On Mother's Day:

My mom told us girls when we were a lot younger that she felt called by God to raise "Hannah's." This is the list that she made up. I LOVE how much she loves the Lord.

What are the Character Traits of a Hannah?

• She has an intimate, vital relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ and she is totally in love with her Lord. He is number one, her boyfriend, fiance, or husband is number two.
• She sacrifices to give to God fully and she can give to God what she desires most for herself. She has this great depth within her.
• She has a vital prayer life. After she prays, and maybe not before...she has a mind set on God and not her circumstances. She gets above them in prayer.
• In times of suffering, she will bear up because of her rock-solid foundation in Christ.
• She doesn't forget God when her prayers are answered but turns in full appreciation of who He is and what He has done for her. She exhalts Him.
• She pours out her heart to God in prayer and listens for His response.
• Hannah will turn her children's hearts to love God more than herself.
• Hannah will stay committed to a vow or promise that she made before her Lord. She will be unwavering and faithful about it. She stays married no matter what.
• She doesn't take back from God what she gives Him.
• She teaches her children to pray at a young age.
• She understands that her God weighs actions. Arrogance doesn't come out of her mouth, but she can handle an "Eli" and defend herself.
• A Hannah can entrust sacrificially to God in prayer her heart's desire knowing God's sovereignty in her life...that nothing will escape His planned best and good for her.
• Hannah's find prayer a place of refuge.
• Hannah's have to learn to wait.....sometimes years, in faith, not understanding why.
• A Hannah is a product of suffering, especially the one in scripture suffered much. They get emptied but Hannah's get God's infilling, and get the victory in the end, (God gave Hannah five more children to replace the ones she surrendered).
• Hannah is faithful. Yearly she returned with a garment for her son to wear.
• Hannah works through heartache in prayer and believes God before she sees answers from God.
• A Hannah will cocoon in prayer. When she's ready, she busts out and things are always different. There's a display of power and transformation.

With Love, Mom

.....she also wrote one about Samuel.

To My Hannah's,

Some Characteristics of a Samuel

• A Samuel is a Godly man and he stays preservedly Godly in ungodly circumstances.
• Samuel is not a victim of his past.
• Samuel is publicly known as a man associated with God.
• Samuel turns to God in prayer for his help and he listens to God's voice.
• A Samuel gets comforted by God to exist triumphantly in rejection.
• A Samuel has clear vision, he sees the whole pie, not just the piece he's in.
• A Samuel is a servant who stands, listening to act on what God has told him to do or from scripture he knows what God says to do.
• A Samuel has a surrendered heart to God's sovereign will in his life.
• A Samuel never stops praying for those who reject him.
• A Samuel responds willingly and fully to the movement of God, even when the change affects his power and his prestige.
• A Samuel is a chosen spokesman and leader for God.
• A Samuel is sensitive to God's timing.
• A Samuel has a warning: A Samuel needs to tend to disciplining his children, not only tending to his ministry.
• A Samuel was one man who by his obedience to God strengthened for God and entire nation.
• Samuel's mom was a Hannah.

I hope this letter encourages all of you as much as it does me. The greatest of Love to you all!

I felt like writing today. :) No guarantees for future posts though. ;)

I had an urge to write....I am quite sure that nobody reads this anymore, which is precisely why I decided to write! haha!

It certainly has been awhile!

This morning I decided after a looooong morning of doing pretty much nothing, that I would whip out my Bible. I could tell this morning that God was giving me plenty of opportunities to actually sit and talk to him and read the Bible, but I was purposely trying to tune him out....unfortunately that has become a habit with me.....It makes me sad. I recalled this morning how it felt to be truly close to my Lord......I really longed for that closeness when His voice is made louder and louder in my life. I realized that the closeness I had with the Lord had, over much time, had slowly been being quieted by my choices. It starts with small things. Satan is no fool I've realized. He doesn't pervade our lives through big events or circumstances so much....but the small choices that we make along the way and the way that we choose to live our lives out every single day. For me, it starts with exposure, then repeated offenses, then I reason out my offenses in my head and convince myself that they are really not harmful to me at all, and then the voice that tells me to turn away slowly grows quieter and quieter, until it is nothing and I am trapped....helpless.

