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Some would gather money
Along the path of life
Some would gather roses,
And rest from worldly strife.

But I would gather children
From among the thorns of sin,
I would seek a little child,
With a wide and toothless grin.

For money cannot enter
In that land of endless day,
And roses that are gathered
Soon will wilt along the way.

But oh, the laughing children,
As I cross the sunset sea,
And the gates swing wide to heaven,
I can take them in with me!

~Author Unknown

The Butlers are going to China!! :-) Please pray for a fast and easy process and that we find our Oliver quickly! 

 

Isaiah 43:5 ~ “So don’t be afraid: I’m with you.  I’ll round up all your scattered children, pull them in from east and west."

Burdens

I have been blessed beyond measure by adoption and I believe through it all God has been giving me a burden for the orphans.  Just to throw it out there, in case you have somehow managed to miss this number, there are over 150 million orphans in the world (150 MILLION!!!).  Now, not all of these children are orphans in the sense that they have no living biological parent, but they have no mommy or daddy nonetheless.  They are in foster care here in the US...they are living on the streets in other countries...they are in orphanages all over the world.  Like I have said before, I do not believe everyone is called to adopt.  I do, however, believe we choose to turn a blind eye to the things of this world that we determine to be "too sad" or to things we have decided we can't make a difference in anyway.  That isn't a kingdom mentality folks...that is a worldly mentality. 

Proverbs 24 (The MSG)

^11-12 Rescue the perishing;
don’t hesitate to step in and help.
If you say, “Hey, that’s none of my business,”
will that get you off the hook?
Someone is watching you closely, you know—
Someone not impressed with weak excuses.
 

Maybe we don't all have a burden for the orphan crisis...okay, then what is our burden for?  We should have a burden for the lost and broken of this world.  The goal, we know, is for people to gain salvation through Jesus.  We sing songs of worship, but do we listen to the words?  We know death and life are in the power of the tongue, so when we sing things like "Heal my heart and make it clean, open up my eyes to the things unseen, show me how to love like You have loved me...Break my heart for what breaks Yours, everything I am for Your kingdom's cause" are we not actually speaking to our Father in Heaven and declaring things to our own spirit or are we just hoping our words don't make it beyond the ceiling so that God won't actually perform a work in us in line with the words our lips have been singing.  I wish the world was perfect and beautiful always, but that isn't reality.  Maybe the burden is one to go to the throne and pray for whatever it is you feel burning in you heart, if so then pray!  We should want to see things the way God sees them and we should want our life to have an impact for the kingdom.  It is so easy for me to get caught up in the things of this world, because I see through a glass dimly.  By nature, I am selfish, greedy, jealous, sinful, and complacent.  I make mistakes and I am so terribly imperfect.  BUT...Jesus loves me, this I know.  Find a way to show that love to this world.  Pray for the lost, give time or resources to someone in need (or maybe just to bless someone whether they need it or not), and walk in faith (real, mountain-moving, giant-slaying faith!!).  Anytime we stop focusing on ourselves and start focusing on others, looking for ways to make a positive impact on this world for Christ, our lives transform into something wonderful. 

 

 

Galations 5:13-14 (The MSG)



It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom.

My girl!

Her name means "God has answered" and boy did He!  Elliana came into this world on Monday, January 23, 2012 and changed our lives immediately for the better.  She is a perfect blessing.  God used a very painful season of miscarriage and years of longing for a child to bring us to a point of submission and acceptance.  An acceptance that His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts (thankfully! because His ways and His thoughts are PERFECT and ours...well, ours have good intentions).  He knew all along that Elli was our daughter and I am so thankful for the wonderful gift of adoption and for her birth mother who performed such a selfless act of love to give this precious girl the life God had set out for her from the beginning. 

 

 

Now that you have seen how incredibly precious my girl is I totally understand if you want to go adopt babies and to that I say...DO IT!  :) 

 

Do I think every single person is called to adopt, of course not...but guys...He is calling His people and just maybe He is calling you...And, for the record, it is a ginormous blessing!  If you have any questions about our adoption or just about adoption in general (I only know our experience with domestic adoption, but I am always more than happy to talk about it) then please ask!

