Memorize

I have hidden your Word in my heart, so I might not sin again you. Psalm 119:8

Why is it so hard to remember things, let alone the gift of memorizing scripture? Because it is in fact a gift, a gift I have not been given in my young adult life. As a children and a teen I knew the scripture. I could spout out anything you needed to know about the Bible. Then… in late high school and early college I turned away from the truth of scripture… and the thought that it was truth at all.

Thankfully the God is gracious.

Through a series of events the Lord brought some people into my life and took some people out. I am thankful for that season for it has brought me to where I am today, and who I am today… a Daughter of the King. Since my early believing days I have forgotten most of the scripture I once knew. However through my love for the Lord… and His love for me, I am regaining the hidden word in my heart.
Now I still believe that I have NOT been given the gift of scripture memorization, but does that mean I shouldn’t try to hide the word of God in my heart! Oh no, try away!

Here are some tips to help make that happen in my life and yours:

1. Memorize scripture from a verse of the Bible that you enjoy. The Bible I use often is TNIV, in case you were wondering.
2. Make some note cards of verses that you are trying to memorize.
3. Now carry these cards with you to read while in a waiting line or on your lunch break, or post them around your home in places you’ll see them.
4. Repeat and learn what these verses means. If you understand them, it will be easier to remember them.
5. Regularly review these verses. Use it or lose it, haha, I’m serious though.
6. Now go and share!

The Essential Christmas Collection

I so enjoy Christmas time and great music to keep the sound of Jesus in our home! This is a great CD that I am going to HAVE to get. There are some great artists on this album... take a look. 

2010 Essential Christmas Collection



No More Plastic Holidays!

Day 1 ~ Gen 1-16

Day starts our first day of the B90, and a little overwhelmed and I'm just as excited. My teens at SapulpChurch.com informed me there is a thing called D.E.A.R. Drop Everything And Read ??? Huh, learn something new everyday, so I told them thats what we will text you to remind you to stay on track with their reading. Also and bright young man decided that a worthy reply would be "In Your Face" if in fact they had already completed the daily reading, I told him that would be fine and I encourage many "In Your Face's" this week.

The Nature of True Apostleship

So a good friend once said she believe my husband to be an Apostle, and I never believed that more than today when my husband gave his notice to leave our current church only after almost a year of serving the Lord in Sapulpa, Ok. His words to the church weren't accepted by some with encouragement, however I am proud of the words brought and the principle behind it.

1 Corinthians 4
1So then, men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God. 2Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. 3I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. 4My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. 5Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men's hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God.



6Now, brothers, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, "Do not go beyond what is written." Then you will not take pride in one man over against another. 7For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?
8Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! You have become kings—and that without us! How I wish that you really had become kings so that we might be kings with you! 9For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men. 10We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored! 11To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. 12We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; 13when we are slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world.
14I am not writing this to shame you, but to warn you, as my dear children. 15Even though you have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. 16Therefore I urge you to imitate me. 17For this reason I am sending to you Timothy, my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church.
18Some of you have become arrogant, as if I were not coming to you. 19But I will come to you very soon, if the Lord is willing, and then I will find out not only how these arrogant people are talking, but what power they have. 20For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power. 21What do you prefer? Shall I come to you with a whip, or in love and with a gentle spirit?

I took this passage to heart on many levels and also to God's timing. I was very encouraged by two very amazing women today and I thank you for that. While following God may not be easy, certainly the Chirstians should not make it harder to do so.

May God bless and keep every one in His kingdom, whereever that may be! May we all be united in Him to Do His works and seek more of Him and less of this world. May He come with love and a gentle spirit to His believers.

We are MORE MORE MORE than Conquerors

D6 2011 & B90

I have two new exciting things coming up in my life in september. I am getting to attend a conference so dear to my heart, but being a conference junkie, many are. I will be attending D6 with some great people and can't wait to see what we learn and possibily change the way we view ministry. Also our church is doing the B90 challenge! Bible in 90 days! I'm so excited to read the Bible from cover to cover before this year is out. I always want to do this and never seem to get it done, now the guilt can be gone this year in 2010.

Tales of a Night with Jr High Girls

Well I am still alive.

Let's say that the help of 9 Jr High Girls didn't help my efforts to stay sane in my crazy life, but they were such a blessing and had a wonderful time growing and bonding with them.

oneLife hosted a jr high girls sleepover at our new house. As I write, I still have 4 of them here and they are doing dances, playing dress up, preforming make overs, making videos, and playing with a light saber, yes it's interesting what goes on in the mind of a 7th grader but no the less boring or dull.

