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Focus on What is Important

What is most important in your life?
What came to your mind? Your career? Your family? World peace? Your children? Leaving your positive mark on society? Your business?

Focus on What is Important

September 10, 2023

What is most important in your life?

What came to your mind?  Your career?  Your family?  World peace?  Your children?  Leaving your positive mark on society?  Your business?

How about Jesus?  For me, when I heard those words this morning (sitting in the Good News Church first service), my mind created a list like words from Jillian’s history and science lesson she has to look up:

Jesus

Family

Showing Jesus to others.

Whatever is the most important in your life directs everything else in your life. 

Don’t believe that?  Seriously.  Consider it objectively.  Whatever you consider most important shapes and directs your life to achieve each step in your life to honor that important thing. 

My mind reflected back to decisions I made as a young person: a lot of decisions as even a preteen are life-shaping. 

I chose to keep myself pure for my future husband. 

I chose to honor my parents and respect them even if I disagreed.

I chose to better myself so I could love my brothers and sisters better. 

Each of these I decided to do because I loved Jesus.  I saw it as my honor to be able to shine Jesus’ light reflected through my life.  I wanted my life to be lived in worship to Jesus.  I wanted people to see that I was different and ask why.  The “preteen/teen” choice that led to me having the most conversations with other teenagers was my choice to love Jesus by honoring His desire for my sexuality.  It was counter-popular-culture to stay sexually pure (yes, as my kids can’t understand, I am young enough that I was laughed at for being a virgin after 18).  I wore a birthstone ring my Daddy gave me on my ring finger and told others it was to remind me that I belonged to Jesus first; He wanted me to stay pure for my future husband.  So many people laughed.  A few asked deeper questions and I would get to share about Jesus and how He loved me first and my joy was to honor Him with all of my life. 

Later, in the business world, I was faced with repeated pressure to falsify information on forms to cut financial corners.  I held my ground and honored God.  When I was told I could choose to either “serve the company” or there wouldn’t be any more hours for me.  I actually told my boss that because I loved Jesus, I couldn’t lie.  The hours available to me dropped to where I would spend more time driving to the office than working; that would have made it a financial burden to work rather than an income.  I was unable to stay.  I often wonder if that choice did any forever good (did my decision or words help anyone see Jesus?); but would I change my decision?  No.  I choose to honor Jesus’ commandments because I love Him.  I get to honor Jesus because He first loved me. 

I pray my children discover that it is an honor and privilege to love Jesus.  We are loved by Him from the foundations of the world.  Even while we were yet sinners, He loved each of us so much that He died for our sins and rose to conquer sin and death!  Because of that, we have the honor of choosing to love Jesus and serve Him with our obedience. 

I looked at little Laud sleeping in my lap and smiled.  I choose to look at every part of loving my babies as a privilege and honor!  I wonder at how blessed I am that God would allow me to raise one of His children!  (Okay, 8 of His children so far) Still, each one is specially loved and was created piece by carefully knit piece by God as they were formed inside me.  God has gifted me the honor of being their mother; one at a time and altogether.  I am humbled, awed, and enthralled by the enormous blessing each child is.  I thank God for them when I think of them. 

Thank you, Jesus, for loving me!  Thank you, Jesus, that I get to love You!  Thank you that I get to love my children!  Keep reminding me of how I should always choose to love You first.

Type at you next time,

~Nancy Tart

Father’s Day 2023

“It all starts with a bachelor…” starts the old cartoon that highlights Fatherhood in a Goofy sense but before the entertainment industry really made fun of Fathers…

Father’s Day 2023

A time-warp Story from June 18, 2023

Father’s Day.  Because of childhood memories, I’m always hearing the Disney Cartoon narrator from “Goofy Celebration of Fatherhood” when I read those words.  “It all starts with a bachelor…” starts the old cartoon that highlights Fatherhood in a Goofy sense but before the entertainment industry really made fun of Fathers.  

Our culture has tried to reduce fathers to a joke.  Sadly, that is the farthest thing from the truth yet popular movies, songs, and tv shows portray fathers as not worth respect.  The butt of jokes.  Maybe a breadwinner.  Unimportant.  

In truth, it’s movies like “Courageous” that get it right.  Fathers are vital.  The Bible tells us the father is the head of the home.  The primary moral compass of the family.  It’s summer camp at my gym.  I love to watch the excitement the kids get when they get picked up; “Daddy!  Watch what I can do!” or “Mommy! Look what I made!”  I hear a lot about mommies and daddies.  

