Patch Quilt Problems

Dear Chocolate Chips of Bliss, If you’ve ever been in a fabric store or to a craft fair you’ll be able to testify that there are usually ornate quilts on display! Quilts with patterns and themes to gorgeous rainbow quilts that are so beautiful that they reinvent the rainbow! I am not one of those people who can crank out a quilt in 3 days. Crud, I can’t crank out a scarf in 3 days! I’m more of a “Liquid Stitch” kind of woman. Have you ever heard of that stuff? It’s awesome! My mom got me started on it. I have used it for hemming plenty of times! And, it works a lot better than duct tape…I know from experience. As an eager kid in home economics I attempted to make a pillow. I was able to get the outline of the pattern done but as I was doing it I realized that I was way out of my element. As I started, it looked great. However, the more I continued, I saw that I was just making a big knotty mess on the back side of the lovely front. Well, lovely for a 7th grader anyway. It makes me think of how sometimes I may “look” like I’ve got it all together on the outside, but the reality of life at times is a little bleaker than I’d like to admit. Can anybody relate? I was thinking the other day about how sometimes our problems add up in such a hurry. I mean, it’s easy to conceal one problem from everyone, even our closest friends, but to try to manage so many at one time-all the time, is impossible. So as women we take on too much of our own patch quilt problems and the quilted problems that we have- become so overwhelming that we want to hide under our self made blanket so that no one can identify who we are out of embarrassment! Here’s the question: are we going to allow our patch quilted problems rule us or are we going to rule them? I hope that your answer was that you want to rule over your problems. If that is indeed what you picked, how can you do it? Be patient with me and allow me to go on just a little bit more and then I’ll show you. A few days ago I was in a conflict with myself. My heart wanted something, my head wanted something else, my flesh was pulling me in a different direction, and my Spirit was being drowned out by all of the surrounding noise!! It was so frustrating! But then the Lord did something awesome for me! He reminded me of a verse that says that you and I should be in this world but not of it. So the Holy Spirit revealed to me that if you and I are not of “this world” then why do we allow our patch quilt problems to become our problems in the first place? As I tell my son, “it’s just a whole lot a hooey”. (Here’s the answer to “how can you rule over your problems?”). So my next prayer was “Lord, I need you to match my flesh with my mind, with my heart and make each of those parts of me submit to your Spirit within me. When I prayed it, every part of me was in total peace. Girls, the Spirit that God has- is the very Spirit that he has given to you and I! The Bible says in Zechariah 4:6,7 “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord Almighty. Nothing, not even a mighty mountain, will stand in Zerubabbel‘s way; it will flatten out before him! Then Zerubabbel will set the final stone of the Temple in place, and the people will shout: May God bless it! May God bless it!”. Here’s a little history. Zerubabbel was a Christian construction worker with Joshua, (the high priest), and he was building the altar and they laid the foundation of the Temple. Now here’s where their patch quilt of problems started to grow. The Bible says in Ezra 3 that these men were met with great opposition and they had to stop building the wall until it was safe again. Well, God made him Governor and with his new authority, he began again to build again. See, what Zerubabbel thought of as a road block to get the job done was actually a promotion in waiting! So, let’s give Jesus our patch quilted problems and let’s tell our bodies to submit to the Holy Spirit in us and as a result see what kind of mountains He will flatten out. Love you all, Dede