I thank their parents for allowing them to come and stay, and I also thank them for taking them back home with them tonight after church. Because this young mom can barely keep up with 2 little ones ages 2 & 3, she needs much more energy to keep up with 9 preteen girls.

Thanks for the blessings girls! Last night was a blast!
... and I'm still the Indian Wrestling Champ by the way... what now ???

homelife

HomeLife Magazine_Birthday from Kris Seidenkranz on Vimeo.

He loves us, oh how He loves us

We need to realign our identity to be based on our relationship with God instead of on our own accomplishments and the recognition we receive from people. Our identity is determined by the way we define our success, so we need to make sure that we are defining our success by what God finds as a success.

When we get our identity from our accomplishments and recognition we end up in an emotional storm of preoccupation with vanity; we most naturally see our accomplishments as very small and unimportant, causing us to feel rejected and neglected by people.

We must define our success as being ones who are loved and chosen by God and who love God in return. This is what determines our personal worth. We are to be anchored in this truth as the basis of our success and worth rather than in our accomplishments, recognition, or possessions.

In ministry when we work towards what we think God wants and actually work towards what we want, we are working for the wrong reason. We have to work to figure out how I can be less to serve Him more, to prevent burnout from happening. Burnout does not come from working hard but from working with a wrong spirit. When we work for success we get burned out. When we work from success our spirit is strengthened (Col. 1:10). We will love Jesus much better with less “emotional traffic” inside our heart and mind. There is freedom from working in His spirit rather than our own.

~!*Lord you give me freedom, help me walk in it.

The #1st Commandment... not an option, by the way

God gave us a first commandment, and in these latter days it seems that people view that as an option. Well I guess it is an option for non believers and lovers of Christ; however, for the ones that claim to love and know God, it is not a option because you can't love God and not follow His word and seek to obey Him.
He wants us to love Him like He loves us. God's ultimate eternal purpose for creation is to provide for Himself a family, that includes faithful children (much like we as parents desire) and provide for His Son Jesus a worthy Bride. We are God's children, so we have power to His throne, and we are Chirst's bride, so we have the power of His heart!

We are all given the choice to love God, it is voluntary, but we aren't given the choice of obedience, for one day we will be held accountable of our obedience before God the Father and Jesus the Son. As Jesus' bride, He is praying ans interceding for us, but He can't make us love Him or obey Him.

There are too many definatins of love these days. My husband often uses the expression, I love fish tacos and I love my wife, to explain how the word love is so meaningless in todays culture. We have to LOVE God on His terms. Jesus desricbes loving God by being deeply rooted in a spirit of obedience (Jn 14:21) It takes obedience to the Lord to not stray from loving Him. There is no such thing as loving God without seeking to obey His word and spirit.

We should measure our spiritual maturity by how much of the beautitudes we walk out in our daily lives. We should measure our ministry by the extent to which those we minister to live out these vaules, not by the number of people who reiceve our ministry.

~!*Lord help me live out your word in my life. Show me how to love you and love others on your terms, not mine. Shape my heart to be like yours. Use me Lord, make me your own.

*Fruit of the Spirit

"The fruit of the Spirit is
      love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control" Galatians 5:22-23

For some reason I find myself trying hard to produce these traits, and I've failing at them. What I came to realize is that a peach tree does not strive to produce peaches, does it? It by nature, creates peaches.
That is how God works the fruit of the Spirit into us, producing what we were meant to produce for Him with His help. We don't need to struggle to produce what Gos desires to do in us. We just need to depend on our Father for our source of nourishment, reading His word, letting us transform our lives, and have confidence in that He will bring about good fruit in our lives. "For it is God who is at work in you," says Philippians 2:13.

"Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing." John 15:4-5

{Self Control}

July 17th 2010
     I'm reading "Confident Parenting" by Jim Burns and happened to also do a study on self control today focusing on taming the tongue. It seems that God has placed these in my life at the same time for a reason. In efforts of my parenting and ministry, I have make a change in this area. In the book I am reminded how the Bible says that we carry on the past sins ans struggles of the earlier generations (Exodus 34:6-7). Jim talks about our lives not being w/o struggles and pain bit that, "in life we wither choose the pain of discipline or the pain of regret." Today I want to choose the pain of discipline, like the runner in Hebrews 12:1-3. I want to run the race of life towards God throwing off everything that hinders my goal and prize, and vow to raise my children the same way. Now I can't control what my children do in life, but I can control what I teach them and show them in living a Christian Lifestyle. I am choosing to be the "transtional generation" as Jim calls it. I grew up in a very verbally abusive home and I can see horrible past family patterns creeping into the way I parent. This vow of discipline calls me to tame my tonuge, which is a VERY hard thing for me to do. I want my children to feel loved and respected by their mother, not punished, put down, be littled until there is nothing left of them. On another view point towards ministry, I can see myself being critical and judgemnetal of people when I don't mean to be. I want only good fruit to come out of my month and life.
... Pray for me in my efforts

Can we go swimming?

Can we go swimming? I hear it all day every day! We  have a community pool in our neighborhood and the girls LOVE it! On Mondays the pool is closed, and they can't understand this since they are only 3 1/2 and 2. We we great enjoy spending time at the pool together.

I can be anything I want when I grow up!

We teach this to our kids, that they can be anything they want when they grow up, a doctor, a lawyer, or even president. It seems funny that we never seem to encourage the work of the hardest job out there as something our kids could achieve, I'm talking about a pastor. I read a article today that got my thinking, if we (Christians) taught our children like the Jewish teach theirs, all of our children would grow up desiring to know more about God and to teach His word... what a better world that would be.

My Baby Turned 2

So this past week our youngest turned 2, and it broke my heart. She isn't a baby anymore! She talks up a storm, gets into everything every chance she gets, plays dead when you catch her doing something she shouldn't, loves her blankie, and cupie, don't like it mama, and loves all over you. I love her beyond belief and wonder how God is going to use her in His kingdom. She is something special! Thank you Lord for my Gift.

Facebook Pics 

Complete... the Jenk's House is DONE Stage 2!

Complete... the House is DONE, well not quite. We have signed paperwork, the loan has been funded, and boxes have been moved, but we are far from complete. This process has left me with many things I still need to get. We cut corners a lot in the buliding process, and while we thought we were saving money... and we were, we still didn't think about the part where we would still have to buy these items (much less of course, but still requires money.) As usual there are things coming out of the wood works that I didn't budget for, so the term, "if you don't have cash to buy it, then you don't need it" doesn't apply here on the need factor. However we will be waiting to get the cash before getting our rugs of all sorts, mini blinds, garage door openers, and fence. Still excited where God has taken us in the past 5 years. Glory to God!

home farming... join the movement

From rural areas to urban communities, home farms are sprouting up all over the country. And it's only just begun. Triscuit has created this site with help from Urban Farming, a non-profit organization, to help build a home farming community where both beginners and more seasoned gardeners can dialogue and gather information towards their common mission: to reap food that is deliciously fresh, penny-wise, healthier for themselves and the planet. It’s about home farming, and the everyday joy that grows out of it. So join us and let’s get farming! What will you plant?

Where did June go?

The month of June has been so busy for the Sanford Fam. We started off the month visiting my parents in Tahlequah, athen we had two days of District Assembly for the NEO Naz District. After that we headed off to Fayetteville, Ar, to watch my neice's and enjoy good friends. When we got back, we started preparing for teen camp. We had a week to make sure everything was together and it seemed as though...

Missional Living for Regular People

Missional Living for Regular People
by Lilly Lewin

Living missionally. It’s a great idea, and a concept that is hot—but not always one we take time to live out.
So what does it mean to live missionally anyway?

Teen Camp Night 1

Getting Here Safe...

So despite the bad weather and crazy other cars we got to camp with God watching over us. Safe and sound we rolled into Camp Wow and were greeted by a CRAZY team of camp workers that invaded our buses and vans and got our kids excited and can't lie, a little scared =) ... this week is going to be a GREAT week !!!
Creation...
Tonight's first service kicked off with the story of creation. What was amazing is that during dinner God showed us his handy work in the form of dark black skies and pouring pouring rain, and it was beautiful, because we now the God that created those storms, created us, and we love Him for it. Lights flickered, kids soaked, He is beautiful! In Him we were created!
Volleyball...
we have some time to kill and hangout. Some of the kids are playing apples to apples and some are enjoying a game of volleyball with their beloved leader Pastor Mark. Most have enjoyed a trip to the snack shop!

