11.28.18 Recap

Good Afternoon Sisters,

Last night was so incredibly SPECIAL!!!  What a testimony to God’s grace and compassion.  Women pouring into each other’s lives with their love and testimonies.  So many words of knowledge and truth spoken through you last night. Indeed, we have gone to new levels with the Lord.  We were so blessed to have a beautiful new sister with us, Stephanie. I met Stephanie over 17 years ago.  She was a nurse at NCCRM and has since got her PhD. and is a professor at Duke. I am in utter awe of how God is bringing so many powerful warriors of the faith into our ministry. For those of you who could not be with us we covered you with an abundance of love and prayer.

We started the night with prayer and devotions.  Our devotion entitled “Broken Hearts” (will be posted on website next week) ties in perfectly with Chapter 17 entitled “Experiencing Blessings in Marriage”. Have you ever experienced a challenging relationship?

Relationships are challenging by design. It's how God grows us. It’s His intention for us not to just survive our relationships He wants us to thrive in them. His word gives us the tools to make that possible. We are called to encourage one another’s strengths. Our tendency is to feel we’re called to fix our partner's weaknesses or expose them.  We need to talk about the A’s on one another’s report cards not the C’s, D’s & F’s. Look for the bright spots in each other. Be your husband’s CEO... Chief Encouragement Officer. Encourage his strengths. We go around in life looking for “likes” from a lot of people but when you get the right “like” from the person you love the most you don’t need it from all the other people.  We are called to lift the ones we love up with our words. “I love the way you look. I appreciate all you do for our family.” Do you think God would bless your marriage more if you became the CEO (Chief Encouragement Officer) in your marriage? We need to let the people we love know that we love and appreciate them. We show them with our words, our actions and our attitude. God is calling us to encourage one another’s strengths and cover each other’s weaknesses. All of us are aware of our weaknesses and we don’t need them pointed out. Your spouse is not your project, he is your partner. You are a team. We are to build one another up... not puff up one another. Flattery is when you puff up someone in order to get your way, using encouragement as a tool to manipulate a situation. We are to build each other up with the truth of who God says we are. And it’s important to understand that we have to do these things when we don’t “feel” like it. We have to do it anyway. We have to be intentional about it and say I’m sorry when we don’t feel like it. If we’re going to fulfill God’s purpose in our lives we’ve got to “think” it sometimes before we “feel” it. We are called to carry one another’s burdens, assume the best about one another, to live with contentment, let God be God, encourage one another’s strengths and do it all when we don’t feel like it.

Sooner or later you’re going to know what it’s like to have your heart broken. This life is not devoid of struggle. The world we live in is a heartbreaking place. Some heartaches are sudden. You never saw them coming. Others come as an end result of rejection. When those who you thought you could depend on suddenly reversed their opinion of you and abandoned you.  Wounds of the heart are a cornerstone of broken marriages. The divorce rate is this country is over 50% and increases even more in second marriages. This increase is due to the fact that wounds of the heart were never healed in the first marriage and carried over into the next. In order to have healthy relationships with another person we must first allow Jesus to heal our broken hearts and pour His love into us so that we have it to pour out to someone else.

God ordained marriage to be a powerful covenant.  Deuteronomy 32:30 says that “one can chase a thousand, but two can put ten thousand to flight.” There is exponential power in a marriage. It’s no shocker that the enemy wants marriages to fail.  Demands, stress and burdens can have a negative impact on our relationships and marriages. Worries can cause you to become quick tempered and take your stress out on your spouse. There is great power when you and your spouse are in agreement.

Our Lord Jesus said, “If two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in Heaven.” (Matt. 18:19).

Together, you can agree to cast ALL of your cares on the Lord, and to remind each other to stay in rest instead of being stressed out and worried. It is not our Heavenly Father’s heart for our marriages to be marked with stress, strife, and the loss of love. His love for the marriage covenant was demonstrated through His first miracle.  Our Lord Jesus was a guest at a wedding and the wine ran out. He turned the water into wine. In fact, the wine was so good that the master of ceremonies wondered why they had kept the “best wine” for the end. Perhaps the wine has run out in your marriage. In the beginning there was a lot of love and romance, but as demands of life piled up the wine ran out.  There were diapers to change, mouths to feed and deadlines to meet. Every marriage experiences this loss of wine and needs a “third party” in order to thrive. That third party is Jesus. Eccl. 4:12 says “a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” When you invite Jesus to take center place in your marriage and you each draw from Him instead of constantly making withdrawals from each other, your marriage can be strengthened instead of becoming depleted.  You simply can’t make your spouse the source of your joy. He cannot be your #1 and you cannot be his. When you put your spouse in a place where all of your happiness depends on him, you will be disappointed as no one can handle that kind of pressure. Your spouse cannot be God. When you keep your eyes on Jesus instead of each other, you can minister to each other out of His unlimited strength and grace, instead of withdrawing from each other. When He is the center of your marriage he can make the bland and tasteless sweet and inviting. He can infuse your marriage with a renewed passion and love. He will ensure that the wine never runs out.  When Jesus turned the water into wine, He was showing that He is the LORD OF TIME. It takes years for high-quality wine to be produced, but He compressed time and in an instant produced the best wine. He can do in a short time what takes year through human effort. One moment of His favor can turn your whole marriage around. Even if it has been years since there has been love in your marriage, the Lord can redeem the years that have been wasted.  He promises in Joel 2:25 that “He will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten.” It is never too late for the Lord to work a miracle. Lazarus had been dead for days and Jesus brought Him back to life. He can do the same thing for your marriage. Even if you feel like the love is dead, His restorative and healing power can still flow into your marriage and resurrect it.

The bottom line is this...Jesus paid the price for you to experience blessings in your marriage.  For those of you who are single or divorced, you can also experience days of heaven on earth by listening and listening to the words of our Lord Jesus.  His Word will wash away every fear and every burden. As you listen the heart wounds are healed. As you keep hearing what about what Jesus has done for you, the water will turn into wine. NOTHING is too broken or too big for Jesus. His shed blood is the basis for EVERY blessing we receive from God.  He can take a marriage that seems devoid of all hope and breathe love back into it and make it better than it was before. I have seen it happen over and over again these past few years in ministry. We don’t have to understand how He does it. His ways are supernatural and are beyond our human understanding. We just need to listen and receive.

And for those of you who are single and desire a person to share your life with please know GOD already has that person set aside for you. REST and use this precious waiting time to allow God to heal your heart wounds and pour His love into you. It is IN this time that the soil of our heart is prepared to receive the promise.

Next week we will plunge into Chapter 17 entitled “Stress-Free Parenting.”

Our Christmas Party is on December 12th! Please bring a dish and an ornament to exchange (evite sent out by Stacy yesterday).

Also, please cover us in prayer this Friday night as we are in the GRACE “Field of Rubies Fashion Show”.  (6:00-8:00). Judith, Wendy and I will be there! Stacy created a beautiful board for the event and provided some wonderful gifts for us to give away.  THANK YOU STACY!

WE NEED YOUR TESTIMONIES!!! Please take time to write them down and send to us!!! Please share our ministry website. IT IS KINGDOM WORK and IS CHANGING LIVES! sherrybraswell.org

Enjoy your week beautiful sisters, remembering to live in the moment, thanking Jesus for ALL that He has done and is doing in your lives!

God Bless You.

Love,

Sherry :-)

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