I used to teach high school students, and inevitably one or two would come to class without homework. I generally did not accept excuses because I always told them the same mantra, “You had twenty-four hours to do your homework, just like everyone else. It was your choice to not use part of that time to complete your assignment.” That same mantra applies to each of us.

This meme puts things into perspective, doesn’t it? Who gives us these 86,000 seconds every day? God does, of course! Now, you will be saying that at least 7-8 of those hours are spent sleeping. Okay, fine! You now have 16-17 hours to use wisely. How are you using your time? Break it down…TV, making meals, eating, reading, work, etc. Then, ask yourself if you are giving God a tithe of your time. That seems hard to do, doesn’t it? It might mean giving up watching a show on TV or reading a favorite book. But giving God your time doesn’t mean necessarily that you are sitting or kneeling and reading your Bible and praying. You can be an active giver of your time to God!

Are you giving time totally unselfishly to someone else? Then offer that time as a sacrifice before the Lord and ask Him to bless it. Maybe you are cleaning up a neighbor’s yard or taking an elderly person to the store. Whatever you are doing for others is time that you are dedicating to God because you are His hands and feet on the earth! Did you ever think of time like that before?

If you read your Bible regularly, you are more than likely familiar with this Scripture that Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes. God has made a time for everything. He set the sun and moon in the skies, established the whole 24-hour day thing and has left us to do what we will with each day. But, like my students, we have to make wise choices. One of the most important things we can do is share God’s Word with others.

God gave us things that we are supposed to be doing, and they are supposed to be so near to our hearts that we can teach them no matter where we are. Our very important job, if we have children, is to teach God’s Word to them. We are not supposed to put it on the back burner, but to make it a central focus of our lives, no matter what we are doing. If we are sitting, if we are walking, when we are lying down and first thing in the morning, our minds should be established firmly on God and His Word. We cannot do what is right without knowing God’s Word. If you read the second Scripture above, you may be asking yourself what enemies you have to defeat. Well, think for a minute. Who is your enemy? Satan, of course! All of those annoying people are like chaff in the wind; they will soon blow away. However, Satan is always there, trying to trap and destroy you. But the Lord will drive him out before you so that you can prosper and enter the Promised Land, i.e. Heaven. You only have to call on the name of the Lord for Him to come to your aid. You have to know that truth before you can use it.

Knowing and using the Word that is God’s promise to you will get you out of trouble and help you to make wise choices with your time. Satan would just as well divert your attention on all kinds of things–anything except on God is His plan. It is up to us to make the choices that will defeat Satan daily. Yes! I said daily because that is how often Satan will come to you to try to get you to turn your attention away from God, His Word, sharing His Word, meditating on His Word, praying and doing good deeds. Your neighbor asks you for help to jump start his car. Satan whispers in your ear, “That’s not a good idea. After all, what has he ever done for you? And you are really busy today already, headed to work or on an errand. Just tell him that he can call a garage and you will give him the number.” Your reply to Satan should be to stand aside and then continue to do what God would tell you to do in the circumstance.

Choices with what you do with your time come every day, every hour, every minute, every second. Will you decide to tithe your time to God? He just wants to spend time with you, in a relationship with you, so close that you can hear His voice in your heart telling you what you should be doing. A task for God…no problem! We have plenty of time, don’t we? Think about it. Blessings for a day filled with good choices!

This is a dramatic book that reads like a soap opera, with a lot of dialog and a great deal of emotion. Julia Butler is still suffering from her mother’s death and her boyfriend leaving her for another woman. She is feeling totally alone and somewhat at odds about how to move on. Then a stranger named Linda introduces herself to Julia at her mother’s funeral and hints at a long-held and deeply-buried family secret. Linda is the character who keeps on giving in this novel because she continues to show up at the most inopportune times and continues with her air of secrecy and mystery. The plot in this novel is very convoluted and complicated, but it not particularly believable since there are a lot of coincidences that just seem to come together, thus taking away from the realism of the novel. The characters are mostly very weak and needy, and none were very likable, although I did sympathize with Julia and her loss. Her quest to discover the family’s secret is the theme of the book and the desire to know that secret kept me reading. I did guess part of Linda’s role in the family secret long before it was revealed, but that did not stop me from wanting to read the rest of the story to find out the fate of the much beleaguered and grieving Julia. Readers of suspense will enjoy this book as long as they don’t expect a great deal of action or reality.

Disclaimer

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. I was not requested to write a positive review. The opinions expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255, “Guides Concerning the Use of Testimonials and Endorsements in Advertising.”

This book will be available on April 11, 2019. Happy reading!

Stu from Something to Stu Over has kindly nominated me for The Versatile Blogger Award. I apologize to Stu for the delay in posting this, but I do enjoy learning more about our fellow bloggers, so I am happy to participate. Thank you so much, Stu, for the nomination and I hope that many of you reading this will check out his blog and follow him!

The Rules

1. Thank the person who gave you the award.

2. Include a link to their blog.

3. Select 7 blogs/bloggers that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly.

4. Nominate those bloggers for The Versatile Blogger Award.

5. Finally, tell the person who nominated you 7 things about yourself.

Seven Facts about Me

1. I am a distant relative of Buffalo Bill Cody. I live in Virginia, so I’m not sure how all of this genealogy stuff works.

2. I was 5’7” tall when I reached adulthood. My children call me the “incredible shrinking woman” because now I am just over 5’2″” tall. My spine’s discs seem to be collapsing.

3. I have lived in 11 different states and the District of Columbia.

4. I went on a missions trip to Guatemala and had my eyes opened to how many in the world live…not like we do in the U.S. that is for sure!

