Last night I was channel surfing and stumbled across your show.  The only reason I stopped is because you were talking about someone I greatly admire, that person is Lou Engle.

Here’s a couple of things I’d like to point out to you, since you seem to have not done a very thorough job investigating a man who spends the majority of his time on his knees praying for this country.

Point #1: You seem to have an issue with a video clip in what you deemed  a “call to christian martyrdom”  christians have been martyred since the 1st century.  In other countires of the world TODAY christians are imprisoned, tortured and yes even killed for their beliefs.  What I saw Lou doing in that clip was facing a cold hard fact.  As a matter of fact some associates of his last year were very nearly killed by a frenzied mob of homosexuals in San Francisco, for merely singing in the streets.  Had the police not stepped in, they would have been killed.

Don’t believe me?  There’s a clip on youtube of these christians getting slugged and getting hot coffee splashed on their faces.  If you think that christians in america will be exempt from martyrdom, you are wrong. 

Point #2:  You said that Lou Engle gave a call to “start a civil war” over the issue of abortion.  Clearly you took  what Lou was saying out of context.  See here’s the thing about Lou, and every other christian on the planet.  We fight our battles through prayer mostly.  Yes there are activist out there, I understand that.  But when Lou Engle is talking about battle he is talking about battling in prayer. 

Lou Engle is one of the greatest men of prayer this generation has ever seen.  For you to villify him the way you did last night was clearly unnecessary.  He is not crazy like you think he is.  Like you, he is entitled to his opinion, and he shouldn’t have to get painted as a raving lunatic.

Rachel Maddow, do know that there is a Father in heaven that loves you, and because He loves you, I love you.  My prayer for you is that in your life you will know just how high and how deep that love is for you.  God bless you!

Heather C. Neil~

The last couple of days I’ve been going through my blogs from this last year trying to see what exactly was going on in the midst of the chaos that has been 2009.

While reading the Holy Spirit really quickened to me the recurring theme for 2009.  Surrender.  Just about every blog, every journal entry I’ve written this year involved me laying down ALOT of stuff!

While I’ve said in just about every blog that in the surrender I’ve become aware of this huge space that exists now, I’ve asked myself a few questions: 1. Has He increased as I have decreased? 2. In the laying down of these things, has this created space for His things? 3.  Am I ready for those things?

My desire for 2010 is to no longer think in terms of how I would handle things, I want to do what I see Him doing, and think what He is thinking.  In Him I live, move and have my being (Acts 17:28).

So while thinking all that yesterday Holy Spirit said this:  Found In Him in 2010

Mirriam Websters Dictionary has an interesting definition of the word “found” it’s a transitive verb (HELLO transitive!) 1. To take the first steps in building 2. To set our ground on something solid 3. To establish (as an institution) often with PROVISION of future maintenance.

Ecclesiastes 3:3 says there’s a season for tearing down and a season for building up.  Much has been torn down in 2009.  2010 will be the year for building up!

While there is always going to be shifting in our lives as christians, HE is always going to be the firm foundation that we can cling to.  And everything He does is for our good, even if it looks bad, it’s GOOD because He is GOOD!

He keeps us in perfect peace when our minds are fixed on Him!

This morning I was watching the local Fox morning show and they had a lady on there to help you address the “overcommitting” issues that people seem to have at this time of the year in regards to Christmas parties and such.

Huh?  Since when is a PARTY an obligation?  It’s a PARTY!  Parties are FUN! 

Somwhere along the way we’ve lost sight of the fun aspect.  We’ve forgotten what it’s like to be with friends and family in a completely non-serious environment.

I think when we’ve gotten to the point where a party is a stress factor in our life, we need to do some pretty serious examination of ourselves, because something is seriously backwards here!

It’s Christmas!  RELAX & LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL!!!!

Is an awesome pastor!  The series he’s been doing lately has been one of the most thought provoking for me in a long time!  I appreciate his heart so much in what he is teaching!

