We're On the Winning Team!

Of course I couldn't get it to cut and paste but I feel this is a message from God He wants the masses to know.

It's over at my blog today. Check it out!

By the way, the blog is a few years old but the site is new. If you like what you see, would you tell others and/or subscribe? Thanks!

Remember, we're on the winning team!




Image From: Photobucket

Julie Arduini is a writer and public speaker from NE Ohio. Her most recent work, Who Hung the Moon (Upside Down?) is featured in James Stuart Bell's God Encounters. Julie is excited to launch her Surrendered Scribe newsletter which features a short story exclusive for newsletter subscribers: Discovering Nancy Struthers. To learn more about Julie and her work, please visit her at Julie Arduini.com.

Insignificant Significance

Where does the time go? The praise is I had the pleasure of seeing Kim yesterday and God is on the move with her, Maria, and me. I sensed a theme going on in my prayer closet and wondered if it was just me.

Turns out the more intercessors I meet with and talk to, the more this message comes up:

We're learning how insignificant significance is.

For those that want to learn more, I listened to a Lance Wallnau presentation on basic needs. It didn't take long for me to realize one of my needs is significance.

Thank the Lord He's set me free from what I call the Sally Field stronghold. You know it, the "You like me, you really like me" addiction. I know that life well, and I do not want to return to that captivity. I thought significance was conquered through that healing.

I'm catching up on previous Smallville seasons and my attitude mirrored what I saw in a Season 8 episode. It's a long story but one character had a chip implanted in her brain with a final purpose of controlling her. When she was set free, she vomited up a ball of junk, all the computer stuff that had a hold on her.

I feel like I'm coughing up balls of snark. God has done so much in and around me, and it's been big lately. Things I prayed for, stood in the gap over, are in the midst or done. It is amazing, and all Him. I should be jumping for joy.

Instead, I'm snarky. Fleshy. Woe is me. The last two years as I prayed, "stuff" happened. Rejection, criticism, confrontations, things from left field that with His help, I stood steady and kept praying. Now that the waves calmed down---

I want apologies. I want a pat on the shoulder. I want, I want, I want.

Significance.

I wish I had the answers, but the direction I sense to take is it's time to shed the old wineskin, old ways of doing things, old thoughts, old grudges, just get rid of it. I have to take these things to the cross and put on that new wineskin.

The wineskin that has a whole lot less of Julie and a whole lot more of Jesus.

Now THAT is significant.


Julie Arduini is a writer and public speaker residing in NE Ohio with her husband and two children. She is definitely going to the cross over significance. She thanks the Lord for His grace as she surrenders fear and creates a website and opens herself up for full time ministry. Learn more at JulieArduini.com

The $20K Life

(This is originally from my The Surrendered Scribe blog. I'm still learning off this message, and thought I'd share it).


I'm a vivid dreamer and I've long let go of the thought that it's a bad taco. I'll admit sometimes an interpretation doesn't come to me, but I pray and often one comes. It's rarely what I actually dream about, and it's always such a great life lesson that I know it wasn't anything I came up with. I totally give God credit for those interpretations (mine always line up with the Bible, not once have I had a dream interpretation tell me to leave my family or anything, just so you know).

Anyway, this dream and the interpretation isn't leaving me. Maybe you are in this situation too, so I thought I'd post it. If I already posted it, forgive me. I am absolutely grasping for the finish line called September. This summer is suffocating my sanity!

So here is the dream...

I am back in Upstate NY, arriving at a pawn shop at 6am. I know I only have 30 minutes because my husband has to leave for work by 7. The line is long and I have with me a heavy, thick black necklace to pawn. In addition, I have separate from the cross but at once attached to it, a cross. One side of the cross is a black cross, an actual necklace my husband gave me two years ago from El Salvador. The other side is not actual and was a white porcelain cross with a single rose on the cross.


Once I get to the counter my husband is with me. A lady waits on me and says that the cross is probably worth twenty, but she needs to talk with the manager. I think, hey, $20, pretty good for 6am.

The manager comes over and looks it over. With the white porcelain portion he says, this is a treasure. It is worth twenty. Twenty thousand.

Twenty thousand dollars!? Well I got so excited I woke myself up!

I prayed and asked the Holy Spirit to reveal the dream to me. Here is what He gave me:

The black double strand necklace is an albatross I'm allowing to hang over my neck. With it is the black cross that my husband gave me two years ago. The last two years have been challenging in many ways, and it's left me tired, worried, and skeptical. By clinging to the black necklace and the burden that hangs over me when I choose this life, I'm living the $20 life.

WOW.

The porcelain cross represents what I can choose. I can let go of the past and trust God. Life won't be easy, but by choosing Him over the bitterness of the past, I get the white porcelain cross life. That necklace was worth $20k.

WOW.

Ever since when I've turned my mind on the past or started to worry about the future, I remember I'm choosing the albatross feeling necklace worth $20. I want to live free from burdens, fear, and anxiety. I want the $20k life.

Anyone relate? I'm struggling, so don't think I have it mastered. If this is your story, try to find a picture or draw one of a white porcelain looking cross with a single red rose on it. Give yourself a visual that you want the $20k life over the $20 one.

I'd love to hear your comments and updates!

PS
The website is moving along. Check it out at JulieArduini.com. I also created a group page on Facebook and a separate Twitter account for my fiction story, Discovering Nancy Struthers. Check it all out and feel free to join!



Julie Arduini is a writer and public speaker residing in NE Ohio. Her website, JulieArduini.com, is set to launch October 1 as she shares her surrender journey online. You can find her most recent work in Kathy Vick's Run Like a Girl. She also moderates the Love Dare over at Christian Women Take Root and is a new contributor for the marriage channel at Exemplify. She lives with her husband and two children.