The Gospel is Everything.

We just got back from an incredible cruise with my entire family and it couldn't have been any more fun.  I want to write a whole post about it and share pictures soon. I loved getting to spend that much time with my wonderful family.  I am so thankful to the Lord.  He has richly blessed me.  Christmas is only days away and all I can think about is the Gospel.  The reality of the Gospel has sunken into my heart so heavily just within the last 48 hours.  The reality that God became flesh and came to this wicked world and died to save rebellious sinners like myself just makes me cry.  God you are so unfathomable and your love is so deep that we can't even comprehend it.  I think about who I used to be.  I was so lost, so blind, so captive and He intervened with His great power and marvelous grace to save me.  Everything truly is about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Christmas is about the Gospel.  The Holy Bible is all about the Gospel.  Our short lives are to be about and consumed with the Gospel.  The Gospel needs to be proclaimed to every man, woman, and child of every nation.  The Gospel is glorious and the only thing that will bring you true and lasting joy!!!  The Gospel will give you joy that far surpasses any trinket or toy you could ever have in this world.  It will fulfill every longing in your heart and give you overwhelming peace. 

Beloved, let us run to the cross on this Christmas.  Look past the manger and to the babe that would become a man that would hang on a cross for you and me.  A man that would utter the most glorious words in His last few breaths, "It is finished."  He said those words and He meant them.  He swallowed and bore all the wrath of God in our place.  He calmed the raging seas of God's wrath towards our sin.  He brought peace between us and God the Father.  He reconciled man to God.  He did it.  We can only boast in Jesus Christ and Him alone.  What a glorious feeling that is!  There is nothing else I need for Christmas.  I have already been given the greatest gift known to man, the gift of the Gospel.  It truly is everything Beloved and will always be everything for all eternity. 

Confessions & Christmas

19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! 24“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.  Matthew 6:19-24.

I have some things weighing heavily upon my heart today.  My daughter is very sick but I know that she is safe and sound in the arms of my Savior.  He takes care of His children's children.  That isn't necessarily what is weighing upon my heart, although, my heart grieves when she's sick and I want nothing more than to take away her sickness.

I am weighed down by my own sin.  The Holy Spirit so tenderly revealed my sin in a very clear way through this passage of scripture I was reading yesterday.  I felt cut to heart by the conviction but then a sense of joy and relief washed over me because He also reminded me that if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us of all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).  You see Beloved, I have been caught tight into the reigns of materialism.  I've sat too long staring at all that the world has to offer and what others have that I have lost sight of what's important.

It is so easy to do this and find yourself entrenched in it before you even realize what your doing.  The enemy is crafty and he wants nothing more than to take your eyes off of the glories and riches of Christ and onto the lies and temporal fleeting pleasures of this world.  Michael and I don't have a lot of money but we are rich according to the Bible, we have food, clothing, and shelter and that is more than most of the world has.  I found out that you don't have to be rich to become materialistic.  It starts with the eye, then moves to the heart, and soon sin breads more sin and there you have it.  Society does such a wonderful job at shoving "stuff" and more "stuff" before our faces every day, especially around the Christmas season.  Satan has taken Christmas, which is suppose to be about the first advent of our Lord and perverted it into this shopping, present, Santa Clause fiasco that might throw in a Silent Night at the end to make you feel better about all the idolatry.  I am NOT saying that these things are bad in and of themselves, I actually happen to love most of the Christmas traditions!  

However, I am guilty of just simply getting caught up in all the glitter and glam of the season and before even realizing it, I've lost sight of what should be exalted most during Christmas, and that is Jesus Christ.  I am amazed at the Lord's faithfulness because He will always bring His children back to Himself when they wander off into various sins.  He is such a merciful God and He longs for His children to come up higher from the world and to lay aside every sin that clings so closely so that we can run the race with endurance, looking unto Jesus the Author and finisher of our faith (taken from Hebrews 1:1-2.)  We are free to pursue Kingdom realities when we aren't rolling around in the muck of the world.  We can put our focus on things that the Lord's heart is about like, the body of Christ, orphans, widows, and most of all making the Gospel known across the world.  

Beloved, pray for me, pray that by the help of the Holy Spirit and through the power of God's word, I would be able to put to death this sin in my life.  It has already brought so much death in my heart by choking out the eternal promises of the Word and replacing them with temporal vain pursuits.  Thank you for your prayers, I need all the help I can get on this pilgrimage.  I am so thankful we serve such a loving and merciful God who disciplines His children like a loving father would.  We have much to be thankful for Beloved and we have much much to look forward to in Glory when sin will be done away with and there will be nothing keeping us from loving our Lord Jesus in the way in which He deserves.  All Praise and Glory to His Precious Name!!! Enjoy this Christmas season with your families, relish in the Gospel of Christ, sing hymns and praises to our King, celebrate with your favorite Christmas traditions, but most of all keep Him the focus in your hearts.  

I love you Beloved,

Glory to the Newborn King!

Cait Graham

Kale Smoothies & Right Motives

Lily eating the Kale smoothie, I'm not sure she got much in her mouth but she loved it!

