Old Fashioned Christmas Caroling - 03:39, Wednesday, December 24, 2008

        " Rejoice Evermore"   -  1 Thessalonians 4:14

After our  "more than challenging" week we have been thru...... I had a good cry on Jesus' shoulder..... isn't He wonderful? He is always available to us 24/7!!!  After placing all my cares and woes at HIS feet, I realized that the enemy was fast at work trying to "steal" our JOY in the Lord -- especially at this time of year when we are celebrating the birth of our beloved Jesus!  When I realized that I became resolved to not allow the enemy to steal the JOY of Jesus or to steal away our joy in this most joyous of seasons! So last night we prayed, bound the enemy ( yes you can bind him in Jesus name!) and bundled up to go Christmas caroling and deliver some fruit baskets to our dear friends.  Oh what JOY!  I was so overcome with emotion and just JOY as we sang :  Joy to the World,  Angels from the Realm of Glory,  O Come all Ye Faithful & We wish you a merry Christmas!  We have been practicing for weeks now and the kids really sang out last night!  We stopped at the home of the wonderful pastor and his wife who head up the prison ministry that I am involved with each week. Oh what a wonderful visit we had! It did us all a world of good! They had us come in and served cocoa and cookies and we just had a wonderful time of fellowship!  Before we left, Pastor Mark prayed over us and it was just a precious expierence!  We came out feeling so buyoed!

Today we have been busy baking delicious cookies for our Church's christmas service and pageant...... the kids are all excited!  Our church host's our town's anual Christmas Eve service and we have been busy baking cookies to serve afterwards! We are just about done. :)  Ginersnaps, chocolate sugar cookies and jam thumbprints..... mmmm..........

We are looking forward to our Christmas service tonight -- time to sing and praise our Lord for HIS humble birth, His amazing life, His painful death and His glorious resurrection!

Friends, I realized this week that the enemy was out with an attack to steal our family's JOY ..... when the Lord showed me that we prayed, bound the enemy and chose, purposefully *chose* to expierence JOY in Jesus -- for HE IS THE REASON for this season!

I want to thank you sweet friends who publically and privately have prayed for us during this challenging week! Thank you dear ones! You are all precious to me! Your love, faith and prayers mean the world!

I pray that each of you will enjoy a blessed and JOY filled Christmas -- remembering my dear readers that we are celebrating the birth of our King and Lord!

Praising His name!

~ gloria ~