Faith Strengthened Moms

In Captive Thoughts Part 1 I talked about our thoughts being worldly and if we are full of Christ’s love and His word we can fight off those negative thoughts. Therefore, not allowing them to take us captive.

In this blog post, Captive Thoughts 2, I am going to open with the following question; what happens when the ultimate antagonist shows up in our lives and in our heads?

“So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, ‘Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.’”

Revelation 12:11 NASB

Many try to avoid the whole idea of Satan, but like it or not he is real and in our world. Avoidance never helps, I challenge you to not hide from your enemy, but to learn about him. When the time comes to face what you’ve been avoiding all along, the best way to do so is by being prepared.

But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.

2 Corinthians 11:3

2 Corinthians warns of us the possibility of  Satan deceiving us and leading our minds away from God. Just like he did to Eve in the garden of eden, tempting her with the apple. He made her question God’s word;

Now the serpentwas more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?”

Genesis 3:1

Rather than avoiding Satan we should prepare our minds and be ready to face him head on when he comes. With God on our side there is nothing to fear! We can kick Satan right out of our heads and to the curb. *Pow Pow*

First, we need to prep our main weapon, the word.

“Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”

James 4:7

Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.”

Luke 10:12

Second, we need to understand our thoughts. I have often thought, “well how do I know if this is God talking to me or if this thought is from God?” Dig into the word and if what you are hearing lines up with God’s word than it is from God. Satan will try to trick you just like he did Eve, but you will know because he will take God’s word and twist it. He will make you question did God really mean or say those things. The doubt you feel is Satan playing his games. Cast the doubt out and dive into the word. The word tells you exactly what God says.

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world.”

1 Peter 5: 8-9

And the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.” 

Romans 16:20

God is the ultimate victor, Satan can play a mean game BUT he can never beat God! Do not let him beat you. Build your relationship with God and whenever Satan tries to touch you, he will be burned.

You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world

1 John 4:4

This is Satan’s world, but Heaven is our eternity ❤️  God had a plan all along to send his only son to die on the cross for the sin Satan brought into the world. Through His sacrifice and relationship with Him we are saved. Check mate Satan *mic drop*.

What are your struggles? Repeat the answer you just thought in your head. Now pretend your in public and someone asks you the same question out loud. Chances are incredibly high the answer you verbalize, to them, is not the same answer you thought in your head. Why is this?

I personally have shared some of my struggles with my readers in my blogs. For those of you who are reading my blog for the first time (yayayayay!!!) I’ll give a quick background summary.

I have had a constant chronic headache, exhaustion, muscle fatigue, tightness, tingling, brain fog, and anxiety everyday for almost five years. My life drastically changed one night while sleeping in the mountains at a family reunion. I instantly knew mentally and physically something was wrong.

My journey has led me to several doctors, CT scans, and MRI’s all resulting the same… Normal. No one ever wants to hear bad news, but I got to the point where even if it was bad news at least we had answers. Fast forward from being a guinea pig refusing to stay on the different forms of medication pushed on me, making my symptoms worse, to the miracle of a friend from church seeing my story on Facebook.

Her taking a chance and reaching out to me truly saved my life. Her husband has been through everything I have and then some battling these symptoms for six years. Through a friend who reached out to them they found this doctor out of state, who has had much success in treating chronic pain. He did a couple of Lyme tests to them and myself resulting in the same outcome, POSITIVE.

Bad news… NOPE! FINALLY ANSWERS! Years of worrying if others think I’m crazy after every normal result. Relief feels so good! We have started on his treatment which has truly helped lessen my symptoms, mentally and physically. However, little is known about Lyme. (*Side note* I will touch more on this later when I write the Captive Thoughts Part 2 post)

“Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience, and in them you also once walked, when you were living in them. But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him— a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all, and in all. So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful. Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.”
Colossians 3:1‭-‬17 NASB1995
https://bible.com/bible/100/col.3.1-17.NASB1995

Why are we scared to voice our struggles to others? We have feelings in our hearts of doubt, fear, hopelessness, etc… Brought on by the thoughts of; what if people laugh at me? What if they think I’m pathetic? What if they think I’m just saying this for attention?

Those thoughts are all worldly. The passage above from Collosians tells us to put aside abusive speech. This includes the thoughts in our heads. God wants us to let the peace of Christ fill our hearts. Negative emotions and thought are normal, but do not let them over come us. If we are full of Christ’s love and His word we can fight off those negative thoughts, not allowing them to take us captive.

I wanted to share this hilarious video with you, by Dude Dad. I watched it with my husband and kids. We were laughing so hard! Dude Dad nailed it 🤣 I don’t want to give anything away, read the comments below this post if you’d like to know my thoughts hahaha….

The next morning after watching the video I had a mom fail ugh… We were in the car on the way to dance. My six year old son goes, “Mom I forgot breakfast.” I proudly wave a bag of mini muffins I grabbed for him. Then he goes “Mom, I forgot shoes.” *face palm* No shoes…bare foot it is.

Share your mom fails and thoughts of the video below! Thanks for reading 🥰

Yikes…. Sorry for the three separate videos, I promise next time I do a vlog I do one video 🤣 Please comment your thoughts on me doing videos to share with you as well as written?

Often times as moms we find ourselves feeling guilty when we make simple lunches or dinners. However, sometimes the simple meals are the best to your child.

