Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him a threefold cord is not quickly broken.  Ecc 4:9-12

Having old and new friends join GirlsGrowingwithGod this week is an answer to prayers.  The Lord has built it – the idea first, then the website and now a community. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change (James 1:17).  I consider each member of GirlsGrowingwithGod to be a gift, a blessing.  Some of you have been here since the beginning, and others have come more recently.  I am looking forward to walking through the Word of God with you all.

I should explain how you are a gift from the Lord for me.  Truthfully, I hope that this website/these devotionals/this community of women will be a blessing to you to a much greater degree.  But for my part, in my life, the Lord has brought me to a place of relative solitude lately. In my second year of homeschooling, we have recently moved to a great little town in a beautiful setting.  But as I have mentioned here before, we don’t know how long the military (rather the Lord) will keep us here.  In addition, we have had some health distractions and so we have been a little slow in making friends, and in making time for the ones we have met.  Initially, when the Lord brought the idea of this website to me, my life was very different.  We were very involved in our church, our kids were in a sweet little Christian school surrounded by friends and I was in a wonderful women’s bible study.  I really appreciated the spot we were in, because in our previous assignment, I had come from a place where we had experienced terrible difficulties and isolation. I felt like God had used these trials to give me a heart for women who might be in a situation that made them unable to connect with other Christian ladies in Bible study (due to illness, work, small children at home, etc).  I felt like the Lord could use the internet to provide an opportunity for these women to join with others to study His Word and join in community with one another.  I wanted to reach out to people who felt disconnected.  It took a few years for this idea, a promise from the Lord really, to be fulfilled and now here we are!  The irony is that when I thought the Lord was calling me to minister to others via this website, He is really using it to minister to me.  I am the one who really appreciates the opportunity to stay in God’s Word and share my heart with other ladies.  I am the one who cannot get to a bible study.  I am the one who is feeling a little disconnected.  Isn’t He amazing? So I hope that God will bind us together, as a cord of three strands…together, stronger than alone.  As the old hymn says, bind us together Lord, bind us together Lord, bind us together with love…

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him (Col 3:12-17)

JustAgirl…just like you!