New Braunfels Bible Church Women's Ministry

Do you know that hospitality is a command for all believers, as well as a gift given to some? Either way, we should be welcoming others into our homes with some regularity.

Some are good at this. It is most likely one of their spiritual gifts. Others of us manage, but with mixed feelings toward Martha Stewart. And still others find the whole idea overwhelming.

Here are some encouraging thoughts:

Sharing your home is one of the best ways to get to know others and to begin a friendship.

Hospitality is not about impressing others, but about receiving them with kindness and generosity.

There are simple forms of hospitality such as inviting a friend for tea and cookies, a mom and her child for a play time, or a couple for brunch.

Extending the invitation to someone is a great inspiration to tidy up. Don’t think of this as hypocritical but as preparing a place for your guests. All our preparations should be with the idea of showing our guests that they are special. None of us...

God’s Word warns us strongly about the troubles our tongues can cause. James chapter 2 tells us that our tongues, though small, can kindle a great forest fire. I’m not sure that my words have ever caused a huge conflagration, but I have certainly wanted to call some of them back. As the poet Carl Sandburg wrote, “When you let proud words go, it is not easy to call them back. They wear long boots, hard boots; they can’t hear you calling—Look out how you use proud words.”

Proud words, lies, slander, angry and malicious words, gossip, filthy words…all can muck up our lives, our relationships, and our testimony as believers.

Our words reveal our hearts, and our hearts are of primary concern to God. He knows that when our hearts are full of wrong thoughts, wrong words and acts will soon follow suit. If we are struggling with our words, what is in our hearts that needs fixing? As God’s children, we must put off anger, rage, malice, and filthy language. We can then put on compassion, kindness, humility,...

Do you have tea time at your house? If not, I’d like to encourage you to try it. Our family is over-the-top crazy about coffee. One son-in-law is a barista and has roasted commercially. My husband roasts coffee beans which he buys green on-line. Yet tea has also had a special role.

A teapot and teacup are symbols of comfort and cozy conversation. The Brits in particular tend to reach for the tea kettle whenever trouble strikes. I took my cue from them, and when our daughter had a disappointment or a trauma, I put the kettle on. We also had a tradition of sharing a pot, as we shared our days, when she got home from school. A thermos of tea once accompanied us to the ER.

Little girls love tea parties, even with only their dollies or teddy bears as guests. Our daughters and granddaughters started with plastic tea sets, and enjoyed graduating to china. If a brother is interested in joining the party, just give him a cup or mug that doesn’t require him to extend his pinky finger.

Inviting a friend...

There are some memories in a family history that are so painful that you will make every effort to not go there again.  The shish kabob fiasco was one such episode for me.  I have the lessons that needed learning printed indelibly on my brain.  Fortunately, it wasn’t tragic, just embarrassing. 

About 15 years ago, we invited our pastor and his wife and our doctor and his wife to dinner.  I had a chicken pasta dish, previously well received, in mind.  A couple days before the dinner, I was talking with the doctor’s wife and asked  about food restrictions.  She told me that her husband was lactose intolerant, no dairy, allergic to basil, didn’t like pasta, and didn’t eat sugar.  Oops, so much for my menu!

I called another friend, and she suggested shish kabob.  We had skewers, so I thought “Okay, shish kabob.  Chicken?  Beef?  Shrimp?  Why not all three?  And rice pilaf, a salad, zucchini bread and grapes for dessert.”  We’d never done shish kabob, but when the day arrived I threw myself into multiple...

How do you feel about leftovers?  My husband and I love them, our daughters not so much.  We love being able to easily put together a tasty meal with little mess in the kitchen.

Part of managing a household well is using that which is leftover.  People in primitive cultures and those struggling with poverty are most often quite good at this, as a matter of necessity.  Unfortunately prosperity often breeds wastefulness.  Our country has been guilty of this.  Some people have taken up dumpster diving, not out of need, but to underscore this point.  Yuck!  Perhaps our struggling economy will result in better management of what we have. 

As believers, we are called to be responsible stewards.  We can use leftovers or remnants creatively to produce some good things.  Extra turkey can make a yummy soup or casserole; scraps of fabric, including some from favorite old clothes, can become a beautiful quilt; partial skeins of yarn can be knit into a well-loved striped scarf; bits of trim can dress up a doll...

One important courtesy that is often neglected these days is the writing of thank you notes.  This is too bad.  A well written thank you is a blessing to receive.  If you have taken much time and trouble with a gift, receiving warm thanks makes you glad that you did. 

I have a sister who feels thank you notes are so important that only nieces and nephews who write them continue to receive gifts, usually well-chosen books for their children.  Our daughters know this and manage to get their thank you’s off to her promptly.  I hope this is not just because they want to keep receiving those delightful books, but because they know it is important to her.  They aren’t always quite so good about notes to us.  Our younger daughter has been known to write a note, but then squirrel it away in her purse for quite some time.  Life is very full for her and her sister.  For many of us.

Thus, if we struggle with this matter, we need to be more intentional about it.  We should plan ahead.  Choose note cards that...

This blog is called “Good Things”, and today it is about one of the best things: thanking the Lord.