This morning I opened the Bible to Proverbs. One of my all-time favorite books of the Bible during my early college years....its all about wisdom. Something I've always been captivated and drawn to...Wisdom. I started off at chapter 2 and replaced all of the "my son" verses with my "dear daughter of mine" to make it more personal. (Boys aren't the ONLY ones who need wisdom. :)) I was so drawn to His mention of His upright, blameless, or "faithful ones" that He talks about. I loved hearing that he holds victory in store for them, he shields them, guards them, and protects them. I WANT this protection! However I am none of the aforementioned upright, blameless, or faithful of his followers. :( Thankfully the Lord speaks discipline as well as love when he talks....(later on in chapter 3 , vs. 11-12 it says, "My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.")

I was also so drawn to the Lord's wisdom by the huge pull that the vocabulary made: "turn your ear", "cry aloud", "search for it as for silver or a hidden treasure". Those words were so adventurous to me....they seem so desperate.....desperate for the Lord to fill a void. It was just what I needed. I could relate to that thirst. Later on in Chapter 3 it talks about the fulfillment in finding wisdom...."Blessed is the man who finds it", "she is more profitable than silver:, "yields better returns than gold," "She is more precious than rubies", "NOTHING you desire can compare with her." .....WOW....I thought to myself...."seriously God?? NOTHING I desire is better than having wisdom??" And then after thinking about it for awhile I thought, well, if the Lord knows me well enough to draw me into a couple of verses like these, then He probably knows me better than I know myself and what my real desires are.

Going back to chapter 2, I believe the Holy Spirit, who I've re-learned now thanks to BSF, has the purpose of reminding us of what Jesus has said and helps us apply it to our lives, spoke some words into my heart. Verse 16, although at first glance seems like an intense situation, by mentioning the "adulteress" and her seductive ways, but when I thought on it for a minute, the Holy Spirit seemed to start making connections between what I was reading in these few verses, and encounters I had had in my past. I recalled a few past encounters where I had been super naive and not seen a situation for what it really was. The verse says, "It will save you also from the adulteress, from the wayward wife with her seductive words, who has left the partner of her youth and ignored the covenant she made before God. For her house leads down to death and her paths to the spirits of the dead. None who go to her return or attain the paths of life." This passage struck me hard. I don't want to take temptation and lightly. Now, although in the passage its talking about the marriage relationship, for some reason I felt like I could connect those same types of temptations in other various types of situations. I realized and was able to see clearly when before I couldn't, the great great temptation that is out there for the men of the twenty first century. But I think that it should be said that there is a similar temptation on a girls side of the story. I will admit, being female and having been in and working in the beauty industry now for a while, men have it pretty tough with the fact that for the most part, physical image is primarily first what a man looks at, and I'm WELL aware of the fact that there are many beautiful ladies out there, it just pains me when they don't know about the inner beauty of the Christian girl that they are dating, and don't appreciate and help cultivate that. It totally kills me. But anyway, there are struggles now on the women's side of things that I have noticed recently as well. Satan's favorite pawn for women these days seems to be through movies.....especially since a certain holiday has gone by. Valentine's day was a few days ago I guess, apparently I didn't even know until the day of haha, but anyway, I noticed all of these new movies come out. Now romance movies and chick flicks are fun to watch when with a bunch of girls....but at the same time, something hit me when I thought about this.....Men are different from women, they are more physical (I'm not saying this to bash them or anything at all, just stating merely some facts that I think are true of my world today.)...and women....well, we are all about the "story", we're all about the "romance" and the "how we got there" part of the story. I recently watched a movie called, "Becoming Jane" which is the "story" of Jane Austen, one of the most famous female book writers of her time. Being a writer, I think she felt the full force of "words" in her life and was a natural romantic at heart. To be perfectly honest, I bawled watching this movie, the second time I watched it (probably because the first time I watched it I was with a bunch of people so my guard was up haha! :)), but I bawled for different reasons. I wondered if having Christ in her life and the man she fell in love with would have made any kind of a difference in the outcome of her life. The ending of the movie was so somber....and although that seems to be the staple that we give life, I determine that the way the world looks at things is a path to "death", whether that's physical or spiritual. Then I wondered what the difference was between Christian love within a relationship, and the love that is portrayed in movies. Some of these chick flicks can have such a strong effect! That's when I realized that if those lines are blurring and I don't know the difference between God's kind of love and a love based on desires, I had realized that I had gone far FAR away from that close relationship that I had had with the Lord and needed to get back in the word. ASAP! Chick flicks with their seductive words had ensnared me......but NO MORE!!! I'm curious about what more God has to say to me about this whole wisdom thing. I do have a great desire to search for it as for hidden treasure.... I have MUCH to learn!! :)