Year In Review

I feel like Chris and I are already full fledged into 2006. We sat down this week and reviewed some of the big items we have each month and it took us all the way into 2007. It will be an exciting year! Lots of retreats, some together, some apart, New Attitude, the starting of campus ministry for Chris, vacations, and a long awaited cruise just him and I! But before I rush full forward into another year I want to be sure I stop and recount all the ways God has been at work in my life! And boy has he been at work. This has been an eventful year. I have known more joy than ever with the birth of my son Trevor! I had no idea having two children could be so much fun. However having another baby has given me the chance to die to myself all over again. With sleepless night after sleepless night I learned how self-sufficient I really was and it drove me to a place of desperation for the Lord. I learned that only God can "never sleep nor slumber" and not have it effect him one bit. God has challenged my contentment in every area! What used to be areas of grumbling in my life by God's grace has been changed to thankfulness. Although much growth is still needed in this area, I am thankful for God's kindness to show me that discontentment is a sin in my life and that is serious, but because of the Gospel I am not hopeless! I am thankful for such a wonderful husband and the Godly ways he lead me this year and I'm thankful for two healthy, beautiful children. Yes there is much to be thankful for in 2005- God has been at more than faithful! I eagerly anticipate his work in 2006!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas Friends! I hope you enjoy celebrating the Lord's birth and the glorious gospel with your family & friends. What a wonderful Savior we have! I'm off to begin our jam packed, but exciting, next two days!

Lies I told today....

Today was a dental day for the Daukas'. It was Taylor's first time going to the dentist. I had to tell a few lies to get her there.

Taylor- What's a dentist?
Mommy- a dr. who looks at your teeth ( not lying yet)
Taylor- I don't want to go to a dr.
Mommy- No the dentist is fun (lying begins) you'll have a great time!
Taylor- Will it hurt?
Mommy- No sweetie it won't hurt at all ( another lie)

So I began to build up this dentist trip as a fun exciting adventure. Meanwhile I HATE going to the dentist!! And no matter how well I brush or floss I can't ever seem to leave without making a follow up visit to have a cavity filled. Well it turns out that it was fun for Taylor and it didn't hurt. So mommy didn't lie to her. They wanted to make her first visit positive so they only took a few x-rays and polished her teeth using watermelon tasting polish with the "tickle-toothbrush". She got her picture taken, a new toothbrush and dentist money to pick out a prize of her choice. I however left with bleeding gums, sore teeth, a follow up appt. to get a broken filling fixed and no dentist money. It's great being a kid!

We have a Walker!

Right before he turned ten months, my Trev-man took his first steps and he continues to venture out with trying to go a little bit further each time. Look out world, look out mommy here he comes!

Singles Christmas Party

Me, Andrea & Janelle

Chris & I

One of the four tables ( this was the rowdy table! )



Last night was the Singles Party. It was incredibly well done, thank you Shanks! My favorite part of the night, aside from seeing everyone all decked out in their finest, was the time of honoring others. We opened it up for people to honor one another in areas that they have seen God at work in their life. I was encouraged on a number of levels. First of all God has been at work this year! See not even a year ago we started singles care groups/singles ministry. There was a surface level of knowledge amongst the group when we began. Last night however, it was evident that they have embraced biblical fellowship and put it into practice in there times together. Another evidence of grace last night was that there were no pauses between honoring people. Chris had to eventually bring it to an end. Try to bring it to an end that is. There were a few " wait can I honor this person before we end? " And that's how it should be. We as believers should be eager and quick to honor and point out evidences of grace in others. Because God is ALWAYS at work! Eph 4:29 says "Let know unwholsome word come out of your mouth except that which builds up, as fits the occasion, so that it may give grace to those who hear." Which for me means that I need to get my eyes off of myself and study my husband,children and friends and see where God is at work and then take some time to encourage them in those areas!

So my friends I encourage you to point out an evidence in grace in someone today. Bring glory to the gospel by building up one another with grace filled words!

10 Things Every Mom, or At Least this Mom, Wants for Christmas

10. A year supply of starbucks, or even better a fresh vanilla latte delivered to my door every morning
9. A free personal trainer, and extra time in the day to actually use the trainer
8. A personal chef who will make both equally tasty and nutritious meals each night
7. A maid who will come weekly or more if needed and clean toilets, floors etc.
6. A digital camcorders that will stay on all day to capture those precious moments that happen unexpectedly
5. Free babysitting for date nights throughout the year by women who your children love and adore. Oh wait I already have that! Seriously Janelle and Andrea you girls are such a blessing to the Daukas family!!! Thank You, Thank You!!
4. A digital camera, you know one that actual takes pictures quickly when you push the button instead of taking FOREVER to capture the moment of your baby who at this point has already crawled off because it took to long for your camera to shoot. I'm sorry do I sound discontent with our camera?? You're right I am, I'm working on it.... working on saving our Christmas money to buy a new one :-)
3. Sleep... just a few more hours of precious sleep that's all I need...
2. A million dollars, I don't know it sounded good :-)
1. To grow more in love with the Saviour and his word to have a deep effect in my life! That is my prayer for 06'!