TShirts...
We have got so many compliments on our shirts, thanks Randy for the great job! Everyone loves them and wants one... haha they say SapulpaChurch silly ones. Even the crew asked when we got those shirts in and why haven't they got one yet?!?! It's camp pride to have cool shirts, and we have it... =) (any other time i wouldn't recommend pride...)
Okay got to go about to start the BlackLight PAR-ty in the @PaRtYbArN !!!! post pics later... bye gator

30 hour famine

So our teens did the 30 Hour Famine yesterday and I am pooped! One teen raised $224, I am so proud of him!!! The kids have learned a lot these past 6 weeks and I'm glad! All the hard work pays off when the kids say that they had fun and learned something! Thanks to my helpers, The Ron's, Tasha, Shauna, Tami, and the hubby Mark! What will sunday nights have in store now??? Ha, ask Pastor Mark -

5 Ways to Create Happy Risers

So  my girls aren't happy risers, and I came across this article and thought others might benefit from reading it, so hear you go, enjoy...

5 Ways to Create Happy Risers
by Tracey Brewer


Mornings can be a struggle when it comes to getting everyone up and moving. Having my children actually display a cheerful attitude while getting ready for the day sometimes seems like an unattainable bonus! Here are five ways I’ve found to create a happy riser.

Night with God, Hubby, Kari, and John

So it was great! Got to meet Kari Jobe and John the lead singer from Desperation Band, it was so awesome, wished I would have known more of the songs though. Here's the pics...

Service Project on "Real" youth center

Kari Jobe and the HeartWorkTour!!!

So every time I write that Mark hasn't done something for me, he proves me wrong (hehe I kinda like this, might do it more often haha) and he got me VIP tickets to meet and great with Kari Jobe and the Desperation Band!!!


Heartwork Tour Promo from Cory Reynolds on Vimeo.


Will totally post pics later !!! AHHH, so excited!

The Jenk's House Stage 1

So if you don't know by now, I'm sorry, but Mark and I am purchasing our 1st home and we are so stinking excited about it!!! We are actually building a home in Southwoods, in Jenks, but don't fear we have a Sapulpa address =) Heck half of our church doesn't even live in Sapulpa, haha.

Any ways here are some pics of the progress... est done date, end of June!






















My back door view! Hor-Seys as Olivia calls them.

Mother's Day

So Mother's day is supposed to be a happy day right? Well ever since I became a mother it hasn't been so happy. I see, to be disappointed every year on this day and spend it doing something I don't want to. Maybe it's my expectation that is making it an awful day? I just figured to would be great to be a mother on mother's day, and now I look back and wonder how my mom felt on md? Hopefully it will get better in the future when my lil girls will now what's really going on. I think I have no luck with Mark though...

English 2

So once again I am back doing school, yea this is going on for 8 years of college now, wow, and still not one degree. I am finally sucking it up and completing English 2! Man has it kicked me in the gut! I know nothing anymore, it is sad, but I am having fun (honest) learning all that I had forgotten. In five more weeks I can put this class behind me and never come to it again! Thank you Lord! No dropping this puppy, I'm sticking in there.

Branson!

So last weekend we spent three days and two nights, in one of our favorite places, Branson Mo, for a Pastor's and wives retreat! Mark and I had a BLAST! We stayed at the Hilton on the Landing! Super nice hotel and had great fellowship with many on our district! We truly enjoyed our time!

Busy Weekend

So I spent this weekend, very very busy, I'll have to post some pics later. We had a playdate at church and then lunch at McD's. Then we were off to fayetteville because it was my sissy's birthday and we went to Theo's to celebrate! Then met with some friends at their condo. Woke up the next day to breakfast with some more close friends! Lunch with the family for a surprise birthday lunch at Olive Garden! Then over to FFC to Papaw's bday party, where they quickly put me to work, glad they "act" like they need me! Then we rushed home for a Wedding that we walked in late to, but it was beautiful!!! Congrats Billy and Crystal! Late night turnned into a early morning for church at 6:30am! After church we had lunch with some more wonderful friends! Such a busy weekend, but a great one! Did I mention no more class for a week, got to love the ending !!!

Over a year in the making...

So it's been over a WHOLE year that I have set down with my computer to share anything about my life... and now here I am. A lot has changed in the past year, and I have no record of it anywhere other than my in my thoughts. This year I am going to try to be better, see I said try, it's not a promise, but I'm going to try....