This Little Light of Mine

We have all heard the words to this song: This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine.... The part I am going to focus on today is: Don't let Satan blow it out.

I had the strangest experience on Sunday. We had set out to go to church and after getting there I remembered that I had forgotten a meal that I was supposed to bring for a friend who had had surgery. I ended up leaving my family there and then driving home and back during the service (we live 30 min. away so it was an hour drive). I have to say that I enjoyed my hour drive, because I was able to spend a solid hour with the Lord, one-on-one time. With six children this doesn't happen too often.

The day progressed and we went to the pool for the afternoon as a family. Sounds perfect, doesn't it. What I didn't know was that the enemy was planning an attack on our family that very evening. After we got home from the pool I began making dinner, and my husband started replacing the front door lock (the other one was in need of repair). I noticed that tension was building between 2 of my children and I had to correct them several times, this caused my tension level to rise.

All of a sudden a terrible wind blew up. A storm was approaching. We have chickens so I immediately sent 3 of my children outside to throw them into their hutch for safety. The rest of the kids and I went onto our deck to close the umbrella's and bring in the wet towels. It was a violent wind that seemed to come from nowhere.

While I was securing the umbrella's my daughter accidentally knocked over a glass vase and it smashed into a million pieces! Meanwhile inside, another child knocked over my favorite glass tea lamp and it smashed into a million pieces. At the same time, my dog threw up all over the carpet!!! Now, I have had my buttons pushed before, but never quite with this magnitude. If you had been there you would have felt the tension and seen the problems! I blew it. I yelled at everyone and then just sobbed. I cried and cried some more. How could I have lost my cool over such unimportant things? I felt so ashamed. So angry at myself. I thought God had been changing me, where was the changed woman now?

I was ready to give up this blog last night. I was so ashamed at my behavior that I said I couldn't write anymore. How could I tell people I was changing when I had regressed to this point in one night? Thankfully God gave me a loving husband. He encouraged me and told me that I had changed. He said that I had been such a joy to be around lately, and God had done amazing things in my life. He also said that I blew it last night, but so what. He told me that God had forgiven me, the kids had forgiven me and I needed to just get over it. The real problem was forgiving myself. That's where the Word of God came in.

Romans 8:1(KJV) There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

This is a powerful verse. If God isn't condemning me, I shouldn't either. I'd asked God and my family to forgive me so now I had to let myself off the hook. This wasn't easy for me to do, but with God's help I was able to let go.

I went over to my very special friend's blog on Monday. Her post titled "Part of that World" talked about not letting Satan blow out our lights. That is exactly what he tried to do on Sunday night. He blew hard and it almost worked, but God is bigger and stronger and God gave us the victory!