Once again my friends these are only suggestions please don't feel confined by my list ;-) And mom's feel free to add anything that I might have forgotten!

12 day till Christmas!

Well we survived a busy weekend. Shopping for a flower girl dress for Taylor, garage sale, chronicles of narnia, youth banquet, Chris re-preparing a message for sunday and then we crashed on Monday! All very fun and eventful!

Taylor was in heaven trying on dresses for Uncle Ryan & Aunt Danae' wedding!




The garage sale was well.... very cold! The Payne's brought some stuff over to sell and we were all freezing at 6:00am. I think it was 35 degrees out!! I forget it gets that cold in AZ. Thankfully by 8:00 it started to warm up! We did make some money which is going towards Christmas presents. I was hoping it was more money I could spend but my hubby informed me no it's to pay back the money we already spent. Bummer!

Later in the afternoon we headed out to the theatre to watch the much anticipated Chonicles of Narnia. Our church had purchased two differnt times in a theatre and gave tickets out to everyone in the church as a christmas gift! I personally was not disappointed by the movie. I thought it was outstanding and found the scene where Asyln sacrifcied his life for Edmond's very powerful. I'm excited to read the books to Taylor and Trevor one day.

Chris did an outstanding job on sunday. I think he did a better job Sunday than on Friday night. I'm continued to be challenged by the realization that so much of my repentance is wordly not biblical. My repentance should be Gospel motivated and filled with sorrow, hatred, confession and turning from my sin. All to often I just confess my sin and try to "Pep Talk" myself into why I need to change instead of letting the Gopsel have it's full effect in my life. I appreciate when he said that repentance leads to joy not gloom. For the gospel is pardon from sin and power to change! What hope!

Well only 12 days to Christmas. I am tempted to think of all that I need to get done in 12 days. Shopping, wrapping, baking! However, I don't want to get so busy that I neglect my times with the Lord! So on that note I'm off to read & pray.

Exciting News

Well there is two sets of exciting news:

The first is that I am officially going to the Singles Winter Retreat. I have been waiting to see if I could find a babysitter and Tiffanie ( our Sr. Pastor's wife) has offered to take both kids for me so that I can attend. At first I thought I could just go and learn and fellowship with our church's wonderful singles. But Chris has now asked me to teach a breakout session on contentment. Using my recent studies from the Art of Divine Contentment. So I better get going, the retreat is only a few weeks away!! I was going to start a blog series on what I have been learning in the book but I think I will wait to after the retreat being that I think it's mostly our singles who read my blog ;-)

The second set of news is good and not so good. Our Sr. pastor got diagnosed with strep throat and won't be able to preach on Sunday, which is the not so good part, pray for him! But Chris was asked to preach on Sunday in place of Rich. He will be preaching his message that he taught to the singles on repentance. It was an outstanding message. I'm excited to hear it again being that it was one of those messages that I could listen to again and walk away with something new. For those of you who don't know me I'm not saying that because he is my wonderful hubby. I try to always be a supportive wife but he has preached many messages, some are better than others, but this one was rich with application and truth!

And The New Winner Is....

Ok well thanks to Andrea and others I have picked a new christmas picture. Here's the deal, when I posted the "funny pictures" with the exception of the last one I just randomly picked from the 25 that we had. Turns out there was more than one good one in the bunch!

Christmas Pictures

It's that time again! Christmas picture time!!! I'm not sure if there's anything harder than trying to snap a photo of a three year old and a 9 month old. Snap a photo and have them both smiling and looking at the camera that is. But we dressed up and thought it was worth a try! On the way to take pictures at my parents house I confessed to Chris my temptation to sin if we did not get any good pictures after the hour it took getting everyone ready. He helped me see that my heart was the concern of the night not getting good pictures. Well thankfully my heart made it through and we walked away with a keeper as well as a few others. A special thanks to papa with his funny voice that sounds like he's dying, and to nana for her quick trigger finger!

Here are a few that didn't make the cut...




and the winner is....



one more cute one....


