Years ago, before a dear woman became my mother in law, she gave me a leather bound copy of My Utmost For His Highest. Little did I know at that time, how God would use this book to teach me and minister to my heart and faith. In fact, I remember reading and having very little understanding of what the man, Oswald Chambers, was talking about. But in the last several years, God has used it so much that it is a set part of my time with Him and though the book doesn't change from year to year, I seem to receive new inspiration almost every time I read it, praise God! He continually aligns a particular day's subject matter with something directly affecting my life at the moment. It is awesome. I have even connected on deeper levels with friends over them.
So, when I post them here, it is by NO MEANS to preach. It is just because it hit me and I want to be reminded by what it said the next time I pull up the blog. If you are touched by it, hurray! If not, maybe you didn't need that one right now, like I did! :) I love the last line of this one, He is so calling me to intercession right now, it is an awesome thing! Thank You, Lord!
Our God is so great~Adrian (and p.s. THANKS, MomMom!)

The Distraction of Contempt
Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us! For we are exceedingly filled with contempt —Psalm 123:3
What we must beware of is not damage to our belief in God but damage to our Christian disposition or state of mind. "Take heed to your spirit, that you do not deal treacherously" ( Malachi 2:16 ). Our state of mind is powerful in its effects. It can be the enemy that penetrates right into our soul and distracts our mind from God. There are certain attitudes we should never dare to indulge. If we do, we will find they have distracted us from faith in God. Until we get back into a quiet mood before Him, our faith is of no value, and our confidence in the flesh and in human ingenuity is what rules our lives.
Beware of "the cares of this world . . ." ( Mark 4:19 ). They are the very things that produce the wrong attitudes in our soul. It is incredible what enormous power there is in simple things to distract our attention away from God. Refuse to be swamped by "the cares of this world."
Another thing that distracts us is our passion for vindication. St. Augustine prayed, "O Lord, deliver me from this lust of always vindicating myself." Such a need for constant vindication destroys our soul’s faith in God. Don’t say, "I must explain myself," or, "I must get people to understand." Our Lord never explained anything— He left the misunderstandings or misconceptions of others to correct themselves.
When we discern that other people are not growing spiritually and allow that discernment to turn to criticism, we block our fellowship with God. God never gives us discernment so that we may criticize, but that we may intercede.

Shameless promoting...

If you scroll down, on the right is a list of the blogs of friends and fam that I visit. One of them is The Tattletale Gazette. It is done by a friend, Tess, who is a great photographer! She is starting a new site to showcase her skills for business. Here is the link; http://tesscormellphotography.blogspot.com/ (by the way, keep checking it, she has asked John to work on a design for her! :)
Well, she just posted pics, on the new Photography site, of my dear sister and her precious family!!! GO SEE THEM, they are beautiful! Some of you may remember, my sister fought cancer this last year, and is on her way up out of the pit cancer that cancer throws you into. She is quite a fighter and as you can see in the pics, as beautiful as ever!

AND, if you scroll through Tess's Tattletale Gazette site, where she has been posting her photos up until now, with great commentary for reading as well, you will find John's brother, Mike and his sweet family's portraits as well. They will be here with John's parents and the youngest bro, for Christmas this year! YAY!

So, there is some idle-time filler for you... gander at a few fun, beautiful pics of some of our precious fam! :)
As my friend Tracy says, "Make it a great day!"
XOXOXO

SO...

John had his birthday, yesterday, and we served him breakfast made with love. He got 'Happy B-Day' donuts at work. We tried to feed him one of his favs for dinner, but he had gotten to have BD cake at work also! Then, we took his fav bd cake made by us with LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to small group and packed every candle we had on the cake (oops! we aged him 10 years, accidentally put on 47! haha) and sang with our friends (and several other times throughout the day! a traditional McNamara rendition when he walked in the door after work and it made him MISS YOU ALL!) We gave him a nice blue-grey sweater and a tub of red licorice! :) All in all, I think he had a good 37th! WE LOVE YOU JOHN (Mac, Daddy!) XO

AND...