5. I am a born again Christian with a deep love for my Savior and an increasing appreciation for His sacrifice. I was born again on February 28, 1973. My daily joy is reading God’s Word and discovering new truths to apply to my life.

6. I have three children, nine living grandchildren and one grandchild who is in Heaven. Although at times I fear death, I think of little Tessa Serenity who is already waiting there to meet me and that helps to calm my fear.

7. I am a pro-life, conservative woman who votes for the candidate who most closely follows my beliefs. I believe in creation, that there are two genders because that is how God made us, that homosexuality is a sin and that one day God will judge the whole earth.

My nominees are:

Three Kids & Chaos

Train Today to Reap Tomorrow

Mws R Writings

Susies Opinions

Loved by the King of Kings

Chris Hall

The Lost Coin Blog

I am happy to nominate these bloggers, but they should not feel obligated to participate. I just want to find out more about each of you and to let you know that I appreciate you and your blogs. Have a blessed day, everyone!

Some of my online friends have been asking how I am doing, so I thought I would combine my physical well-being with the lessons God is teaching me these days. I am on an extremely restrictive diet because the doctors don’t want my stomach working too hard until it has had a chance to heal. So, for the next month, I can eat fish (yuck!), soft or puréed foods and ice cream or sherbet. I can only add one new food a day, and this is the fifth day that I have been allowed to add foods, so I am now eating fish, noodles, butter or margarine, cake and puréed green beans. Sounds delightful, right? The good news is that I am able to eat and digest food! My esophagus is working right, and I am exercising my lungs daily now with a spirometer incentive device. You see, my lungs are not used to having all of that room to work so taking a deep breath is painful. I am working on expanding their capacity, with exercises on that little device ten times daily. Through all of this God has given me two scriptures that are very dear to my heart.

The first photo is from Voice of Prophecy and the second is from cellcode.us. Both were found with a Google search.

I am very happy to have the noodles or whatever is on my plate for the day. I have to eat 4-5 times a day, small meals. I am absolutely grateful for being able to taste and eat solid foods again. No, they are not my favorite things, but they do nourish my body and are helping to make me stronger. My outer wounds from the robot cuts are almost healed. My inner parts are healing a little more daily. Thus, I am thankful for all that I have and all that I can do. It’s a long recovery period of 2-3 months, but God is with me every step of the way. After all, He looks after all of the birds and the flowers, so I’m sure that He will take care of me. He is supplying my physical, emotional and spiritual needs daily. I hope that you know this God of whom I speak. He does not love or care for you any less than He cares for me…just trust His mercy, love and goodness. Go before His throne and ask for His forgiveness. That will start a relationship that will be unbelievable! Blessings for a day filled with God’s goodness!

Each day that we wake up to serve the Lord, we face the challenges of daily battles. We all have them. The enemy of our soul is trying to destroy us, so Satan is the enemy that we are all trying to ultimately defeat. The truth is that Jesus defeated him at Calvary and that daily we are defeating him in our lives. The final victory will come at Armageddon when the enemy is totally defeated forever. For now, we need to ask God what He wants us to do in these daily skirmishes with our enemy. Does he want us to go out to battle or just rest in him? There is a real difference between just allowing God to act victoriously and our struggling with Satan’s taunts and temptations. In the Book of Job, Job faces Satan head on, loses everything and still does not curse God. Job is a hero of mine because in spite of all of his troubles, he continued to have faith in God. And he was rewarded for his belief because God restored more than he had had before Satan attacked him. Job fought the battle and won! I’m not sure that I could do that, but I do know that in my daily battles, God is enough. The Lord shows Himself strong on my behalf more times than I am probably aware of. But I don’t go to battle lightly. If God says “battle time” then I am prepared, with all of the spiritual armor described so well in Ephesians.

Photo from Mission Venture Ministries on Word Press

But there are sometimes that God tells me just to be still, to rest in Him, that the battle is His. That is what happened when it was time for my surgery. I surrendered myself to the Lord and His great power and felt totally at peace. I should have been shaking with fear at the prospect of facing surgery that ended the life of a dear friend; however, I was calm and didn’t even realize it. I was laughing, joking and talking to the pastor and his wife and my spouse. Before I knew it, the nurse anesthetist came in and told me it was time for me to go, so off I went. I should have felt anxiety after the surgery, knowing that I face months of a very restrictive diet. But that has not been a problem for me. I just look at the daily diet plan and go with it, thanking God for whatever new thing I can add to my diet daily. One new food a day until I am back on a regular diet. First, I added a banana. Next was fish and next was noodles. So, I’m recovering slowly, but I’m recovering. Job got everything back in an instant; I’m not expecting that to happen with me because God prepared me for this battle. I met with doctors and nurses who told me that it would be a slow recovery. Nevertheless, I am still wearing the armor of God and fighting my battles daily. Do you know how many commercials on TV are for food? And they are all foods that I cannot have. (A good reason not to watch TV. I do, however, enjoy Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy each evening and just suffer though the food commercials). God continues to tell me to be still and to rest in Him. This is not my battle. My battle is to get stronger again physically, to let my digestive system recover from the trauma and to follow the instructions of those wiser than I, i.e. all of my doctors and clinicians. What battle are you facing today? Surely not one like Job, but one that may rock your world. No matter what you are facing, God will take control and fight the battle beside you or for you. Our part is to pray and ask Him what our role in the battle should be. Do we fight or do we rest? Ask Him. He will tell you. Just remember to always have your armor on because Satan is constantly looking for your vulnerabilities. Be wise and don’t let him find any! Blessings!

“Battles” by The Afters