I could slave away for an hour in the kitchen and get nothing, but complaints. I take five simple minutes to gather supplies for peanut butter and jelly Friday, and all I hear is nothing except happy children asking for more!

Moms do not be so hard on yourselves! (Trust me I am 100% guilty of this) Life with kids gets chaotic and crazy! Just remind yourself, your family would rather spend time with their mommy then poking at a five star meal 😂

Moms share those quick and easy favorite recipes!!!!

Randomly came across this shirt and found it absolutely hilarious! 😂 I wanted to share with all of you, the truth to this saying is so on point!

Brought to you by Zulily: take a look at this Heather Royal Blue ‘She Believed She Could’ Relaxed-Fit Tee – Women & Plus today! https://www.zulily.com/invite/musicjeh2010732/p/heather-royal-blue-she-believed-she-could-relaxed-fit-tee-501865-93073872.html?tid=social_generic_android_phone_shareviaicon_na_modal_b87ce5cd748b9a2c6a199a6c3c646635&pid=93073872

Bread, an every day food we take advantage of without realizing it.

Think about the above statement for a second. We can go to the store, buy bread already made and ready to eat. Incredibly easy, yet I know I am one who finds myself complaining about this simple task.

I often find myself annoyed when we are out of food and I have to take my four kids to the store. Even when I do a grocery pick up, I tend to still complain about how long it is taking the employees to bring me my groceries. Convenience, is something we take for granted in today’s day in age. We are spoiled. An attitude I know I personally need to improve on.

My husband and I have personally made the decision to homeschool our children. I chose the curriculum, My Father’s World. (An amazing Christian based curriculum). This curriculum has fascinating science experiments and history lessons.

Our experiment/history lesson last night was making bread from scratch. As I was teaching my children how to knead dough and keeping track of how long the dough needs to be worked, I got to thinking of how easy we have it now a days.

I explained to my children how pilgrims did not have stores they could go to, to get food. Everything they ate was home made from scratch. They had to go out to the fields and collect the ingredients. My children love McDonald’s and had to ask if there was McDonald’s, with disappointment filling their eyes I told them; “there was no fast food restaurants.”

Convenience… Busy day let’s just get drive thru. I’m feeling too tired to cook, take out. We’re out of bread and milk. Better go to the cow to get some milk; I meant store. We are so blessed, yet still complain, just like the Israelites.

Then all the Israelites left Elim. They reached the western Sinai desert, between Elim and Mount Sinai, on the 15th day of the second month after leaving Egypt. Then the whole community of Israelites began complaining again. They complained to Moses and Aaron in the desert. They said, “It would have been better if the Lord had just killed us in the land of Egypt. At least there we had plenty to eat. We had all the food we needed. But now you have brought us out here into this desert to make us all die from hunger.”

Exodus 16:1-3

My children loved kneading the dough. I was surprised by how much work goes into creating the perfect dough. My arms had grown tired and felt like jello.

How often do we treat our relationship with the Lord like a convience item; only praying or reaching out to Him when things go wrong? Just like the bread dough, the more we knead and work on our relationship with the Lord the better the outcome will be.

It is important to not treat our relationship with Him like a quick stop and go. Our relationship with Him is far too important for that. Below I have shared some Bible verses showing the beautiful outcome of a close relationship with God.

Do you ever feel like you have gone crazy trying to find something? The overwhelming, frustrating, and confusing feeling you get when the item you had is no longer where you put. This leaves you wondering what on earth you did with it?

I hope you have or this blog post is pointless hahahaha….

My children are notorious for taking items and making me feel like I’m going crazy.

I was feeding my baby girl and had my drink by my phone on the couch end table. I got up to lay her down, come back and it’s gone. My other three kids swore they didn’t touch it. Hmmmm…. I wonder who took it 😂

I am a huge fan of stories. I hope you guys share your stories as well in the comments! I’d love to laugh…. I mean read them! Kids can do the must frustrating yet funny things.

I’ll close with one last story. I always say my phone literally grows legs and walks away because of my third child (who is three). I had to put a lock on my phone because for the longest time she’d steal it and go hide watching videos. Most of her hiding spots were quite clever; under my bed, in my closet behind my clothes, or behind the rocking chair. However, her funniest hiding spot was when she would lay on a bed and hide under a blanket. I love how kids think if I can’t see you, you can’t see me hahahaha….

The topic of True Disciples has really been on my heart lately. In this post I wanted to share two great messages I heard this past week. Both touching base on what it means to be a True Disciple. These messages also have several other amazing points to get your mind rolling and thinking as you dive into the word 💕

The first message is by Pastor Tim at New Life Church in Pleasant Hill, Iowa. (The link does work if you double click on the box above). The second message is from Pastor Barry at First Assembly of God in Indianola, Iowa.

https://indianolafirst.com/media/parables-of-perseverance-part-4-pastor-barry-hill

“But evil people and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.”

2 Timothy 3:13 NASB

“It’s time we rise up and be true disciples of Jesus, to not be shy!” -Pastor Barry.

This topic is so important especially for everything going on in today’s world. Above is a passage from my devotional I found to be spot on for what my mind has been pondering on the truth of being a True Disciple. People and the media can be deceiving, but if you want the truth dive into the word ❤️ I encourage you to do so, whenever you doubt or question what is right dig into the word seeking the answer!

Please feel free to comment any thoughts or questions you have 🙂