snyder scoop: June 2013

Sunday, June 30, 2013

anything - week 4

God is really messing with me in this book.....we are at the half way point in our study this week...

chapter 8

crashing curtains

waking up

I was still limiting God by my understanding of how life should work - safe and comfy and not so costly. (p. 76)

I had a constant, nagging feeling that God was real and this life wasn't a game; it wasn't about my comfort or my curtains or how much everyone liked me and approved of me. Heaven was coming, God's voice was clear, and I needed to quit pretending everything was lovely. (p. 81)

chapter 9

new eyes

real change

...surrender is usually dying to self on a daily basis and most often found in the mundane. Lunches had to be made, conflict with some friends had to be resolved, and toilets still needed scrubbing. (p. 86)

chapter 10

big God

praying anything

I wanted to be right with God at the end of my life rather than right with all of the people in it. ( p. 92)

anything - week 3

chapter 6

scrapbooks

abandoning fear

The idea that we would actually hand it all over to God and say, "Go. Build it. Do whatever you want with all I have"....it is terrifying. What if God has planned any of these as part of the story?
singleness
struggle
adoption
a difficult husband
infertility
moving from the town we love
an apartment instead of a house
cancer
disapproval
death
dangerous overseas missions
financial hardship

What if he lets me suffer? What if he asks me to sacrifice? What if none of my dreams come true? The very thought of doing anything demands everything. We have to face our fears. If we believe he is real, if we believe he has an eternal heart, we have to face the fact that a God like that may mess with our temporary comfort and fictional scrapbooks. (p. 52-53)

There is no escaping it. He is God, and if our suffering brings him the most glory, let it be. Easy to preach, difficult to live. (p. 56)

God is an anchor in the midst of the difficult chaos of this world. The chaos will be resolved. It will. As Oswald Chambers said, "Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time." (p. 58)

Jennie Allen, author of Anything, shares a story about a girl named Rachel who has endured great suffering in her life. Jennie heard her testimony and share these thoughts she can't forget Rachel saying:

Then she said a line I will never forget: "You have to thank God for the seemingly good and the seemingly bad because really, you don't know the difference." The hardest things in her life brought her the deepest relationships. The hardest things have become the things that define the most beautiful things about her. The hardest things in her life have given her more of God. (p. 59)
**my favorite part of this week's reading

"I trust God." The beauty of that statement on this day makes me cry. God, give us enough faith for whatever the stories of our lives will hold, even on the worst days. (p. 61)

chapter 7

eighty years

abandoning this life

Wake up! This pursuit of me, it may cost you everything you hold dear, everything you love here. It may cost even your life. And until this life gets small, really small, and I get big, really big you won't truly follow me. Because loving this life too much will affect your love for me. It also will affect what you are willing to do for me. (p. 69)

As I stand back and look at myself as I was, sitting in the counselor's office whining and crying after years of chasing things that were supposed to work for me, that were supposed to make me happy here, that God was supposed to do, I see that my ache was actually his mercy showing me that everything I loved other than him was never going to work. It was never supposed to work. (p. 71)

carowinds

Last Sunday we enjoyed a family trip to Carowinds while in charlotte visiting maw maw and aunt Bonnie. We had so much fun and enjoyed being together after missing daddy for a few days!!

Nate we honor, esteem and respect the sacrifices you made daily in order to care for your family. We are so proud of you.

Saturday, June 15, 2013

anything - week 2

completed week 2 of our anything bible study this week!! this book is really challenging me and is written in such a conversational tone by jennie allen that it convicts you like a friend telling you something you really need to hear. i love how she weaves God's truth and God's word into many of her examples.

the memory verse for this week:

chapter 4

giant people

abandoning people

the king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD, he turns it wherever he will (prov. 21:1)

i can let other people down. if God is for me....the God of the universe for me...who could be against me? whom else do i fear? (p. 38)

i did wonder sometimes, when i closed my eyes and let it get scary quiet, if i was missing the best things, the things that matter most, because i was afraid. he knows we keep chasing other loves until we love him most. we keep spinning. we keep searching, restless. we keep missing all he has for us. he'll always feel far away, drowned out by other louder rivers, until every other thing fades away and he becomes the only thing. (p. 39)

chapter 5

normal drug

abandoning entitlement

as real life and responsibilities pressed in, i felt God being pressed out. (p. 42)

had our hearts become demanding? if God did not give us and our kids a safe and comfortable life, was he holding out on us? (p. 43)

money and a good latte protect us from a lot of things. it is too easy in this country for blessings to become rights, for stuff and money to become what calls the shots in our lives. and before we know it, God's gifts have replaced God himself. (p. 44) - my favorite quote this week

little deaths always feel like big deaths until you let go. after you let go you wonder, what was the big deal? (p. 45)

but God often seems unconcerned with helping us maintain same, simple lives where everything fits and works. i don't know what God's plans are for you, but i do know that we don't hear from him until certain things die. he doesn't compete. and when we does speak, it typically costs something.......it doesn't make sense to use, but since this life, these few years, are not the climax from God's perspective, he's okay with throwing a little wrench into the short plans we have to be normal here. (p. 47)

love this narnia analogy!!!

