Mailed our dossier last week!

This was the blog that I started last week and then put it aside to write another one so I figured it was time I finished this one. I did get our dossier mailed off last week and our agency is reviewing it and we are still waiting on our immigration paperwork. We are praying it comes in next week.
5/3
I mailed our dossier paperwork this morning to our agency and I am very excited to have that portion done! Will and the guys prayed over the paperwork last night at our prayer meeting and then we prayed together last night and I know God is going before it to prepare the way. We are still waiting on our immigration letter of approval so please pray with us for a very quick turn around. We were fingerprinted last week in Charleston so that was the last step that immigration needed from us so I know it will be here soon. Then the dossier heads off to the powers that be so they can do whatever they need to do to bring the girls home.

Another update: we signed a 3 year lease with a Navy family that will be moving into the home that we own in Charleston. It is such a huge blessing to have that resolved and in the process we witnessed God's provision and attention to detail, it is amazing the way He orchestrates our lives. The family found our house on Craig's List and after a few emails she realized that our families had served together on the USS HM Jackson when we were stationed in WA. She recognized our last name b/c I had been her phone tree caller during deployments. Only God can connect people in His perfect timing. Who knew? God uses Craig's List!

On Sunday (two Sundays ago now) our pastor read James 4:8 - "Come to me and I will come to you..." which is a verse I have loved for sometime. However, in the last few days I have gone back and studied the verses preceding and following verse 8 and there is a wealth of knowledge and understanding that I know God wants to instill in our hearts and minds.
James 4: 7 -10 "Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you doubled minded. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He shall lift you up."
The verses that surround this beautiful verse, "draw near to God and He will draw near to you" are full of very clear guidelines and instructions for us on our journey to "come to God." James draws our attention to 5 different things that will bring us closer to our Savior. Please do not mistake me, I am not speaking about works that help us earn our place in a closer relationship with God but I am speaking about 5 choices, 5 attitudes that can either strengthen the bond or drive a wedge between us and God. God has promised us an intimate relationship with Him solely based on Jesus' death on the cross but as in all relationships, it is a two way street. We are the only thing that stands in our way when it comes to Jesus Christ, He already made His choice, there is no question about it, He is all in with you and with me. The question is are we all in with Him? Back to the 5 choices, James tells us we must make as we make this trek towards God.

First: "submit yourselves to God" or be subject to God. The first thing James tells us is to be subject to God, to be under the authority of God. I love these types of descriptions b/c after being raised by a Navy man and now being married to a Navy man, authority and being subject to someone else are things I understand. We live our lives under the authority of the Navy; regardless of what is going on in this house when the Navy says it is time to go, he goes and the children and I understand and respect that. To be subject to God is easy to understand, but not even the slightest bit easy to put into practice sometimes. My desires, my feelings, my thoughts, my plans come in 2nd place to His plans, regardless of whether or not I happen to like His plans. In every area of our lives we are to be subject to God; we line our thoughts, our time, our resources, our relationships, our ministries, our careers with God, and as we do this we are taking huge leaps and bounds towards Him and He will never disappoint us, He is leaping and bounding towards us.
Second: "resist the devil." This is not something that can be accomplished passively, the word resistance implies action. Resist - to withstand; fend off. to oppose ACTIVELY; fight against. Satan will not flee you if you are not actively engaged in spiritual warfare were you battle him with the spiritual armor you have been given (Ephesians 6:13-18.) Come on you all, this is war and we are on the winning side but we need to pick up our weapons and fight this fight in our own lives and then take this fight to the streets to help those who have not learned how to fight yet. But make no mistake, you must resist him in your own life first and then you can spread God's freedom to the world around you.
Third: "cleanse your hands and purify your hearts" Man, I seem to have to do this everyday, sometimes every hour! It is amazing the filth my hands can get into and how quickly my heart divides itself between the world and God. Everyday, all day, cleanse and purify through the blood of Jesus Christ. Our loyalty is wavering and weak, we need God to purify and strengthen us. The spirit is willing but the flesh is so weak which means if you spend to much time, or anytime for that matter listening to your flesh then you have some cleansing and purifying to do. It is all through the blood of Jesus and it is quite simple, the only thing that stops us is our unwillingness to choose God over and over again. It is our choice, we must ask for this cleansing and then we will have to ask again tomorrow and then the day after and so on until we go home and live in perfection with our Maker.
Fourth: "be afflicted, mourn, and weep" Why? because we grieve the heart of God with our sin. I grieve the heart of God with the garbage I allow in my life. Have you ever really wounded someone who loved you dearly, who was completely devoted to you? I have, I have hurt people I love and people who love me. I have seen the pain in their eyes that I have caused, I can still see the pain in their eyes. It is so much worse with God because He was/is blameless and He is the best friend I have ever had. And I have trampled on that devotion, love and holiness more times then I would care to admit. We need to take the time to face Him, to look into His eyes and see the pain we have caused and weep over our selfishness and insolence. We have wounded the heart of the Creator of the universe and nothing is more deserving of mourning then that. We should not take our sins lightly, we need to stop and allow ourselves to feel just an ounce of the pain He feels and then we would walk away from sin, actually if we really understood what we have done then we would sprint away from sin.
Fifth: "humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord" First of all, you need to be "in the sight of the Lord" and I have a feeling that "in the sight of the Lord" does not include a 3 minute prayer on your way out the door in the morning, or the 4 1/2 verses we read right before we fell asleep last night. "In the sight of the Lord" conjures up images of time spent alone, devoted to God. It takes a little awhile to shrug off the cares of our lives and to cleanse and purify ourselves and to really focus our eyes on our God. And honestly once we have done that the humbling part comes relatively easy because our God is so good and so everything that we are not, that we immediately recognize our need to be flat on our face before God (spiritually and literally.)

All 5 require active participation on our part, it is not unlike any other relationship, it requires us to be present, to put in time and effort. The wonderful part of this story is that we are promised, we are guaranteed that in this relationship we will never be let down. We will never come near to Him to find out that He is emotionally unavailable or that He is preoccupied with His new BFF (best friends forever - that's for you mom b/c I know you had no idea what a BFF was) or that He is having a bad day too and He just can't deal with your baggage right now. No, this time we can take it to the bank that He will draw near to us EVERY TIME! So, why do we put so much time into every other relationship except this one, I think it is b/c we don't really get it, we don't really understand who He is. But, I have a sneaking suspicion that we are starting to get it, I can feel it in my soul, my spirit, we are drawing nearer to Him like we have never drawn near before and He is so excited (can't you feel His excitement?) He is amazingly patient, He is waiting.