Young Mom's

My friend Sarah and I began leading a young mom's Bible study many years ago.  At first, it was with the young leaders' wives of the small groups we had at church, but it has grown.

Here we are wearing "matchy, matchy".

(Sarah, I do believe we've aged.)

Sarah is such a dear friend!  Sarah moved next door to us many years ago and what a friend she became!!  Love praying with her!

This is our group this year, minus a couple who were missing that day. 

Heidi (who is expecting!!)

                                     Julie (who has moved away now)

Each week we would get together at church and would begin the morning with yummy food.  We all took turns bringing the breakfast.  And we'd share recipes of course!

Usually there was an opening question, like "Where were you on Sept. 11" (since we met that day), or "What was your nickname when you were growing up" (when we talked about Paul's name being changed from Saul).

We shared God moments -
     something He had done that week,
     something you read in your devotions that blessed you
     or an answer to prayer maybe.

We all took turns telling the story of our lives.  We would pass around photos of our growing up years and tell about our family, our moves, how we met Christ and what He is doing in us.

This year we studied "Galatians" by Tim Keller.
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In Galatians, there were people who were saying that Jesus was critical and crucial to getting saved, of course, but that faith in Him alone was not enough to grow you into full acceptance with God.  That you needed to adopt a full range of Mosaic ceremonial and cultural customs. They were telling the young believers that performance mattered in order to be acceptable to God!  So Paul was pretty upset.

Salvation is God's doing.  His action.  His work.  There is nothing in who we are that saves us.  We are too sinful to contribute to our salvation.

The Gospel is about God's grace in sending His Son and in calling us to faith in Him.  We are saved by belief in Jesus' work on the cross - nothing else.  If we were able to earn it, what was the point of the cross.

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What a blessed year this has been -
               to see God at work in each of our lives.

      We've had the joys of new babies, the heart break of a friend's birth of a very preemie baby that we prayed home (the doctors said he would not make it).

                   We prayed for Sydney, Amanda's niece who had leukemia and had bone marrow transplant and is doing well at this time.  
                                         
                We've been praying for health for one of our mom's
                                                and also for the health of another yet unborn baby.
               We prayed that one of our girls would be able to get pregnant and she did.

We prayed for our husbands
                                     and our children.  Being a mom is such a challenge!

 It has just been incredible to watch God at work through the good times and the hard times!  He's working on us, but how wonderful that we don't have to strive for perfection in order to be accepted.

He loves us.  Period.