Last night at church we watched a teaching from Pastor Jack Hibbs titled The Rise of Islam.  Back in May our College and Career Pastor emailed us this link to a similar teaching from Jack Hibbs at a Prophecy Conference.  I'd say the video we watched last night was better, updated with interviews, but that link I posted is the best I can give you guys.  However, I browsed around Jack Hibbs' church's website and found a teaching from Walid Shoebat, one of the guys interviewed in the video we watched last night, at a Southern California Prophecy Conference titled Why I Left Islam.  So that led me to browse YouTube to see if there were any interviews with him that I could post, and there were!

I think I found the Psalm I was looking for:

"Who can list the glorious miracles of the LORD?  Who can ever praise Him half enough?" - Psalm 106:2

You don't know HOW long I've wanted to blog about the WONDERFUL things God's been teaching me and doing in my heart and life.  It's hard to find time to get to sit down, figure out how to summarize my exciting experiences, and then get to publish them on here.  Sometimes when I do find the time, I can't get an Internet connection.  But my husband was sweet, and while he was in the middle of balancing our budget, let me come on here to FINALLY write only A BIT of what God's been doing since I last wrote.

I went to a Women's Retreat this past weekend with my church and was SO blessed!  I'm STILL pumped up from it.  For three days now I've been singing the songs that our worship leader wrote and played at the retreat.  She blessed us all with a CD of her music.  She wrote a song JUST for this retreat.  The theme over the whole weekend seemed to be "Redeemed" and "Restored".  [laughs] That was actually the title of one of the books that were given away.  Our guest speaker, June Hesterly, co-authored that book and another one titled Ordinary Women, Extraordinary God which I'm currently reading.  I bought the other one awhile ago and was DEEPLY impacted by all the pastor's wives' testimonies.  But I tell you, that first night of worship, as we learned the lyrics to the song Eileen wrote for our retreat,

"My heart [heard Him say], 'Come and talk with Me.'  And my heart [responded], 'LORD, I am coming.'" - Psalm 27:8

I quoted that verse in past tense to make it personal.  The Holy Spirit touched the most vulnerable, softest part of my heart through these lyrics:

I have come to worship my Creator.
I have come to lift up the name of Jesus Christ...

{This song isn't on the CD, so I don't remember the rest of the lyrics.  But the part about coming to worship my Creator just started the process to restoring the intimacy I've been longing for with God again.}

Draw me close to You
The way that You would want me to
With sincerity and truth
Willing to do what You would ask me to

You are God, You are Lord
To be honored and adored
You've redeemed, and restored
What was broken and so much more
So what You say, I will do
Cuz I am nothing without You

I will humbly follow You
Seeking to walk the way You do
Knowing that on my own I fall
I grab on to the strength Your grace will give to all

{Redeemed and Restored written by Eileen Earle.  It was SUCH a blessing to get to listen to this retreat song Monday morning before going back to work.}

The second day, after one of our sessions, we were given time to spend alone with God and go through a devotion in Ruth, the book our retreat theme was from.  I ended up sitting outside our room on the patio just simply watching God's creation for a bit.  I saw a butterfly and dragonfly, heard some birds sing, and admired some beautiful flowers.  One of the best ways for me to feel close to God is to get out in His creation.  [laughs] Now at the retreat, I felt like it was just a little patch of His creation spared in the midst of a city, but hey, it was enough for me to be thanking Him for.  And for the FIRST time, I actually got to thank God for giving me a husband.  It was a gift I longed for since I was 18.  Marriage became an idol in my life and finally, the spring of 2006, I surrendered it to God and turned my heart toward lifetime missionary work.  And THAT was when God brought me Gregg via the Internet from Texas.  Well, for anyone who knows me, I'm extreme.  I dove WHOLEHEARTEDLY into this new desire and my heart wasn't very open to the one I just gave up.  But God made it clear that He brought me Gregg to marry, so out of obedience I stepped out in faith and made the lifelong commitment a little over a year ago.  But my heart was still bitter over God not giving me a husband back when I wanted him.  Well, during this long overdue intimate, undistracted time with God, the softening of my heart in this area was complete.  My bitterness had dissolved into thanksgiving.

In closing, this is a dear Psalm that I grew up hearing my dad sing and play on guitar, and that I got to sing with my husband during last Wednesday night's service,

"It is good to give thanks unto Thee, oh my God, to sing praises to Thy name, oh Most High.  To show forth Thy love by morning, Thy faithfulness by night." - Psalm 92:1-2