We heard about spiritual fathers at church today too; those like Paul who calls Timothy his “son in the faith” and “beloved son” though he wasn’t his biological son.  My father lost his father as a young man just entering adulthood.  I never met my grandfather Theodore Pearson, but I know he was a strong, giving, loving man because of the legacy he left in his children whom I met.  Our daughter “Theadora” was named in honor of him.  My father also had a spiritual father; Mr. Bob Suber.  I loved him.  I first met him when I was about 7 or 8 years old.  His wife Betty taught me how to embroider and sew clothes.  I watched him talk with my Daddy as we spent many evenings at their house for supper and the adults would go into discussions.  I sat cross-legged in front of him with starry eyes listening to stories of his childhood in the nineteen-twenties and thirties where he and his buddies used to swipe fruit from orchards and try not to get caught or pick raw corn and dig potatoes from the edges of farmland and would roast them for lunch on fires they’d make and share food with traveling hobos.  He said his mama always cooked a big broth pot from whatever squirrel, rabbit, or game he or his younger brother got that day and would toss in root vegetables and greens and herbs.  He said her pots could be smelled for miles.  After her family ate, she fed a bowl of broth to any hobo that stopped and asked.   Mr. Bob died when I was about fourteen and I saw my Daddy cry.  He said that Bob Suber’s graceful acceptance of death reminded him of other men of faith that Mr. Bob had pointed out – and he wanted to be sure he had that peace and grace when his time came.  In December 2018, he showed that grace and peace at his own time when God called him home.

Fathers are so important.  

I am very grateful for my Father.  For the blessing I had of being his daughter.  

I’m also so thankful for the Father God chose for my children.  Louis is always striving to be the most godly father he can be.  

I pray for the men God will lead to my girls to be fathers of their children.  I pray that we raise up Lucas to be a godly man and father.  

Life is far simpler than we make it out to be.  Love is our center.  Family is our core.  God made it that way from the beginning.  I pray that we shoo away the distractions and focus on the truth; choosing to follow Jesus in all things and put our families first.  Fathers bold enough to be fathers have that power inside them; God put it there from the beginning.  Each man simply has to choose.  

Type at you later,

~Nancy Tart

God Knows You

This week in Sunday School, our children are focusing on “God Speaks.” One of the wonder truths in our curriculum is basically that God knows you! God knows every person, He knit them together (No one is an accident!), He knows everything about their hearts, minds, and souls (Every single hair is numbered!), and He loves each of us just as we are (All of God’s Creation is beautiful!). …and enter a favorite story that taught me about that truth…

November 7, 2022

God Knows You


This week in Sunday School, our children are focusing on “God Speaks.”  One of the wonder truths in our curriculum is basically that God knows you!  God knows every person, He knit them together (No one is an accident!), He knows everything about their hearts, minds, and souls (Every single hair is numbered!), and He loves each of us just as we are (All of God’s Creation is beautiful!).  

This love is perfect and unconditional.  

One of the stories that hit my heart as a child was that of a little Irish girl who prayed every day for blue eyes.  Her family had blue eyes and she wanted lovely blue eyes!  She considered her brown eyes dull and plain.  This story caught my 5-year-old heart because I had blue eyes and loved the way God made me, but I thought the most beautiful eyes in the world were those that looked like warm chocolate drops – honey brown.  Though I’d never prayed for different eyes, hair, or other features, I understood thinking that a feature of my body was plain and thinking someone else had the most beautiful.

Every night she would pray for blue eyes and when she looked in the mirror she would be sad because she still had brown eyes.  Her mother told her that God had a plan for her lovely brown eyes.  One day the girl grew up.  She decided to be a missionary and was sent to India.  

The people of India distrusted the white-skinned, blue-and-green eyed people who spoke of only one God who loved.  The unknowns often scare people.  The young woman’s missionary group wanted to enter a temple in India to find out if the horrible stories of little girls being sold to the temples was true.  But they were never allowed in; even when they tried to disguise themselves – always their bright blue or green eyes gave them away as strangers.  

But this young missionary had brown eyes!  She dyed her skin with coffee, dyed her hair to be dark brown, and dressed as the local people.  They let her into the temple!  Her brown eyes did the trick!  There she prayed “thank you, God, for making my beautiful brown eyes!” 

This young woman was Amy Carmichael, later known by the temple slave girls as “Amma” or Mother.  Her lifelong ministry, the rescue of thousands of young girls, would never have been possible had she had blue eyes!  God knew what plans he had for her.  

Just as God knew Amy and the plans He had for her, He knows the plans He has for you, for me.  

I am a planner; I always have a range of plans for the day, the week, the year, twenty years, etc, but I’ve learned that God knows me better than I know myself and though I may make and try to follow my plans, I always have to leave room for God to change them!  

Just a wonderful thought to think upon this week ~ God knows you.  God loves you!  What does it take from you?  You just have to choose to follow Him.  (My Daddy used to say, “and that’s the simple to confound the wise.”) 

Thank you for Reading!

Type at you later!

~Nancy Tart

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