“It is a good thing to give thanks to the Lord.”  Psalm 92:1

We should thank the Lord every day, all day, but the day our nation set aside for thanking Him is just around the corner.  In the process of writing this, I googled the history of Thanksgiving in this land.  I found it extremely interesting and somewhat checkered.  

Here are two tidbits of interest to Texans:

1) Texas is one of four states claiming the first feast of thanksgiving and praise.  In 1541 Francisco Vasquez de Coronado held a feast with the Teya Indians in the Palo Dura canyon near Amarillo.  This predates the Plymouth feast of 1621, but it was not at a permanent European settlement. 

2) In 1939, following a stressful decade, American retailers asked FDR to move Thanksgiving back a week (from the last Thursday in November) to provide more shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  President Roosevelt...

Mary Poppins gave us this bit of wisdom.  The following quote from Miss Piggy seems to contradict it, but actually both are true: “Too much is never enough.” 

Any time we have enough we should consider ourselves blessed as if by a feast, and we should thank the Lord.  As Americans we often slip into the realm of “too much,” and this is not a good place to be.  It is never satisfying.  Thus Miss Piggy is right, too.

Have you ever not asked yourself after overindulging, “Why didn’t I stop?”  This can apply to more than eating.  We can get carried away with the number of items on the Thanksgiving menu or the number of gifts we put under the Christmas tree for our children.  The holidays seem to have this effect on us.  The result is not good.  Troubling words like overspending, fatigue, stress, unrealistic expectations, grumbling and discontent come to mind.  It’s not a pretty list, definitely not what we want as we welcome family and friends into our home. 

In Luke 10, Martha is trying to...

If you are involved in a church, a small group or a Bible study, you never know when the Lord may put it on someone’s heart to pray for you.  Most likely it will be at a time when you really need it.

Yvette, a young mom, was struggling with postpartum depression.  She would only rouse herself to change and feed her baby.  The laundry and dishes were piling up, but she could not face them.  She had been involved in a large Bible study before her baby came.

One day the assistant director of this study whose name was JoAnn was ironing.  She asked the Lord, “Who needs some prayer?”  Yvette popped before her eyes.  She didn’t really know her, but she knew her Lord did, so as she ironed she held this young mom up before the Lord.  Later she was moved to call her.  The young mom was so blessed and encouraged.  She shared that at the time JoAnn started praying for her, she found the energy to get up and start dealing with the laundry.

The young mom above was pediatrician.  She had things together...

Being like-minded is a biblical goal that can make a big difference in our relationships.  Romans 15:5-6 says, “Now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like-minded toward one another, according to Christ Jesus, that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

My husband and I lacked this concept early in our marriage.  I remember one appalling occasion when we invited a single gal to dinner.  Somehow we wound up at odds, more or less competing with each other for her attention.  There was no unity.  After she left, I could only ask, “What must she have thought of us?”

Perhaps that evening was in the back of our minds when we found the above verses and embraced them as what we wanted for our marriage.  We then had the goal of together seeking the best solution, the best way, the best timing for all our decisions.  Of course, by then I’d also begun to grasp that my husband was to be the head of our marriage.  Hmm.

The Greek words...

There was once a young mom who was feeling very overwhelmed.  She had some serious health issues, including an auto-immune disease which caused fatigue and muscle weaknesses.  She had two little girls and a very helpful husband.  However her husband was in the Navy reserves, and he was doing his two week annual stint of active duty.  He’d been gone about ten days.  She was very tired.  The house was in need of cleaning.  The laundry was piling up.  So were the dishes.

She stood at the kitchen sink wishing she had a helpful Christian mom nearby.  Then she was moved to pray, “But Father, if You think I need help, You can send it.”  Not five minutes later the doorbell rang.  There was a friend from church who, with her husband, hosted their small group.  She said, “I’ve come to clean your house.

The young mom was a little embarrassed, but also very overwhelmed.  There was, in clear sight, a pile of leaves under a Boston fern that begged vacuuming, so she could not protest. 

The cleaning was quick and light, but so very significant.  Yes, I was that young mom a long time ago.  I decided that a much greater blessing than a Christian mom nearby is a heavenly Father who sees, hears, and sends help.

Tip:    There are many good reasons for being in a small group.  In the above case, it facilitated the Lord sending help, but it was also easier to receive help from a friend.  Find a group.

    “Before a word is on my tongue, You know it completely, O Lord.  You hem me in behind and before.  You have laid Your hand on me.  Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.”  Psalm 139:4-5

Did you sing “Jesus Loves Me” as a child?  It is a great thing for a child to know this truth.  But for me, an even more precious truth is that He knows me, yet still loves me.  I saw the words “Jesus Knows Me, This I Love” on a plaque in a catalog, and decided I had to order it.   

A favorite verse is Romans 5:8: “But God demonstrates His own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  As moms we know that though a baby seems so very innocent, this stage is very brief.  Even so, it seems more comprehensible to me that Jesus would love the little children.  But that He knows me through and through, all my sins–past, present and future–and still loved me enough to die for me on the cross, is too huge to take in.  (Tenses get a little tricky here.  Before the foundation of the world, Jesus knew that He would die for me.  Is that not awesome?)

Some of us had a long list of sins for Jesus to bear on the cross.  I did.  And though I have been walking with the Lord for many...