I made a comment the other day about how the series he is doing needs to be heard by every christian on the planet and so in the interest of space and time I’m going to give you a brief synopsis of the series.

“I Am My Beloved’s & He Is Mine” is the title and the scripture is Acts 17:28, “In Him I live, and in Him I move, and in Him I HAVE MY BEING (emphasis added)”

The basic premise is this: For to long Christians have been geared toward this “piece of the pie mentality” or we comparmentalize every area of our life and God only gets a certain percentage of that, when He did not mean for it to be that way.  He wants to be involved in ALL OF IT.  You know like “doing all things as unto the Lord”

As a woman I wear alot of hats.  Wife.  Mother. Daughter. Sister.  Friend.  And whatever else I am doing ministry wise to boot.  How on earth can I be expected to find time for God in all of that????

It’s actually pretty simple.  He’s in all of it.  Everything I do under those headings I do unto Him.  When I clean the kitchen, His presence is there with me.  When I am doing laundry He’s there.  When I am loving my husband and children He is there. 

Even right now as I blog His presence is here guiding my thoughts and words. 

Now while that sounds SIMPLE in thought, it’s not always easy to RECOGNIZE or REMEMBER when you are doing the everyday mundane things!

Talk about needing a change in my thought process!  My goal this next year is to be cognizant of His presence even in what I deem the mundane. 

I love His presence.  I’ve had amazing times with Him in the last year and a half when I’ve done nothing but set aside time to just be with Him.  I plan on having even more times like that, and we all need those times, but let’s face it, it’s not always practical for most people. 

So the next time you are doing one of those “mundane things” take a moment close your eyes and breathe Him in.  He’s there.  In Him you live, in Him you move, in Him you have your being.

Heather~

This is what I’ve learned in the last couple of days:  rain can get a bad rap sometimes.  Ever heard the term, “when it rains, it pours”?  There it is right there rain getting a bad rap.

This last week I’ve been battling this dark cloud that I’ve ignored all year.  I was thinking about it in church on Sunday, this ominous thing that seems to have settled in over my head quite nicely, yet it is not so nice.

The Lord, thankfully, broke in on my thought process and said to me, “dark clouds produce rain, and the purpose of rain is to wash away, to refresh and renew”  wow.  Now I think I want it to pour when it rains, when I look at it within that context.  Refreshing and renewal. 

I looked up scriptures in the bible that talk about rain.  The majority of them are POSITIVE when talking about it.  There were a couple that talked about raining fire and brimstone, but that’s not the kind of rain we’re talking about here.   And of course one can’t forget the flood, and as a big of an inconvenience that was, the only ones that were affected by that were the non-believer’s, right? 

So here’s for your reading pleasure some good scriptures about rain.   All from the New Living Translation (best translation EVER!)

Proverbs 16:15 When the King smiles, there is life; his FAVOR REFRESHES like a SPRING RAIN-  I”ll take some of that!

Hosea 6:3 Oh that we might know the Lord!  Let us press on to know Him, He will respond to us surely as the arrival of dawn or the coming of RAINS in early spring.

Joel 2:23  Rejoice, you people of Jerusalem!  Rejoice in the Lord your God!  FOR THE RAIN HE SENDS DEMONSTRATES HIS FAITHFULNESS!  Once more the autumn rains will come as well as the rains of spring!

Wow.  So here’s 3 good things right off the bat: 1.  When our King smiles, His favor rains on us, 2: When in the midst of the storm, we press in to know Him, He responds to us! 3. His rain demonstrates His FAITHFULNESS to us!

Now I know why the phrase “life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain” is so important!!!  If that’s what is raining in my life then I’ll dance until my feet fall off!

Tonight I was laying in bed reading a book I’ve probably read 5 times.

I had the TV on for background noise and I decided to stop and watch this movie that was coming on called “The Last Holiday” with Queen Latifah.  I’ve never seen it, and what really caught my attention was the “book of possibilities” that the character kept in a drawer in her kitchen. 

