Monthly Archives: August 2019

The 3 P’s of the Alesa Doctrine

The 3 P’s of the Alesa Doctrine

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If you know our family you are probably familiar with our two younger children Amy and Chad, but you might not realize we have an older son Lee, who is 10 and 12 yrs older than his siblings. To say we have memories with our oldest son that we don’t have with our younger two and visa versa is an understatement. 

 

One particular fun memory we have is what my oldest son and his two best friends Joe and Ryan call the Three “P’s” of the Alesa Doctrine. You see Joe and Ryan practically lived at our house when they were 14, 15 and 16 yrs old,  so they were just part of our kids and because we treat everyone like family when they visited our house, they had to follow our rules. 

 

You see it was about 1998 when Pokemon came out. It was all the rage, especially to my 14 yr old son Lee, and his friends. Pokémon also known as Pocket Monsters in Japan, It was a Nintendo game, and eventually there was even Pokémon Trading Card Game and I don’t know what else but it seemed the world was taken over by the craze all except for me. 

 

It didn’t matter to me how cool it was to everyone else. I didn’t like it. I really can’t tell you why. All I knew was, there was just something wrong with it that made a check in my spirit. Others might call it our conscience or just a sixth sense but for me, I feel like it was God telling me not to allow my kids to play it. So I band it from my house, It was about the same time that I was on a health food craze and not allowing any processed foods in my house, I was making homemade everything, homemade baby food, I was canning food, and even feeding my family tofu (Okay, I tried but that didn’t go over very well) 

 

It was also about the time when Harry Potter came out. That set of books and then the movies, had way too much witchcraft in it for my taste and again I just felt in my spirit it wasn’t the influence I wanted my kids under.  

 

1 Corinthians 10:13 tells us that  Some of you say, “We can do whatever we want to!” But I tell you that not everything may be good or helpful. In other words God gives us a choice in everything in life, we have a free will, we are not like the angels or even the rocks that when God snaps His fingers, we must do what He says and obey Him. Nope! God gave man a choice and allowed us the freewill to pretty much do anything we want. But He warns us that just because we can, doesn’t mean we should. 

 

So Lee and his friends named my rules, the 4 P’s of the Alesa Doctrine. No Pokemon, No Potter, No Processed foods and No Pringles. Now of course the Pringles and Process foods are interchangeable and it really could be called the 3 P’s with the Pringles being dropped but our family and especially the boys like Pringles so much they felt it was worth adding in. It’s funny how teenage boys perceive things. The 4 P’s of the Alesa doctrine became quite the joke at our house. But although they teased me about being so strict they never defied me and did it. (Okay maybe a little bit on the processed foods, but Potter and Pokemon was out) 

 

Now don’t get me wrong if any of these things are something that you allowed your kids to participate in or you participated in yourself. That is totally okay with me. No judgement here. But I am just saying as for me and my house, I felt like it wasn’t right for us. 

 

You know, there is a lot of questions like that, can go unanswered in the bible. I mean no where in the bible does it say “Thou Shalt Not Read Harry Potter”. That is why we need the power of the Holy Spirit to guide us in situations like this. We find out about the Holy Spirit in the second chapter of Acts. He is who Jesus sent after He left the disciples here on earth to guide and direct them. Some people call it our conscience but I think God takes it to a whole new level, if you follow Christ and what His word says. 

 

In life we will come across decisions everyday that we don’t know what to do and If we search the bible for it, we either don’t know where to find it in the bible or it just isn’t black and white with a “Thou shalt not” tagged to it. 

 

When times like that arise in our life, let me encourage you to do 3 things. First pray about it and ask God to show you what to do. Second look in the bible for someone who may have dealt with a similar experience and Thirdly, Ask someone further along in their faith walk than you. 

 

Don’t ever think that God doesn’t care about every part of your life. He does and He wants to be included in everything we do. The guidelines He has set before us in the bible and how the Holy Spirit guides us is because He loves us and wants the very best for our lives. He cares so much for us. Yes, everything may be permissible, but we need to ask ourselves if everything we do is beneficial to our lives and pleases God when we do them. We need to ask ourselves, would Jesus do this?

So this week as you go about your days, why not ask Him to show you what you should do and ask Him if there is anything in your life, that isn’t pleasing to Him to reveal that to you and then be willing to follow what He shows you to do. Don’t forget to follow the 3 steps I mentioned earlier, if you don’t know what to do in any part of your life, God wants to help you through it. Alesa Lewis Miller is the Pastor’s wife of Lighthouse Worship Center, Greensburg Kansas, Mom, Mimi, Speaker, & Columnist. Find more of her stories at www.behindtheparsonagewalls.com

Mimi and Poppy Camp

Mimi and Poppy Camp

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This past week was Mimi and Poppy camp at our house,  which means it is a week my husband and I get all of our grandchildren (which I affectionately call grands) to ourselves. Jeff and I picked our 3 grands up, on Sunday, at the halfway point between where they live and we live because they live 5 hours away from us. 

