What a joy to know that I have nearly 6 weeks with my children at home! It will be amazing! And I am also excited to have my parents come to visit in 3 weeks time! I was thinking earlier today about what I would write and nothing. No ideas came to my mind. I carried on with my grand plan to clean the house with the children! They were brilliant and very helpful, but it is still hard work  cleaning when they pretty much want to play! I am exhausted! I am sure you mums out there know exactly what I mean.

Anyway, I have just read Psalm 51 and verse 10 is among one of my favourites:

“Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”

Many times during my life I have prayed this prayer. I long for the day when my heart will be pure and I will only choose to live to please the One who seats on the throne of my life. I want Him to be in the centre of everything I do all the time. I want my thoughts to be filled with things that He wants me to think about.

Summer is here and yes, I am busier than ever, doing the best job in the world, but I don’t want that to be an excuse to push Him away or take a holiday from being His follower. So my prayer today is that during these next few weeks I can still desire a pure heart and a renewed steadfast spirit within me. For His glory.

God bless!

Last Friday my husband and I went out for a meal at our local pub! The food was amazing as always and I had a delicious pudding: passion fruit roulade! What a treat! For a few minutes I had a glimpse of home: the sweetness of the passion fruit, the smell and the lovely memories of drinking passion fruit juice in a hot summer’s day by the pool at my parents’ house! The laughter and the noise of the family and friends enjoying time together! Passion fruit is one of my favourite fruit and in Brazil it is called Maracuja. My mum makes a delicious passion fruit mouse!

Yesterday at church we had a little glimpse of home as well! It was so nice to be reminded of what HOME will be like! We looked at the Bible and through 9 months (every last Sunday of the month) we saw how men turned away from God and God loved men and rescued them. He sent the ultimate rescue, His Son Jesus, to die on the cross for us, so we could have a perfect relationship with Him again. Jesus bought us back to Him. His sacrifice was perfect  and it had been planned from the beginning.

We read Revelations 21:1-4

“Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth,’^[a] for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. ² I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. ³ And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling-place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ⁴ “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death”^[b] or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’”

What an amazing glimpse of our perfect future in our perfect home! God will be dwelling among his people! My heart was filled with joy to be reminded that no matter what our lives are like here we are going to live in God’s presence for an eternity! All of those who have, through Jesus, trusted in God will be part of this amazing picture! What a wonderful truth to look forward to!

I really enjoyed my pudding and the passion fruit bits on Friday –  but they only lasted a few minutes. Spending an eternity with God will be FOREVER! How exciting is that?!

God bless!

It has been a while since my last post! Life is pretty busy at the moment! I Have been thinking about a verse that seemed to pop up a few times during the past week in different occasions and thought I would share it with you.

Our church organized a beautiful flower and music festival last week and many people from our village and other places were able to see flower displays that illustrated some verses from the Bible. All the people involved organising it and the effort behind the scenes were unbelievable. God is good! His Name was exalted and many people heard about His love and what He offers through Jesus this weekend.

The verses that stayed with me throughout this past week are:

One of the things that really frustrates me, and actually, makes me really uncomfortable is someone giving me advice about my driving, when I am driving. Things like: watch out, or there was a space back there, or you are miles away from the pavement, or you are going too slow, for example.

Effectively what they are implying when they are saying that is I am not a good driver.  Hearing those pieces of advice affect my pride and my ego, because I am, automatically putting my guard up and thinking: I am a good driver.

Have you ever stopped to think about the way we approach our God when we pray? Are we telling Him what to do? Suggesting, perhaps that He missed something, or is not doing what we asked Him to? How are we approaching our relationship with our Lord? Are we complaining day in and day out about our circumstances? Are pointing out to Him that we are not content with His decisions? Are we behaving like stroppy kids and saying to God: I will not play this game of being a Christian anymore and won’t go to church anymore, because we are not getting our way?

The truth is, God does not need our advice! He does not need us to tell Him how He should direct our lives. How illogical is that anyway? We mere humans, limited, sinful, mortal pretending we know better!

The Bible tells us: