Living Proof Live Rio Rancho NM from Rich Kalonick on Vimeo.

LPM celebrated its 15th birthday on May 5, 2009. We praise You, Father, for all You have done!

Part 1

15 Years of Living Proof – Part 1 from LPV on Vimeo.

Part 2

15 Years of Living Proof – Part 2 from LPV on Vimeo.

Part 3

15 Years of Living Proof – Part 3 from LPV on Vimeo.

Part 4

15 Years of Living Proof – Part 4 from LPV on Vimeo.

Part 5

15 Years of Living Proof – Part 5 from LPV on Vimeo.

Finally! I’m not exaggerating when I say that this post has been five days in the making. We’ve been adding pictures to it slowly. Sorry it’s taken so long! Our family had a blast at the beach in Galveston. It was just the girls from Wednesday through Friday and then the boys joined us for the rest of the weekend. It was everything we hoped it would be. We relaxed, swam, built sand castles, played with hermit crabs, walked along the beach, shopped, laughed, ate Dad’s famous gumbo, watched fireworks from the top deck of the beach house, played games, and enjoyed each others’ company very much. It was a very happy 4th of July!

Our quiet time spot.

Our view from the beach house.

Girls lunch at Willie G’s.

My boys in the waves. We meant to take a lot more beach pictures but it never happened!

Annabeth’s new jammies. They say “Berry Berry Sleepy.”

Baby Girl was very taken with her Auntie.

Mom, Lis and I played a gamed called Whoonu while we were waiting for the boys to arrive. When Melissa excused herself to answer a phone call, Mom and I rigged it so that she would get these cards. We picked 4 things we thought she hated and she had to rate them in order of how much she liked them. We thought we were hilarious. Turns out the joke was on us because apparently my sister loves her some four square. Whoonu? But, having been the second born daughter, she does despise hand-me-downs.

Mom and Dad at the pool.

Jackson has been learning how to swim this summer.

We’ve finally found something that tires him out!

Apparently it tires Annabeth out, too.

Aunt Melissa got Jackson a treat from the ice cream truck and simultaneously became his best friend.

A visit to Galveston is not complete without a meal at Gaido’s. Mom and Dad have been going there since before they got married. We took the opportunity to celebrate Dad’s birthday, which is actually today! Happy birthday, Daddy!

Some fun in our backyard after we got home.

We all missed Colin so much! His presence was the only thing missing from a perfect weekend. But as you can see, he was having no shortage of fun on his getaway with some college buddies. You can probably tell by his fleece jacket that he was nowhere near Texas! 

Siesta Summer Bible Study (Weeks 1 and 2) from LPV on Vimeo.

Hey Summer Bible Study Siestas!
It’s time for Gathering II! Remember, all comments to this post are meant to come AFTER your small group meeting as a way of sharing a highlight with us from your time together. Try to limit your feedback to one regular-size paragraph and be sure to remind us where you’re from and how many are in your group. Only one group member is requested to give a report but if something huge is happening in your life through the study and your leader didn’t share it, by all means, post an individual comment so your Siestas can give God the praise He’s due.

If at all possible, please watch the video for your instructions for this week’s gathering but, just in case you can’t get it to work or can’t spare the time, here are the activities in writing:

1. By now you’ve been well introduced to the concept of the study. We’re cleaning out our thought closets. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you individually need this particular subject matter and why?

2. Look on p.13 at the quote in the margin: “Who I am and what I struggle with are not the same thing.” In what way did that statement resonate with you? What struggle do you most tend to define yourself by?

3. Look on p.23, Day 4 of Week 1 at the interactive where Jennifer says, “In your own words, describe worry.” What was your answer?

4. Go to p.44 in Week 2 and focus on the part of the study where Jennifer talks about “faulty assumptions.” I thought this part was incredibly insightful. What is one of your faulty assumptions?

Have a great time with one another and may Christ’s Presence and power be evident in every gathering! You are loved and prioritized here at LPM.

*Previous posts:
Summer Bible Study Sign Up
Summer Bible Study Kick Off

Hi ladies! This week has been quite a ride! We are so excited about our summer study and we love how excited you are, too. It’s been really fun seeing all of your pictures. I squealed when the group pics started rolling in late Tuesday night.

I have a few new details about our summer Bible study:

A) Jennifer Rothschild, the author of Me Myself & Lies, has a blog!

B) Jennifer wrote a song based on Psalm 19 called “Let the Words.” Her hope was that women would connect with the song and use it to reinforce the idea of words (like the ones we say to ourselves) being “acceptable to you, Oh Lord.” A free MP3 download of the song and a music video are available here.

C) LifeWay has provided a free download of the first week of homework for anyone who doesn’t have their book just yet. You can get it here.

I’ve done my MM&L study the last two mornings and it is already impacting me so much. I don’t know about you, but I really need this. Mom and I had lunch at a cute little tea room today and we had our own discussion about our thought closets. That was nice because I had to miss my group’s first meeting. (Jackson was sick, but he’s all better now.)

By the way, Mom and I looked like lunatics at the restaurant because we took pictures the whole time. How could we not document and therefore blog about Annabeth’s first lunch at a tea room? When Mom grabbed a tiny tea cup off a shelf and positioned it in Annabeth’s hand for a photo op, I thought we were going to get kicked out. Thankfully we didn’t. If I’d had to miss out on coconut cake because of her misbehavior, it would not have been pretty.

Here are some pictures from Annabeth’s first tea room experience – the first of many.

Annabeth with the cup that my mom was apparently willing to purchase today. It was a very risky two seconds.

Praise the Lord.

Annabeth realizing we were going to have to take Bibby back to work.

Melissa, we will go again when you’re here!

We can’t wait to hear from all of you who are participating in our Second Annual Siesta Summer Bible Study! This is your official sign-up post. This year we are thrilled to be going through Jennifer Rothschild’s Me Myself & Lies (workbook only) and we launch with our first gathering today through the post below this one. But first you need to sign in by posting a comment right here. If you are participating solo, please sign in with your first name and city. If you are participating with a small group, only one of you needs to sign in, but please include all your group members’ first names and then the city from which you’re participating. We can’t wait to see the group God is pulling together so speak up, Girlfriends!

We at Living Proof Ministries are so honored to be your servants. Let’s stay in the Word!

*After you have posted your sign-up comment, you can upload a photograph of your group (or of yourself if you’re doing it individually) to our guest book. If you don’t have a picture yet, just come back later! Like our comments, pictures will be moderated.

I HAD TO GET BACK ON HERE AND TELL YOU GUYS THAT YOU ARE THE CUTEST THINGS I’VE EVER LAID MY EYES ON! I CAN HARDLY CONTAIN MYSELF! HOW WONDERFUL TO SEE YOUR FACES!

*From Amanda: As I’m moderating these pictures, many of them are showing up as question marks. I’ve been deleting those. If yours doesn’t show up after, let’s say 12 hours, you might want to try again.

Siesta Summer Bible Study (Introduction) from LPV on Vimeo.

*If you’re having trouble viewing the video, you may need to download a newer version of Adobe Flash Player. You can get it here. Thanks for the tip, Adrienne!

Hey, Siestas! Let’s kick off some summer Bible study, why don’t we? I’m a little over-excited, too, but hold up before you write back! DON’T COMMENT YET! Your comments to this post are meant to FOLLOW your group meeting as a way of sharing a highlight about your time together. Again, please DO NOT WRITE COMMENTS until after you meet. If you’re participating solo, please watch the video first and do the exercises for yourself, THEN comment with your brief responses.

Here’s how it goes:

Please watch the eleven minute video for instructions for your small group and, if you can’t watch it together, no big deal! Each of you try to give it a look before your meeting. These videos will be posted indefinitely, so it’s no problem if your group can’t meet until later in the week. I’ll always write the instructions in the post just like I did last summer in case anybody has technical difficulty watching the video.

Here are your 3 interactive exercises for today:

1. An icebreaker just so we can have the opportunity to be ridiculous: What breed of dog do you most resemble in demeanor and why? If you don’t know your dog breeds, describe your demeanor to your group and let them help you.

2. This one will help us get to know one another’s priority needs right now. Get out a pen and paper and craft a one-sentence text message with a limit of 160 characters that starts with (and includes) these words: Please pray for me. I…

3. Have one group member read Psalm 19 out of The Message to the rest of the group. (See below) After she reads the whole psalm, have members lock in on the section that describes what the Word of God (called by other names such as “revelation”) does for us. Mention each benefit of studying Scripture and have group members who have discovered one of those benefits give short and specific testimonies as an encouragement to the rest.

You’ll pray and dismiss then designate ONE GROUP MEMBER to comment with a report about your group. Please limit the comment to a normal size paragraph. Each member will then complete Weeks One and Two of homework in their Me Myself & Lies member-book by our second gathering in two weeks. If you can’t get all your homework accomplished, meet anyway! A little Bible study is FAR BETTER than no Bible study! Thank you so much for participating!

I love you like crazy.
Beth

Psalm 19
A David Psalm
1-2 God’s glory is on tour in the skies, God-craft on exhibit across the horizon.
Madame Day holds classes every morning,
Professor Night lectures each evening.

3-4 Their words aren’t heard,
their voices aren’t recorded,
But their silence fills the earth:
unspoken truth is spoken everywhere.

4-5 God makes a huge dome
for the sun—a superdome!
The morning sun’s a new husband
leaping from his honeymoon bed,
The daybreaking sun an athlete
racing to the tape.

6 That’s how God’s Word vaults across the skies
from sunrise to sunset,
Melting ice, scorching deserts,
warming hearts to faith.

7-9 The revelation of God is whole
and pulls our lives together.
The signposts of God are clear
and point out the right road.
The life-maps of God are right,
showing the way to joy.
The directions of God are plain
and easy on the eyes.
God’s reputation is twenty-four-carat gold,
with a lifetime guarantee.
The decisions of God are accurate
down to the nth degree.

10 God’s Word is better than a diamond,
better than a diamond set between emeralds.
You’ll like it better than strawberries in spring,
better than red, ripe strawberries.

11-14 There’s more: God’s Word warns us of danger
and directs us to hidden treasure.
Otherwise how will we find our way?
Or know when we play the fool?
Clean the slate, God, so we can start the day fresh!
Keep me from stupid sins,
from thinking I can take over your work;
Then I can start this day sun-washed,
scrubbed clean of the grime of sin.
These are the words in my mouth;
these are what I chew on and pray.
Accept them when I place them
on the morning altar,
O God, my Altar-Rock,
God, Priest-of-My-Altar.

It’s June, the mother of all wedding months. And, as was mentioned before, it’s also the month we celebrate our anniversary. So I’ve been thinking some thoughts about marriage.

I’ve been hearing a lot of conversations about marriages – marriages on the rocks, marriages failing, marriages unlikely to last. It’s sad. And scary. Will we be one of the couples who makes it? I certainly hope so. We definitely plan to. But what if one of us goes off the deep end and burns the whole thing to the ground? What if we face a challenge so great that we don’t overcome it? I know for a fact that the enemy attacks our marriages and anyone in ministry can count on being on his hit list. We’ve felt the heat before and I’m sure we will feel it again. What if we fall for his lies and tricks? What if we don’t even need his intervention because we are so self-destructive on our own?

What do you do when your friend’s marriage is burning to the ground? Really, what steps do you take? How far do you go to try to help them? This is not currently happening in my circle of relationships, but what if?

If it were Curtis and me, what would our friends do? Would they stand by quietly or would they take us out to the woodshed and beat some sense into us? Seriously, I hope they’d take us to the woodshed. I hope someone would stage an intervention.

Even so – as I’m learning in my adulthood – people do what they want. There’s only so much you can do to help.

I have no idea where I’m going with this. None. But these are the thoughts I’ve been thinking.

About six weeks ago Curtis and I watched Fireproof for the first time. I don’t know why we’d waited so long to see it. Actually, I do. We were feeling rebellious about it. So many people were saying we should see it that it made us not want to. Nice, right? It’s funny because the night before we actually watched it, we had a humongous fight. The fight was about which “movie on demand” we were going to watch on our TV. For real, y’all. How that seemed worthy of such a huge fight, I have no idea. The next night, when we finally watched this movie about a marriage being saved from the flames, it ate our lunch. We both cried. When was the last time we saw a movie that showed romance in a marriage? I don’t even know. If your marriage needs a shot in the arm (and whose doesn’t), do yourself a favor and watch this movie. And get the book, “The Love Dare,” that’s shown in it. You might be feeling a little rebellious like we were. If so, you just need to get over it because your pride is stealing a blessing from you.

Here’s a question for you. If you ladies who are married knew that someone reading this blog was struggling in her marriage, what one thing would you want to say to her?

I’d say something that my mom once told me. Difficulties come in waves. If you can make it through the wave you’re on, you’ll find that it will end. Just because it’s hard right now and just because you don’t feel any affection for your mate at this moment doesn’t mean it will never go back to normal. Or even to better-than-normal. Persevere, pray, and read your Bible. We need God’s living and active Truth to pulverize the stubbornness, the numbness, the indifference, and the lies we’ve bought into. Get counseling. And please don’t say it’s too expensive. Getting a divorce is much more expensive in every way. Plus, a lot of Christian counselors will offer their services on a sliding scale based on your income. Okay, I will stop writing now because I want to hear your two cents.

Also, if you have been in a failed marriage, I pray that this post does not heap discouragement on you. That would be the last thing we’d ever want to do on this blog. Please know that Jesus loves you so much and there is no situation that He cannot redeem for His glory and your good. If He were not capable of redeeming, I would be the most hopeless of all. But here I am telling you that there is hope. He is hope.

Ephesians 5

Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a man is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them.

For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth)and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said:
“Wake up, O sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”

Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Living Proof Live – Pittsburgh PA from Rich Kalonick on Vimeo.