 

As our son and his wife dropped them off, I could tell he was nervous and as usual began giving us all the directions of what the kids needed and what not to do with them or let them do. Which the whole point of Mimi and Poppy camp is they don’t have to have any rules, because it’s for spoiling!  

 

For a minute I thought to myself “Doesn’t he know I raised 3 children already,  I got this!” but I let him continue to ramble and share his concerns after all they are his children. But the truth is they are our grands and I am pretty sure, if there was a gage to measure the love we both have for these kids, it would be a very close tie, and maybe even Poppy and Mimi’s gage would surpass mom and dad’s. 

 

The best part for me of the whole conversation was as my son hugged me goodbye, he told me. “But seriously mom they have been so excited about this, I think they about wet their pants” 

 

This is not the first time we have had Mimi and Poppy Camp. But probably the first one our youngest grandchild who is 3 years old can remember. My daughter in law texted me earlier this week and told me, they couldn’t find him around the house for a few minutes and when they went searching for him. They finally found him in his closet packing a suitcase because he said he wanted to get ready to go to Mimi and Poppy’s house for camp. 

 

All this got me thinking… are we as excited to spend time with our Heavenly Father? Do we look forward to reading His word. Do we make it a priority everyday to talk to Him in prayer and then listen to what He has to say? Do we get so excited we about pee our pants thinking of getting to go to church and worshiping Him with other believers? 

 

You may be asking yourself, what exactly is Mimi and Poppy Camp. Well, I am sure it is different for every grandparent but at our house. We spend 3 days of doing nothing but what the grands want to do. We eat nothing but what the grands want to eat. We have even been known to allow them to eat ice cream for breakfast and breakfast for supper just to switch it up. 

 

We do arts and crafts, go swimming, go fishing,the grands get to drive the golf cart around town. We do a lot of just hanging out and watching movies, while we pile up snuggling on the couch and eating popcorn. 

 

But probably the thing our house is most famous for, is our indoor water gun fights. That’s right I said indoor water gun fights! Now don’t get me wrong. We are not using super-soakers in the house. We have those little handheld water guns that our grands love to fill up and as we run all over the house the giggles and laughter erupt. Just who doesn’t have fun when a pair of water guns come out? (okay maybe 6 or 7 guns)  

 

But after talking to my grands this week, I have found the thing the like best about coming to Mimi and Poppy camp is they can just hang out and not have to go anywhere or do anything if they don’t want to. 

 

You see 6 years ago our lives were changed when our son married this wonderful young lady who had 2 little girls. We weren’t exactly ready to be grandparents, but since that day when our life changed, we have totally embraced those kids as ours. The thing is, their dad is still in the picture and every other day they get to hang out with him and his new family. Then their parents trade out every other weekend. So needless to say the girls are on the road a lot. They have a lot to deal with from school to changing houses every other day. 

 

So for them, just hanging out and not having somewhere they have to be is their favorite thing to do and it just so happens that Mimi likes that too. So there are some days we just sit around each reading or listening to something, all doing our own thing but still in the same room, just hanging out together being quite. 

 

That made me wonder, how much do we like just hanging out with our Heavenly Father. I am always with my grands during camp but we may not be interacting with each other. As I said, sometimes the one kids may be playing a game, another watching cartoon while the other is sitting at the table drawing a picture, and I may be typing on my computer writing a story for the newspaper. We are all in the same room all doing our own thing, but at the same time I may pause a moment and ask them a question or tell them a story about something, I might even give them advice. We are together but separate. 

 

You know the bible says to “Rejoice always,  pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 1 Thess 5:16-18 

 

That line there about praying without ceasing could be kind of confusing if you didn’t think about it, with the image of me and my grands in the same room. I am always aware they are there, as they are aware that I am with them as well. We are in constant communication when we are together because I can hear their sighs, I can see their body language, I pay attention to their facial expressions. They just know Mimi is here, and when they call you can bet I answer. Just like God who is always with us and is always watching over us taking care of us. 

 

There is something else we do at Mimi and Poppy Camp. We have nightly devotions with object lessons and games to reinforce the scripture that we are talking about. Last night was 1 Cor  10:13 that talks about there is no temptation that is given to man that God won’t provide a way out. To illustrate this verse we sat each child, one at a time in from of my curtains that has hundreds of blocks in the pattern on them. They then had to sit there and start counting the blocks. At the same time Poppy had a prize on the end of a fishing pole that he dropped in front of their face distracting them and tempting them. They would lose count of the blocks when they saw the prize and had to start all over again. 

