Trust is good for your soul!

As many of you that know us well will remember, back in October/November time we were frantically planning our wedding and I was becoming the bridezilla over any tiny detail that could go wrong and of course Dom was the usual calm, collected and reassured fiance. We were getting concerned that neither of us could afford the home right for us as living in Brighton was making a heavy debt in our finance.

After searching online and meeting with estate agents we were told that we would need to wait until the beginning of March to start looking for a place and probably need to re-asses our budget or location too. Aghh!  Well with March being the month of the wedding we thought this would be VERY stressful but could do nothing!!!

The only way to deal with the weight was to pray and wait, Wait and Pray and then PRAY AND WAIT some MORE!!!! I am not the most patient of people and often feel like i am talking to an empty room with no-one that was listening. Dom and I prayed together and seperately and we felt peace that God would provide us our dream home, in the perfect budget, perfect location and of course in perfect timing. I prayed over our list of things that we would love for our dream home to have EVERY DAY and thanked God that he would be our provider in all of our life together.

Now I have of course said the word 'Trust' in the title, well, you need to Trust him, Trust God, in everything that happens that he will provide, he will guide and he will protect. God gives us beautiful hopes and dreams for the future, our careers and our lives, and we must trust that he knows best in these and will show us this in his perfect timing.

At the end of February I moved into our new home in.....

Our new home

We have been completely blessed with this cute, bungalow in Worthing, West Sussex.

I want to explain further just how good God is, and how trusting, praying and waiting for things in life can result in you being completely blown away by Gods provision.

So I said I prayed over a list, here is the list;

House (not a flat)

2 Bedrooms

Some where quiet (so I can sleep)

A garden

Free parking for both our cars

Space for us to grow vegetables

Space for chickens

A gas hob

A good kitchen

A place where we can put our on stamp on it

A place for us to have a family

A place for us to serve. Hospitality

God didn't just give us a home, he ticked EVERY box, albeit not in the way in which either of us had pictured (e.g. neither of us considered a bungalow, and Dom had originally completed thrown out the idea of living in Worthing) but God still took our picture of our black and white picture of our dream home and he took it, blew it up, then re-painted it in watercolour and added all these amazing extra features!!!

 DO NOT UNDER ESTIMATE THE POWER HE HAS TO AMAZE YOU!!

As many of you will know, Dom has been training to become a plumber over the Autumn and Winter and now Spring is upon us and he is now a qualified Plumber. He was laking in the esential confidence to go out and tackle jobs, so more experience wwas needed. Thanks to two amazing Plumbers/Heating Engineers in our Church he has had the opportunity to go out and get stuck in, which means when he comes home he has the confidence, knowledge and hands on experience to take on the renovation of our new home! Amazing.

I'll show you how he is doing....

Project 1: The Kitchen Part-A

Lets show you how it was when we moved in.....

The current kitchen is very small and in need of stripping right back to make a good size kitchen for us both.

 First job is removing the old tiles from around the door frame, chiseling out the half bricks around the door ready for the builders to come in and brick up this door giving us extra worktop and cabinet space.

We then had the builders in the take out the door, brick it all up again.

Here it is!! Dom has now covered up the bricks with plasterboard and it is ready for plastering!! Yippee

As this is a working kitchen we can't just rip it out and stick a new one in or we would have no-where to cook so we are needing to do it in small stages but we are flying through it all. (well Dom is)


Next job is to rip out the old pantry unit;

 Next job, full up the very sexy cork floor tiles and then stick down the new slate effect floor tiles....


Dom playing with his new Tile cutter and rocking the ear defenders!!!

So that is the progress so far, hope to keep you all updated on the kitchen progress!!!!

How time will fly.....

It has been over a year since I last posted and WOW! What a year it has been.

I feel like I have dragged through a hedge backwards again and again but I can also say it has definately been worth the battle.

A year ago I got baptised, I got engaged to the most gorgeous man on the planet and then 6 weeks ago I got married to him!!

This photo was taken by Barry Page of Barry Page Photography

We were truly blessed with a gorgeous day of sunshine, clear blue skies and warm weather, we had all the friends and family we could imagine and just felt so happy to have everyone supporting us in our new life together.

We had a wonderful honeymoon in Lake Tahoe, San Fran, USA where we took in the beauty of the Lake and snowboarded at Heavenly Resort....

This is us on day one on a road trip around the Lake, it was stunningly beautiful and just a great day!

We loved the slopes and just had lots of fun......

Heading up the chair lift on day 2 on the slopes!

The main reason for popping back on to this blog is talk to your about our lives and keep you all in check now we are in Worthing, West Sussex. We may see fewer of some friends and more of others so just wanna show you us, our new life/home and what God is doing with us here in Worthing.

More posts to come..... especially Project 1: The Kitchen!

What If Your Wrong

This song is not just a beautiful song its a song of thought

a song of just exactly what some people are thinking or feeling.

What if you are wrong?

What if it isn't a myth?

What if it isn't an old story?

What if it is true?

What if it could change you?

What if....................................................................................?

What if you really do have a heavenly Father?

What if you do really have a way out your mess?

What if you really do have meaning and purpose?

What if you have a Father that loves you?