Walking on water...

By this point, I'm sure everyone who reads this has heard the song "Oceans." 

And I will call upon Your name
And keep my eyes above the waves
When oceans rise my soul will rest in Your embrace
For I am Yours and You are mine

Let me preface this, and my entire life, by saying that I am indeed an incredibly unworthy person, the most unworthy, to receive the gift of salvation.  I will also take this opportunity to clarify something while we are talking about salvation.  I believe in the God of the Bible.  The God who created everything.  I believe in Jesus Christ.  I believe that Jesus is the son of God, fully God and born into this world to die as a man on the cross and pay the price for my sin that I could never be equipped to pay for myself.  I believe Jesus rose from the dead and is Heaven preparing a place for me, even me...I also believe that God sent the Holy Spirit so that we could have the very presence of God with us always.  I believe that faith in Jesus is the only way to Heaven and I am thankful that He is perfect in my place because He knew I could never be perfect on my own.  Okay, now we can move on :) 

We all know the story of Jesus walking on water, but just in case here is the meat of it.

Matthew 14

²⁵ Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. ²⁶ When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear.

²⁷ But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”

²⁸ “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”

²⁹ “Come,” he said.
Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. ³⁰ But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”

³¹ Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”


I may be the only one, but I have usually looked at this verse with the "when you are in trouble, look to God or you will sink" viewpoint and, obviously, clinging to God during the trials of this life is exactly what you should do.  The last time I thought of this, though, I thought about it in a slightly different way.  Pastor Keith (our pastor, who by the way is super great and who you might hear me refer to in the future as PK) talks about seeing everything in our life filtered through the Word of God, seeing things with an eternal viewpoint.  Maybe we need to go ahead and move past the "woe is me" stage of our walk and get on with it....get on with being refined by the fires of this life and not consumed by them.  Being made into something wonderful, something more Christ-like.  I don't know about you, but I don't want to go through my life just bouncing from struggle to struggle...praying to just keep my head above the waves.  When He calls me out on the water I want to RUN to Him! Run to the One who has saved my soul and the One who can make my life worth something.  Maybe the waves we are trying not to sink into are just the things of this world that want to keep us bogged down and distracted.  Money, having the best of everything and most of everything, how we look to other people, etc...maybe those are the waves we need to be walking on and not sinking into.  Maybe it is "you of little faith, why did you doubt that I was enough to sustain you."  We need to be living a life of purpose, not existance.  And perhaps if our eyes are fixed on Jesus there would be no storm in the first place sometimes.  Now, let me toss in here that I believe God blesses His people and that there is absolutely nothing wrong with having nice things or having money.  But...how do we live our lives...how are we trying to show Jesus to a sad and dark world...Do we give when God tells us to give of our time, our money, our talents...(do we even hear Him when He tells us these kinds of things).  This is probably just for me y'all and I'm okay with that. :) 


I will call upon Your name, Jesus, because it is Your name that heals the sick, raises the dead, makes the demons flee, and saves the lost. 
And with Your help I will keep my eyes above the waves of this world and focused on the things that matter to You.
When oceans rise my soul will run to Your embrace as it is in You that I find rest when I am weary, where I am safe from all attacks of the enemy, and where I am renewed to live a life worthy of my calling.
For I am Yours and You are mine. 

Hey, Y'all!

Welcome to our life behind the pines!  A couple of basics to get us started.  I am Abigail and I have been married to Jeremy for 10 years (seriously, I'm old enough to have been married for 10 years?!?!...yep, it's true).  We have the most amazing little girl (I will no doubt devote an entire post to her cuteness soon) and I will also touch on the blessing of adoption that brought her to us. 

Let me say, just for the record, that this blog is going to be my place to keep up with some of the major "goings on" in our life and also to share some things that are on my heart and that are dear to me.  What that basically means is that if seeing pictures of my uber-cute kid and possibly hearing a lot about adoption aren't your cup of tea then you may get tired of me rather quickly.  :) 

Now that we have gotten to know each other, I hope you will come back and visit!

Side note....I may fail at doing the whole blog thing and when I say fail I mean "insert whistling sound here" followed by "insert crashing sound here" kind of fail...Crash.And.Burn...