 

We talked to them about,  that is how it is in life, satan will distract us with something that we want or think is good, just to get us to not follow God’s plan for our life. We warned the kids that even if that happens, as soon as they realized they messed up they can just start over again. Just like that started counting again. 

 

I don’t know what is distracting you, or what has taken your focus away from what God has for you, but I am here to tell you, you can start again. Because God is there, He has never left you. You can call on Him anytime and He is there, like I am with my grands, He is just waiting to help you. So just start over again with what you know to do. Read your bible, pray, attend church and I promise you, that is your way out of whatever has taken your focus away from the God that loves you even more than I love my grands. 

 

 

Trading Ashes for Beauty (the wedding story)

Trading Ashes for Beauty (the wedding story)

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This week our church has the pleasure of hosting our first free wedding. It is a new ministry the church is offering in an effort to show our commitment to family values and the institution of marriage. With so many people living together for years before they get married, and often having multiple children before they even consider having a wedding. Our church wants to change that. Those couples often say it is because weddings are so expensive, that they wait to get married. 

 

So Lighthouse Worship Center is out to make weddings a reality for those interested. We offer to reimburse the couple for their marriage license. We provide a venue for up to 50 guests,  cake, punch and mint reception, officiant and coordinator for the day, decorations, and a few other things to complete this wedding. The only thing the couple has to do is complete 10 weeks of pre-marital counseling. 

 

This weekend as I was putting the finishing decorative touches on the tables, the morning of the wedding. The father of the bride was watching me and made the statement “It is amazing how such a little thing can make such a huge difference” He was referring to the honeysuckle vines I had trimmed from my yard that morning and placed around the candles on the table. My response to his comment was “and to think this is really just trash to me” See these vines under any other circumstance would of been tossed in the trash, but I had specifically allowed these vines to become overgrown so I would have them for this very day. What should of been cut back weeks ago, I held off because I knew this day was coming. Bruce was right those little vines made a huge difference on the tables. 

 

That conversation got me thinking. I wonder what else may seem to be a small thing but makes a huge difference? I am willing to bet most of my neighbors and friends didn’t even realize that the bushes in my front yard were a little overgrown and what a huge impact they would have in another scenario, when cut out of my yard. No one really noticed except the designer of the wedding decor. She had a plan and it wasn’t just a, thrown together at the last minute plan, it was a plan she had been working on in her head for months. She had drawn out a design on paper of the best way to set up the tables and chairs in the room, She had measured the tables and the space to assure the right amount of people could be seated in the space. She had searched endlessly for just the right decor at the best prices for this event to come together. That is a lot like our Heavenly Father nothing comes as a shock to Him. He has a plan and He sees into the future, Shoot! He wrote the future! The bible tells us that He is working all things together for our good (Romans 8:28)

 

But I am gonna be truthful with you, I know sometimes in life, it doesn’t feel that way. Sometimes if feels like our world is crashing down around us. It feels like we are never gonna get out of that hole we are in. Sometimes we just feel like trash that has been thrown away. But the ending of that verse says “ to them that love God and are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28) See the truth is, we all have a calling on our lives. We all have a reason to live because God has a plan for us. You may be wondering but “Who takes trash and turns it into beauty?” Well, I am here to tell you God does! Just like those vines that would of been thrown away under any other circumstance because they had grown wild and out of control. The designer of that wedding, saw a greater purpose and she used them for good. 

 

You may think there is no hope for you, you may think you have grown so wild and out of control that good will ever come out of you. Whether it is your lifestyle choices, your eating habits or just what comes out of your mouth. I am here to tell you if you will confess your love for God, He has a plan for you and just as Jeremiah 29:11 says that plan is  “for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” 

 

God is the great designer of our lives, and He takes what others deem to be trash and turns it into treasure everyday.  But, He is also a gentleman who will respect your right to choose to be left alone and if you say “Hey, God I got this!” He will step back and say “Okay it is all yours” and allow you to live the life you want without any interference from Him. The choice is always ours. 

 

Do you know someone today that may feel like they have been thrown away? Do you know someone who feels like their life is out of control and has just grown wild? If you do, you need to reassure them that if they will confess their love for God and decide to follow His plan, He is the one that turns trash into treasure. It doesn’t matter how other people see you, it only matters what God sees in you and the bible says He knew you before you were even born and He has a plan for you! (Jeremiah 5:1)

 

So whatever you are going through, whatever may seem to be out of control in your life. Trust that there is a great designer that has a plan for you, if you will only call on Him. He will be right there to help you. So, don’t be discouraged and don’t worry about what others say because the only one that matters is the one that created this universe and when He formed you He had a plan for you! Just trust in that plan today and give God a chance to trade your ashes for beauty (Isaiah 61)