the chronicles of narnia books so move me. nothing else i have read draws out such a display of two existing universes running side by side like these stories do. c.s. lewis drew these universes, narnia and our world, as realities that carry on simultaneously. the great hero in the stories is aslan, the lion who represents christ, but in the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe the human heroine is the youngest of the pevensie children, lucy. she is the heroine simply because she believes. God is calling us to this alternate universe, as lucy was - to push through the fur coats in the closet to get to narnia and aslan. he wants to press us through our doubts so we can see the other eternal story going on, of which we are actually a crucial part. (p. 48)

not that he minds helping us; he wants us to need him. but from his perspective in eternity, i imagine he is thinking, if she would just lift her head a little and look up and out, her problems would get smaller and forever with me would get bigger. (p. 48)

Saturday, June 8, 2013

anything - week 1

this summer, i'm joining an awesome group of ladies online through good morning girls to study God's Word and read the book anything by jennie allen.

we've just finished our first week and i thought i'd use my blog to post some of my favorite parts of the book and our weekly verse from our study.

chapter 1 - plastic god

abandoning unbelief

p. 5 every sin at its root, is based in something we do not fully believe about God.

p. 7 unbelief is no small thing. it lays the foundation for all the places we struggle, and ultimately faith in Christ is what will separate those who belong to God from those who do not.

p. 9....many people who study the Bible never find God. many people who go to church never really know him. the only exercise that works 100 percent of the time to draw one close to the real God is risk....."to risk is to willingly place your life in the hand of an unseen God and an unknown future, then to watch him come through. he starts to get real when you live like that."

p. 10 stepping out wholly dependent on God to come through, stepping away from what is secure and comfortable exposes the holes in our faith.

chapter 2 - least good

abandoning pretending

p. 14 on a core level, are we really as "good" as we think we are?

p. 15 though some of my behavior came from a pretty sincere place, the truth has always been that without God's intervention, I am selfish and prideful every minute of every day.....there is something to humility that is costly...something resembling humiliation...an outright declaration of the wreck we are without God rather than composing a beautiful existence that barely needs a savior.

p. 17 it physically hurts to see our pride, to see our sin, to quit playing good, to feel broken and to need God. and it hurts even more to let others see it. so we run from falling; we choose large fig leaves to cover up with and not God. we run from that vulnerable feeling that we may not measure up, all while aching to measure up.

p. 18 there is something so beautiful about people aware of their sin and their need for God. that is beautiful to God. he can work with that, enter into that. jesus' first command after nearly every encounter with a needy person was for them to repent. he promised these broken people hope and healing. he promised to make a way for them.....they thought they were fine without jesus. they did not need him.

p. 19 pretending to be good halts God's movement in our life.

p. 21 we don't want to fall. we like to see great testimonies of God's grace, but we don't want to be the testimony. (hands down my favorite quote from this week)

chapter 3 missing buttons

abandoning shame

p. 27 when we are saved, spiritual things begin working inside us and disrupting that way we used to think and live. sin becomes distasteful because it fights with who we are. God becomes our chief desire. these are marks that we are believers. unless there is some craving for God and some distaste for sin in us, we should question if we are believers. we are children of a living God who wants us out of bondage, out of sin, out of the weight of shame.

p. 28 true grace threatens our control. but it gives us something too!

p. 31 but when God calls us to something that feels backward, it is usually his path to our freedom. the path out of shame is to see our sin and turn from it toward our God. and there we find peace and a God who can say, "I can take care of this...Actually it's already been taken care of."

Thursday, June 6, 2013

ahg court of awards

so so proud of the girls and their hard work earning badges and service hours this spring in american heritage girls!! we love you both!!!!!

first day of school/curriculum for 2013-2014

hard to believe we are beginning our second year of homeschool!! claire is beginning 5th grade and camdyn is starting 3rd grade!! we had a fun first day of school this week.....we did our lessons at home and then took a field trip to cedar falls park! the girls did their prayer journals by the falls and then we stopped for ice cream and milkshakes on the way home!! so excited for what God has in store for us this year as we continue to live and learn together. we love you girls!!!! welcome to a new school year!!