To say I was intrigued would be an understatement.  You see almost 3 years ago now I created what I call a “dream book”.  In it are pages of things that I love or that inspire me.  Pictures of places I want go, how I want to decorate my home.  Quotes.  Every page is a vision that the Lord has given me.  And He as of late has been urging me to add more.

Now back to the movie.  The basic premise is that this woman finds out through a fluke that she only has 3 weeks to live.  She quits her job, cashes in her life savings, her bonds and takes off on the vacation of a life time to Prague.  She learns how to snowboard.  She gets every kind of massage you can imagine, she meets people of “high caliber” and eats dinner with them every night.

She lives her life to the fullest.  With no regard of the risks she might be taking or even caring if she’s going to get hurt in the process.

Not that I want to spoil the movie for you, but it turns out she has been misdiagnosed.  Do you think she went back to the blase life she had before???  Heck no!  She continued to live her dreams out.  The most powerful picture at the end of the movie is her changing the title of her book from “Book of Possibilities” to the “book of REALITIES”  WOW! 

This movie had me going through my dream book again, and I decided to take pictures of some of the pages and the things on them.  I even have a whole “dream corner” in my room it has my book, a box full of things, and a sign about my favoritest place in the whole wide world.  I took a picture of that as well.

So here’s my question.  What is it that’s holding you back from dreaming?  Or if you are dreaming what is holding you back from stepping out into it??  Life is short people!  We don’t know how long we have!  DREAM BIG!  LIVE LARGE!!!!  GO FOR IT!!!!

A couple of blogs back I mentioned how in letting some things go I’ve become aware of this HUGE space that exists now.  More room for Him   He’s been faithful these last few days to give fresh revelation on some things.

On Sunday during worship I had a picture of a heart with many rooms in it.  Most of them looked clean, beautifully decorated, well furnished rooms.  But there was just this 1 room that was different from all the others.  We all have it.  You know the one that accumulates all the “stuff” that we don’t know what to do with, but aren’t quite sure we should let it go either.

When I saw this room I heard the Lord say, “it’s time to purge” I also heard Him say to lays aside “every encumbrance” to run the race, like Hebrwes 12:1 & 2 says.

The purpose?  To make more room for HIM

So today I decided to look up the word “encumbrance” in the dictionary and here’s the definition: something burdensome, useless, superfluous, hindrance.  In the Greek it means: Whatever is prominent.

Our pastor had a beautiful picture after I shared the word with our body, she saw us standing in the middle of our rooms with our stuff and we were just worshipping the Lord, as we worshipped all the “stuff” DISAPPEARED.  Wow.  See how much a difference there can be in just simply shifting your focus?

Be careful though, there was another word on Sunday that said that some were panicking because they couldn’t find their stuff.  Hey!  You don’t need it!  Let it go!  It was USELESS to you so DON’T PICK IT BACK UP!!!!  Amen??

I must decrease so He can INCREASE!!!!!!

Heather~

Yesterday I was reading a prophetic word by a man named Doug Addison and the Lord really spoke to me through this word about our 6 years of hell in Arizona.

You see I’ve always dismissed that time as needless suffering, and figured we deserved it because for the most part it was self-imposed.  We chose to move there.  Bad choices were made while we were there, it was just a colossal screw up really in the end.  There’s no way that the Lord could have been doing anything.  Granted there were hopeful moments like when we finally found a church after 2 years of wandering, but even that rug got pulled out from underneath us eventually.

I was wrong.

While I was reading this yesterday the Lord whispered to me, “Just because you think that Arizona was self imposed, doesn’t mean that I wasn’t working.  In spite of choices that you make, I can still work through them and in them and around them if necessary.”

Wow.  What a revelation.

