Today I'm blogging over at Stitches Thru Time with a Monday morning devotional and giveaway! Stop by to enter to win a custom chalkboard art! How do you keep the fire in your prayer life? We're chatting it up at Stitches Thru Time! http://stitchesthrutime.blogspot.com/2016/08/no-one-likes-it-lukewarm-devotional-and.html

A friend of mine posted a great quote from an evangelist on Facebook this morning, and it got me thinking. "The trouble of it is today, the people don’t have time to get before God and get still. They got so many things to do. They belong to this; they got to do this; they got to have this; they got to go there. You—you don’t have time. The devil’s just took up all your time. You don’t have time to get still before God, get quiet."        56-0213 - "Hidden Life With Christ"        Rev. William Marrion Branham This reminded me of something I'd read a while back from Martin Luther. He said, "I have so much to do today that I'm going to need to spend three hours in prayer in order to be able to get it all done." Wow. That's quite a contrast to the typical attitude of "I don't have time" or "I'm too busy to pray." Martin Luther was one busy fellow. He wrote many catechisms, thesis, started a reformation, wrote ...

Superbowl commercials have been a cultural phenomenon for a long time. Some folks are more interested in the commercials than the football game! This year, there was one commercial in particular that garnered a lot of attention. Not for how clever it was, but for how...weird? Strange? Kinda gross? Those of you who saw the Puppy-Monkey-Baby commercial know what I am talking about. There were even memes going around on social media about the strangeness of this advertisement. But you know what is the most interesting thing about the Puppy-Monkey-Baby commercial? Everyone remembers the commercial, but almost NOBODY knows WHAT they were advertising. I was recently listening to a sermon about how our lives as Christians should be a billboard for Jesus Christ. This sermon caused me to pause and question myself. I realized that I needed to ask the question, "Am I a Puppy-Monkey-Baby Christian?" Even though I claim to be a Christian, even though I claim that my life is dedica...

Today I'm blogging over at Stitches Thru Time with a devotional thought on hard times. Here's a preview. *****  Have you ever had a day when you woke up and realized that your life is not where you'd wanted it to be? Or realized you'd made a terrible mistake you couldn't take back? Or somehow found yourself in the middle of a mess you can't get out of? One of those days when you'd give anything for one of those Southwest "Wanna Get Away" buttons? I recently went through a period like this. Things weren't going the way that I wanted them to, and it seemed that no matter how hard I struggled forward, I always ended up back in the same place. A death march of circles that were getting me nowhere. I cried out to my Lord, and though I could sense His presence, I felt as if my prayers weren't having an impact. I had no clear answer or direction. Click Here to read the full post at Stitches Thru Time

Today I'm blogging over at Stitches Thru Time! Join me in our Monday morning devotional.   Here's a preview... Amber Schamel here with our Monday morning devotional. I was in church a couple of weeks ago when our pastor shared an inspiring story with us. It touched my heart, so I thought I'd pass it along. There is an ancient tale that tells of an island which many of the ships had to pass. This island was inhabited by Natives with a strange culture. The women would all go out on a sandbar and begin to dance and sing. The poor sailors who had been at sea for many months were absolutely tantalized by the women. Their dance would lure the ships to the island, where the Native men were waiting to attack them, kill all on board and take whatever loot they could. Read the rest of the devotional at Stitches Thru Time

Author and friend Michele Huey is hosting me on her inspirational blog, God, Me & a Cup of Tea. Here's a teaser: Be patient therefore, bretheren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. ~James 5:7 I volunteer about half my time at a non-profit ranch in the Ozarks. One of the many things I help with is the harvest of pears when they are ready for picking. We went out to the   tree with ladders, baskets, sheets, and set to work. It was absolutely unbelievable how many pears were on that single tree! We picked bushels and bushels of pears until we had them coming out our ears. A lot of pears were eaten before they even reached the house. Some were stored in boxes in the cellar. We froze gallons of them, gave some away, and still some went rotten before they could used. Then there were the pears at the top of the tree that were too high for...

Today I'm blogging over at Stitches Thru Time! Here's an excerpt... "Amber, this is really stupid. You should have known better." I have said these words to myself many times, but particularly during my latest mishap. First, you have to know something about me: I love curly hair. I mean LOVE it. I think it is gorgeous and am known to scold people for straightening their luscious curls. It didn't take long for me to notice the common denominator in most women I considered beautiful...they all had curly hair. Add to that my obsession with the Civil War era and their perfect ringlet hairstyles and you have what is more than just a fascination with curls. That being said, it seems almost torture to me that all of my sisters have naturally curly hair, all four of them, but not me. How else do you spell n-o-t f-a-i-r? I have tried almost every method of curling my hair. Hot irons, hot rollers, wands, gels, sprays...yet after all that work, the curls com...

Today's special guest post comes from friend and author Anne Baxter Campbell.  Everyone is busy setting goals and resolutions by the score. Personally, I quit doing resolutions. I like to set goals instead.   How about you? Someone a few years back coined the phrase, "This is the first day of the rest of your life." The hope was that people would realize their faults and failures belong to the past, which can't be changed, but they could start out new now. One of the enemy's best tricks is to convince you that you can't change or improve. That your bad habits are too deeply ingrained to fix. That you aren't worth anything, so what's the use? Well, the enemy is wrong. Maybe today just change one thing. Do the improved habit for 21 days and you will create a new habit. Then try one more. For instance, maybe you want to stop smoking. Today, smoke one less than you did yesterday. Tomorrow repeat that. How many smokes are in a pack? Mayb...

Joining us today is friend and author Murray Pura to bring us an inspiring devotional. THE PRAYER TREE A person can pray anywhere or should feel free to pray anywhere. But sometimes it helps to have a special place to go to, a spot that helps you quiet your mind and focus your thoughts. Some people like churches, some like gardens, others like porches, still others prefer a walk along a path or a ride on horseback through a field of tall grass. Jesus liked lonely places away from people and when in Jerusalem preferred the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives. When my children were young they had a prayer tree.             There were two prayer trees actually. One in the woods only a few hundred feet by the home we lived in when they were five and three. Another up a mountainside when they were twelve and ten. The first one was always arrived at after a long walk in the woods that included visiting horses...

Anne in period costume Friend and author Anne Baxter Campbell joins us today with a devotional on the Lost Coin. If you enjoy this devotional, check out her blog where she shares sermonettes and devotionals. http://pewperspective.blogspot.com "Or what woman, if she has ten silver coins and loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I had lost.'" Luke 15:8-9 The word used in the Greek for "silver coin" was "drachma," which amounted to a day's wages for a typical worker. When a Jewish maiden married, her husband would pay a bride price, usually several silver drachmas (or the Jewish equivalent, a half-shekel coin). The woman would string them and wear them across her forehead. These coins were sort of her insurance policy. If her husband ...