount for our son's daycare
Our kids do listen to us (even if it doesn't seem like it)
Moments of joy with my kids and husband

The list is endless, but this is what I have written down from a while ago. Some of these came by other people. You can be the other person. Leave a bigger than normal tip, hold the door open, help someone find product in Wal-mart (we all know how are this can be), watch someone kid for free, volunteer at a center. There are so many ways to impact others. I have been impacting others close to me and now I get to impact others around the world by working with Trades of Hope. You can too. You can host an online party, join us in selling, or shop! All these ways help women and their families stand on their own.

www.mytradesofhope.com/amyjosims

Have a great and blessed day. Until next time!