Today I am sharing a smoothie recipe that I found online while researching the veggie kale.  I found this recipe on a random blog that came up in Google so I cannot take credit for it at all.  The blog was Kandeeland and she said she got it from somewhere else.  So who really knows where it came from?!  All that matters is it that it has changed my life.  Well, maybe that's a bit dramatic but it has done the body good, that's for sure.  The Graham household has to adhere to a very odd diet.  I have Celiac Disease so cannot have gluten, which ellimantes the whole wheat, rye, and barley family and Lily Cait cannot have any corn products or anything containing corn, and Michael, well he can eat whatever he wants but is sometimes forced to eat on our diet because its just easier that way. What a sport he is! 

Even though we eat very healthy around here because of our allergies we still lack the nutrients that we should be getting everyday from veggies and fruits.  This smoothie recipe packs all those vitamins into a 12 ounce cup and serves it to you in a delicious manner.  Plus, I cannot tell you how great I feel after drinking this smoothie.  It gives me energy, stamina, helps my digestive system, makes my skin feel and look better, and just makes me feel like a healthier human being!  The power food in this smoothie recipe is kale, also known as borecole.  This is such a nutritient rich vegetable that is known to be one of the healthiest vegetables on the planet.  That's healthy yall!  I didn't want to bore you with every single health benefit so here is a link that you can go and read about kale till your hearts content (if you so desire to).  Benefits of Kale  

WARNING!!! This is a super duper healthy tasting beverage, which of course means it does not taste like a sugary Frullati smoothie from the mall.  So be advised that if you try to feed it to your hubby he will probably make a terrible face and say that it tastes like salad (this is the response I got from Michael :).  However, I am used to weird food so I love it!  We just have American taste buds so healthy stuff isn't in our pallet but it needs to be!  That doesn't mean you have to try to choke down one of these smoothies everyday, it just means we need to have a desire for healthy foods that have AMAZING benefits!  I'm trying to get there people, but its a process as is everything...

So without further a due, I know your excited...

Here is the recipe for the Super Healthy Kale Smoothie!

Frozen Acai, My Smoothie, and My Orange Blender :)

SUPER HEALTHY KALE SMOOTHIE!

8-10 ounces Coconut Milk (So Delicious Organic Coconut Milk)

1/2 or whole banana (I like to freeze them before)

2 giant leaves of kale (or basically a handful rinsed and torn in half)

about a 1/4 cup of blueberries

1 pack of Sambazon frozen Acai

2 Tablespoons ground flax seeds (Spectrum Organic Ground Flax Seeds)

P.S. I got EVERYTHING at Natural Grocers but you could get the bananas and blueberries at Walmart for cheaper!

Grace Moment for the Day:  I thought I would keep with the theme of the blog post for today. Here is the verse I chose,  "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? "You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body." 1 Corin. 6:19-20.  Today's post was just a fun one not very serious at all.  However, I had a greater purpose at hand.  Whether or not we drink kale smoothies doesn't really matter at all.  The bigger picture is what matters.  

I have been deeply convicted lately about how I take care of my body.  There are two extremes out there.  The first is, the super duper healthy freak movement where people are only concerned with their health for vain and worldly reasons.  Then second, there is the "don't care" mentality, where people are indifferent towards health and taking care of themselves and just become plain lazy.  I sadly, have fallen deeply into both categories.  I used to be consumed with what I looked like, how much I ate, and how much I exercised to the point where it lead me down a very sad and sinful road.  Then, I also fell into the other camp, I stopped caring about my body and found it fun to consume as much terrible food as I could and never exercise.  

Neither one was glorifying to God and neither one was taking care of the temple of the Holy Spirit, that was given to me by God.  That is a powerful concept.  Our body is not our own but was given to us by God.  Wow.  Then, to add to that, we were bought with a price, a very high price at that.  The precious blood of God's beloved Son Jesus was the price in which we were bought.  Therefore, we are given a command at the end of the verse, a call to action!  "So glorify God in your body!"  We must do this Beloved, we must find the middle ground on taking care of the temple of the Holy Spirit and letting it fall to the pits just because we don't really care.  

Let us not do this in attempt to get the world to acknowledge how healthy or fit we are but may we do it in a heart of forgetting self and aiming to bring glory to where glory is due, to Jesus Christ.  Because He has purchased us from the bonds of slavery, and called us to eternal glory where these temperal bodies will be done away with and we will be given glorified bodies that will never fail and we will get to spend an eternity praising the Lamb of God, what a joyous day that will be!!!  So be encouraged, the Lord will help us with this if we ask Him to, He is our ever present help in time of need.  I am going to pray that the Lord would help me in all of my MANY weaknesses, He is so merciful and loving and will help us become more effective vessels for His Kingdom, all we have to do is APTAT.  I heard this from John Piper and I love it, Admit that we cannot do it, Pray for help, Trust that He will help us, Act and obey His word, and then Thank Him for helping us.  APTAT.  

He Is Faithful,

Hope you enjoy the Kale Smoothie!

Much Love,

Cait Graham