Notes from Nicole

Some people have a "green thumb" when it comes to growing things. I am not one of those people. I love to garden. I love to dig in the dirt and feel the soil between my fingers, but for some reason I don't do a very good job of keeping the weeds out like I should. I try, I really do, but somehow those darn weeds just begin to creep back in and by the time I get a chance to do my weeding there are so many that I begin to feel overwhelmed. Maybe you are like me or maybe you are one of those people whose yard and garden looks like the cover of a Better Homes and Garden magazine? Regardless of what your gardening skills may be I have found that life can be very similar to that familiar parable that Jesus tells to his disciples on this very same subject matter. In Mark 4 Jesus tells his disciples this beginning in verse 14; "The farmer is like a person who plants God's message in people. Sometimes the teaching falls on the road. This is like the people who hear the te

One of the most amazing stories in the Bible is the one about Shadrach , Meshach and Abednego . If you ever went to Sunday School as a child you more than likely have heard this story a time or two. Or maybe you saw the Veggie Tales version of it? I have learned a lot about the Bible from watching that cucumber and tomato! Just kidding-well, sort of. Anyway, for those of you who are not familiar with the story here is a summary for you; King Nebuchadnezzar was a ruler over Judah and God allowed him to gain power, people and land. The king also had Daniel as his interpreter of his dreams and advised him on what to do. Even though God had allowed the King Neb these things, the king still doubted God's existence . The King had a large golden statue built and ordered everyone in the Kingdom to bow down to it when they heard the musical instruments play. There were three men, Shadrach , Meshach and Abednego who refused to do this. So, the king ordered that these three men be thrown i

This is an older writing that I wrote a couple of years ago. I found it today and thought I would share it with you-enjoy! I did have to condense it a little, becasue as some of you know-I like to talk:) God says, "Be quiet and know that I am God. I will be supreme over all the nations. I will be supreme in the earth." Psalm 46:10 How many of you enjoy talking? Now, I am not just referring to chatting casually with a friend on the phone or even having a heart to heart with a loved one. I am wondering who really enjoys just being able to talk? I know that if talking were a sport I would posses several gold medals! My sister got the curly hair gene and I got the "gift for gab" gene. I enjoy talking, I really do. My mom says that I would get home from school, come in the door talking and I wouldn't stop until I went to sleep at night! Whew! I now have one of those "talkers" in my own house and let me tell you-my ears need a rest after he g

Ok, I know that I am always putting stuff on here about songs and how they trigger a message that I need to share, but I can't help it! I think God uses music, secular and non-secular music to speak to me-He knows what a music nerd I truly am:) So, Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers-any fans out there? I used to listen to their music all of the time! I was just sitting here thinking about all of the "dreams" that I have in my heart. Some are spoken, some are unspoken, but they are all real. There is a song of Tom and the Heartbreakers called, "Runnin' Down a Dream- the chorus of this song says, "Yeah, runnin' down a dream that never would come to me. Workin' on a mystery, goin' wherever it leads. Runnin' down a dream." I guess the reason this is the song that started going through my head is because right now all of my dreams ARE mysteries to me. I am not sure if they will come true or not, but that isn't going to make me stop dr

I have been wondering here lately what God wants from me? Ok, maybe it has been more like 10 years, and not just lately. Whatever the time frame has been, I know that it is time to follow God's call. I have been reading His word, and listening to my heart and I do hear Him speak. I have been watching an orginization for several years and I have yearned for some direction and advice regarding my speaking/singing ministry and now my book that I have written. I feel like I have years of unspoken words and messages about God's love and grace that have been bottled up for so long-and it is time to say them outloud! There is a wonderful resource for women like me, women who have been called by God to share the Good News. This resource is Proverbs31 Ministry. I have been a follower of this ministry for a long time now and I have been longing to be a part of their awesome conference called, "She Speaks." This conference is for women who know that God has put a call

I like to think of myself as friendly and open to meeting new people. My friends like to think of me as a "freak magnet." I do not say that with any disrespect if you are the one whom I have met at some point in my life when our paths have crossed, it just always seems as if I find myself in situations that normal people usually don't encounter. Like the time when I was waiting for the rest of my family to come out of a restaurant and I saw a man fall off of his bike in the middle of the street right in fron of me! The traffic just kept moving and not one vehicle stopped to help and the man just kept lying there in the middle of the street! I turned to my son and told him to wait right there and I ran out to help him out of the road-eventually someone with a truck did stop and put his bike in the back and took him home. Or maybe the time I took my kids to an event called Punkin Chuckin and there were literally hundreds of people there, but I noticed that this tin

I have lived in the Midwest my entire life. I have been surrounded by cornfields, dirt roads and small towns. Some may consider those things a blessing or a curse, depending on how you look at it. The one thing that really sticks out in my mind though is the snowstorms that we used to get as a kid. I don't know if it is one of those times when as a child everything seems bigger than life and then in adulthood you realize just how small something truly was? But I know that some of the snowstorms that happened during my childhood were huge, by any means of measuring! The current weather forecast for our area in the next couple of days is predicting one of those good old fashioned, huge snow storms. Now, some people will panic and head to the grocery store and clean out the bread aisle, the milk cooler and the egg cooler, because of the "maybe" snowstorm. These folks would be your former boy scouts and girl scouts who still live by the "be prepared" motto

Have you ever bought a loaf of bread and then somehow a small hole gets poked into the bag and all of the sudden you have a loaf of stale bread? I have done that several times, and it is usually when I am ready to pack someone's lunch and that is the only bread I have left in the house! Those are the days where my kids get crackers with their meat and cheese:) I was thinking about this staleness as something that can also happen to us as Christians. What can make us or our faith go stale? There are lots of things. If we do not stay fresh in the Word, it can cause us to become stale. So stale, in fact, that reading the Bible has become a chore that we try to avoid doing. So stale, that going to church or sunday school has become a chore that we try to avoid, as well. I know that there are many, many, many things going on in our lives, but when we put those things first and God last, it is like poking holes of doubt and discontent into our faith. These are some excuses that