JACOB ANTHONY MCNAMARA MADE THE HONOR ROLL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*****Nate also continued to get very good grades and remained on the honor roll !!!!!!!!!!!!!! *******************************************************************************

CONGRATS JAMMER AND NATEY! WE ARE SOOOOO PROUD OF YOUUU!!! XOXOXO

WOO-HOOOO! CONGRATS AND NICE WORK ~ MCMEN! XOXO

*Jacob Anthony McNamara*

This time is an anniversary for us. Ten years ago this month, we stood before our church body with an amazing little red-headed baby boy in our arms and dedicated him to the Lord. We pledged to teach him about the Lord and our precious church family was a witness and also themselves pledged in any way that they had interaction with him to help us raise him in the love and admonition of the Lord.

So, when my Outlook reminder comes up, 'anniversary of dedicating Jacob', I try to think over the time that we have been blessed with him and ask the Lord, how we are doing with our promises????

Jacob has been an amazing gift. My sweet soveriegn God has used him in multitudes of ways, especially to grow me and change me. I learned with Jacob that God gives us children, not just for us to raise them up (because they pretty much just do this) but also to grow us up (which we, or should I say 'I', do not do on my own at all!).

When I think back on that time, standing before our church family, holding little Jacob, Cubbie, I called him when he was a baby, we were completely unaware of what was in store(both good and difficult) for us, as I suppose you are with all babies. What an awesome God we have!

And now, ten years later, wow.... words escape me. But, you know him and you love him, too. He is full of energy, he is funny, smart, sensitive and strong. He is brave and fearless, which I guess are the same thing, but it bears repeating with him! :) He is beautiful and I love being his mom!

What will the next ten years bring...? I believe God has great works saved for him! Wanna watch with me? It will be very exciting, I am sure of it!
Thank You, Lord, for the wondrous gift of Jacob!
*...pics to follow...*

My Utmost For His Highest

This one really struck me, so I thought I would put it here...

The Undetected Sacredness of Circumstances
We know that all things work together for good to those who love God . . . —Romans 8:28
The circumstances of a saint’s life are ordained of God. In the life of a saint there is no such thing as chance. God by His providence brings you into circumstances that you can’t understand at all, but the Spirit of God understands. God brings you to places, among people, and into certain conditions to accomplish a definite purpose through the intercession of the Spirit in you. Never put yourself in front of your circumstances and say, "I’m going to be my own providence here; I will watch this closely, or protect myself from that." All your circumstances are in the hand of God, and therefore you don’t ever have to think they are unnatural or unique. Your part in intercessory prayer is not to agonize over how to intercede, but to use the everyday circumstances and people God puts around you by His providence to bring them before His throne, and to allow the Spirit in you the opportunity to intercede for them. In this way God is going to touch the whole world with His saints.
Am I making the Holy Spirit’s work difficult by being vague and unsure, or by trying to do His work for Him? I must do the human side of intercession— utilizing the circumstances in which I find myself and the people who surround me. I must keep my conscious life as a sacred place for the Holy Spirit. Then as I lift different ones to God through prayer, the Holy Spirit intercedes for them.
Your intercessions can never be mine, and my intercessions can never be yours, ". . . but the Spirit Himself makes intercession" in each of our lives ( Romans 8:26 ). And without that intercession, the lives of others would be left in poverty and in ruin.

"I do all my own stunts"

And we couldn't pass up this photo opp, a shirt so fitting of Jacob, which was passed to us from a friend! :)

This is what happens when anyone in the vacinity of Daddy flexes in any way, shape, or form! Oh, yah?! Check this out! RRrrrrroar!


Nate and I have been getting some excersize and gaining a bit of muscle, proud of our work we do a little flex, hoping for a little 'Atta boy!', but instead we get the above....oh yah?! Check this out!


Evidently, we are having a bit of an obsession...

Check out these guns!