Here’s what Doug had to say in the article that really ministered to me:

This is what I believe God is saying, “Just as suddenly as things changed and were cut off in 2005, I am now renewing and reviving situations—suddenly! I am parting the Red Sea once again and making the impossible possible. Watch Me, and give Me glory as your life and ministry are restored and renewed in this very hour.”

Prayer: “God, awaken us to what You are doing in our lives right now. Give us eyes to see and ears that can hear what You are doing. Amen.”

So is there and area in your life that you’ve dismissed as time wasted and thought there was no way God could have possibly been doing anything??

Don’t be to surprised if the Lord shows you someday what was really going on behind the scenes.  He is always, ALWAYS doing something!!!!

Last weekend I had the awesome privilege of going to a place that holds my sweetest childhood memories, the family cabin in Big Falls, Minnesota. I spent probably half, if not ¾ of my life there up until the age of 13. If you were to ask me at any point in time in my life what exactly represented normalcy, the cabin would be the picture I’d paint for you.

On Saturday night I decided to go for a walk around the field and I was plugged into my MP3 player and I was just worshipping the Lord. And I was just talking to Him and telling Him how grateful I was to get to be there, and I prayed and dedicated all the land and the cabin to Him and declared his rule & reign over the land, so that He could do with it as He pleases.

At one point I was kneeling in the middle of the field and I heard the voice of the Lord say, “I want you to let this place go, Heather” at first I was stunned. Then I was sad. Then I obeyed.

The Lord has done this with me a lot this summer. I’ve had to lay a lot of stuff down that’s important to me. The cabin was easier than I expected it to be. I’ve learned something about myself this summer too in the process of laying things down. Most people say when they let something go they feel lighter or freer. Not me. I suddenly become aware of this huge space that didn’t exist before. Not a hole or a void cause those are painful. Just space, more room for Him to be exact, and that’s all I ask for is more of Him.

So has the Lord asked you to let go of something lately? Have you done it? What’s holding you back if you haven’t?

Picture an attic that’s just full of stuff. There’s no room for anything else, but people still try and shove things in any place they can until it’s uncomfortable or it overflows into another part of the house, and then when they need something they can never find it.

This can apply to our lives in so many ways. Not just in a physical sense, but in a spiritual sense too. What is a gift you earnestly desire? Is it love? Is it faith? What is it that you have to let go of in order to receive those things? Think about it this week. There isn’t anything worth holding on to especially if it’s not healthy for you. He has such better things to give you, if you’ll let go and be open to Him!

With love, Heather~

This week for the first time in over 3 years I am going to a place that holds my GREATEST childhood memories.  Our family cabin in Big Falls, MN.  By our family I mean the Bauer clan.  This cabin was built by my grandfather when my Dad was around 5 I think.  It is smack dab in the middle of some of the prettiest forest you will ever see!

It’s changed some over the years.  It didn’t have electricity until I was around 15.  It didn’t have running water until about 2 years ago, and it’s now red instead of brown and it has a new roof.  Not bad for a cabin that’s been around for 50 years.  But one thing hasn’t changed and that is my memories of a time when life was carefree and fun.

This week my goal is to reclaim that carefree feeling.  I’ll be going with my Grandma, my cousin and my aunt.  I’m really looking forward to my time with them.  I’m looking forward to tooling around in the woods on the 4 wheeler.  I’m super excited about the pictures that are waiting to be taken with my digital camera of the surrounding beauty.  I hope to see a bear.  Some deer and a fox.  A Lumberjack and a chickadee and a blue jay, and finches (those are birds).

This is a real opportunity as well to just CHILL.  No agenda.  Lots of laughing. A good glass of wine.  Hot coffee.  Spam.  Pancakes.  Washing the dishes that have been in the cabinets since the cabin was first built

I could go on and on, but I think you get the point.  Life doesn’t get much better than that in the natural sense.

But even more than all those great things, I really sense the Lord has something  more for me in that place.  I am anticipating some sweet time with Him in the woods.  No unnecessary noise.  Just me, just Him.  How sweet!