Keep on keeping on...

Every day, all year 'round there are many reasons to guard my mind. It requires some discipline to marinate it in the Twenty-third Psalm and the Lord's Prayer.  Both pretty much wrap up the basics.

If you have followed my blog you know that I was raised "tough"...actually plowing through snow drifts up to my shoulders from the time I was five years old in order to get to the one-room schoolhouse where Mrs. Ethel, a widow with a son Ted's and my age urged me to read, listen, think and learn. When the country school was closed I entered town school. Mrs. Ethel moved to town too and was my teacher for two more grades!  Years later I became a Christian. Mrs. Ethel's son Bob came to Minneapolis to our wedding and somehow came to Christ. He in turn led his mom to the Lord. Bob went home to Jesus in his 50's.  Mrs. Ethel and I  wrote and talked on the phone across the miles until she died in her sleep at 95!

Why am I telling you about Mrs. Ethel?  Her investment in me brings to mind the scripture: "Train up a child in the way she could go and when she is old, she will not depart from it."  Mrs. Ethel encouraged me to read, listen,  think and learn,  The same principle goes for a brand new Christian. Even if that new believer is an adult they are a child in their new Life in Christ.  Please don't just invite this dear new family member to church. Open the Word of God, love and invest in them. Of course it will be a sacrifice, but the word "love" means absolutely nothing without "sacrifice".  I didn't have any idea how to disciple the new Christian teenagers that were coming to Christ in our first ministry.  I opened to the Book of Ephesians and the Holy Spirit took it from there.  ...one verse at a time. ,,,and since then ever so many have done the same. ...one verse at a time. Many of the disciples that date back decades show up in my life regularly. Now that summer is nearly here more will be coming. ...and I will be blessed.

My two remaining children and their life mates are coming today. All four are "going and making disciples!"  Jeff and Carla are staying overnight. ...then after they leave ten teenage boys are coming for an air-gun birthday party. Today a half dozen men are ripping off the deteriorating shingles from my roof and putting on new ones. With every whack of the hammer I hear owed dollars accumulating.  ...and then I am reminded: ""The Lord is my Shepherd,  I shall not want."  Everything on this Planet wears out or leaks and my body is no exception. ...but meanwhile, there is...

                            POWER IN THE BLOOD

Would you do service for Jesus your King?
THERE'S POWER IN THE BLOOD; POWER IN THE BLOOD.
Would you live daily, His praises to sing?
There's WONDERFUL POWER IN THE BLOOD.

THERE IS POWER, POWER, WONDER-WORKING POWER
IN THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB.
THERE IS POWER, POWER, WONDER-WORKING POWER
IN THE PRECIOUS BLOOD OF THE LAMB. 

Love, Jo

Good for you, Ann and Franklin Graham. Just like your daddy and mother before you, you are giving us encouragement to keep on keeping on.