What If...................................................................................?

What if you have been Promised, a REAL Promise that you will never be

left or forsaken?

What if you could know PERFECT Love?

What if you could be forgiven?

What if you could really move on?

What if you were created? Not just here?

Would it change you? Would it move you? Would you do things differently?

Would you want to know how?

Would you want to know more?

Falling On Deaf Ears

"Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, who confidence is in him.

He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.

It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green.

It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit"

No doubt in my mind that I should have been on here sooner, surely typing up thoughts, words or even passages of scripture is something I can make time for???

Then it hit me, I have been so busy planning, diarising and meticulously organising the new call on my life in moving to Brighton, that I had simply shot off the starting line and gone full steam ahead into 'cope' mode.

God calling me into a huge, bustling and bright city like Brighton was something of a shock to me, as I for one, do not usually hear from God, well not in the way I would like anyway. You imagine hearing loud speakers of 'Naomi your going the wrong way' or Flashing lights on motorway signs, or even huge billboards with words written just for you, but this is not the way God will speak to everyone and is certainly not the way God had spoken with me in the past. To be honest even if he had, I am not sure I would have even noticed, I probably would have said "what a coincedence". Thankfully my knowledge of the way God works in our lives is growing, my desire to learn more about him is developing at an ever increasing rate and I simply cherish those times when I sit in his presence. Now through scripture, incredible teaching and testimones, I am more aware of lots of these 'Godincedences' and am desperately slowing up my pace of life to see, enjoy and be greatful for these times of God working in my life.

God speaks in may ways but his quiet, small voice can be too quiet for the even the most seasoned of listeners, making those 'hard of hearing' feeling left out in the cold. When I say hard of hearing, I am talking about brothers and sisters in Christ that like me don't stop enough and in silence wait on him, one can be so desperate to hear God speaking with them that they even forget to listen! Someone said to me once 'why do you think God gave us two ears and only one mouth'? We definately need both of those ears, we need to learn to turn them on, tune them in and allow them time to listen. Really the point of this little picture is that we should be listening to God more and talking less!

Leaving my 60hr working week, my home, family and personal space behind in very rural Seagry, Wiltshire I have suddenly realised how noisy my life had become. There really wasn't room for silence, I was so busy that the noise just filled my every crevice of my being and I barely noticed. There is a profound silence right now, Yes! I can hear a bird singing, Yes I can hear the buses passing on the road outside and workmen destroying the house opposite....... but these sounds would have been swalloed into the noise before...... I can finally listen!

My ears were deafened and I feel like they are in a time of healing...... a time where still and quiet silence will allow my ears to restore the level of hearing that God intended. God is not silent, we just need to prepare ourselves to hear him and prepare our lives to receive what we has to say. God will not suddenly start speaking to me in the way I want or I would prefer, more like he is waiting on me, for me to be waiting on him. Giving God my all, making him my desperate need and desire before anything else.

"He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust" Pslam 91

I am learning to wait, learning to trust in the God that has a perfect plan for me and that does mean trusting and waiting patiently with no map for the road ahead. Imagine being blind-folded and being guided through every part of life...... if you didn't trust the person holding your hand then you would probably not take even a single step, however if the person holding your hand was the person you trusted the most and had the most confidence in then you would step out in faith, knowing that you would be cared for, looked out for and provided for.

That is exactly how God wants us to be, stepping 0ut in faith, confidently knowing and trusting that he is the ONLY way! His ways are good and only he can make our paths straight!

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding: in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight" Proverbs 3 v 5-6

"The Lord will keep you from all harm, he will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and for ever more" Psalm 121

ETERNITY

TODAY'S PROMISE

"Calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said,

'If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it.

But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it."

- Mark 8: 34-35

TODAY'S THOUGHT

When you are absolutely convinced that Jesus died on the cross to spare you from eternal punishment and give you the gift of eternal life, the troubles of this world are put in to perspective. You know that your future-for all eternity- is secure.

Then you begin to understand how God intended you to live, and you become more willing to "give up" those things that gratify only you and pursue those things that make a difference to God and others.

TODAY'S PLAN

Can you learn to forgo your own agenda for God's agenda for you?

NEEDS

TODAY'S PROMISE

"Your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him!.... Your heavenly Father already knows all your needs."

Matthew 6: 8, 32

TODAY'S THOUGHT

Learning to recognise the difference between needs and wants allows you

to find contentment in living God's way.

The more you focus on what God values, the more you will be able to distinguish

your wants from your needs.

If you constantly feel discontented, you may be focusing more in what you want

than on what God knows you most need.

TODAY'S PLAN

Could you be satisfied if God gave you only what you needed and not what you wanted?

Can you trust that this might be best for you?

MIGHTY GOD

TODAY'S PROMISE

"The Mighty One is holy, and he has done great things for me........His mighty arm has done tremendous things!"

- Luke 1: 49-51

TODAY'S THOUGHT

It's hard to picture the baby Jesus as the mighty Gd, but he was mighty enough to create

the world, live a sinless life, heal countless people, calm storms, and conquer death.

He is mighty enough to conquer your troubles too!

TODAY'S PLAN

Do you see Jesus more as a meek and lowly or as a mighty warrior?