Cards coming soon :-)

Repentance

Chris spoke on Repentance Friday night at the singles corporate meeting. It was a message that I have been eager to hear. One because Chris has been working on it for over a month now and two because I really believed that there was something I needed to learn from his message. Here are his points from 2 Corinthians 7:5-11

Regarding the nature of repentance:

We need to be students of our own sin
We must cultivate sorrow over sin
We must cultivate hatred toward sin
We must confess sin
We must turn from sin

Concerning motivation for repentance Chris pointed out that:

Christ purchased the gift of repentance on the cross
Christ is exalted when we repent

I realized how rare it is for me to have sorrow and hatred over my sin. Sure I'm sorry that I sinned but I rarely take the time to cultivate sorrow and hatred for my sin. To think that it was my sin that nailed him to the Cross. It's just seems easier to say a quick prayer of forgiveness and then try to "put on" the right thoughts and behaviors. Also I haven't really been thinking of repentance as a grace gift from the cross. I am eager to start applying this message to my life! I think I am going to start with my anger towards walmart. Once I finally found everything I was looking for in that over crowded super store we decided to save ourself a long line and head to the self check out. Cause really how hard can it be to self check 20 items? Well after the first two items scanned it appeared to malfunction and it made us press the 10 digit barcode, then enter, then choose the picture of the item on a screen. Oh my, it was bad, Trevor started screaming, I was impaitent, Chris was getting impatient and Taylor was trying to be a servant and was handing every item one by one to her daddy in which he would repeat the whole try to scan it a couple of times, have it fail, type in barcode process with. At one point I honestly wondered if we were on some sort of hidden camera show!!! But I wasn't it was just yet another opportunity for me to repent of my sin.

For further study I highly recommend Thomas Watson book Doctrine of Repentance and also listening to Chris message when you get a chance.

The Kindergarten Code

I read this post on Dr. Al Mohler's blog today:

The Kindergarten Code- The Ivy League For Five Year Olds

He talks about parents who are determined to raise superior children, who eventualy will gain admission for Havard. He ends by saying
"This entire phenomenon points to the fact that too many parents are treating their children as projects to be perfected rather than as persons to be loved, nurtured, taught, and disciplined. As this article makes clear, some parents see children as an extension of ego -- trophies for social status. This is unspeakably sad." I admit that as I have begun some preschool work with Taylor this year I am tempted to think about how smart she is and how advanced I want her to be in school. Oh how wrong a focus this is.... yes I desire her to learn the skills of reading, math and arithmatic but God forbid I ever desire that more than her being saved and growing in Godliness. The job as her parent/teacher is to prepare her for the day she stands before the Lord. He will not care how "advanced" she is or what Ivy league school she has attended. No, He will want to know who she has put her trust in to save her from the wretched sinner that she is. How humbling it is to be a parent!

How I became a Reformed Charismatic

Well this seems to be the topic as of late on the blogsphere. My brother Ryan just posted on this yesterday. My post could begin and end in one sentence. How did I become a Reformed Charismatic? I submitted to the leadership of my husband in this doctrinal shift for our family. Although true I will give you a little more. I grew up in a Christian home and attended a nice little community church where I was saved. I'll quote my brother in the kind of church this was "For most of my youth anything that could be offensive to the congregation was held back from the congregation, therefore I was unaware of any controversial topics. We got a healthy dose of do this and don’t do that along with alter calls (which inherently are not wrong in my belief) and the “pray this prayer and you will be converted.” I had a high view of myself and a small view of God." At 18 I stumbled upon a Five Points of Calvinism book and devoured the material and anything else I could get my hands on concerning the subject. It didn't take long for the Lord to open my eyes to this truth in his word. I found a church that taught and believed these truths. As far as the gifts were concerned I was a cessasationist for as long as I can remember. I had an Old Testament view of prophecy, did not believe in a prayer language, and thought tongues & signs and wonders were gifts that ceased with the closing of the canon. I had scripture to back up my beliefs but I think my experience with a Pentacostal church kind of sealed the deal. - I was 16 when a friend at school invited me to attend her church. I walked into utter chaos. People laying in the aisle, speaking/screaming in tongues and that was just during worship. Let's just say I left before the sermon began. Fast forward a few years, I marry Chris, we begin our family, plant a church, then stumble upon Sovereign Grace (PDI at the time). We attended a small group leaders conference and it was there our belief in the "charismata" began to be challenged. Now It was one thing for me to hold to a doctrine with an experiencence that left me never wanting to believe otherwise. So I didn't really have a catergory for a church that practiced the gifts according to scripture. Now don't hear me wrong, I'm not advocating to base your doctrine on expereince. It just shows you how proud and immature I was at the time, well I'm still proud and immature but you get the point. This conference began a year and a half long journey of studying scripture, reading books & meeting with the Pastor from our church and the Sovereign Grace Church. Chris spent many hours on this subject. Actually he went away for a week where he did nothing but study this topic. He brought it back to me and shared his new convictions with me. Now thankfully the Lord did a work in my heart as well and I came to the same conclusions in searching the scripture but what I was left with was submitting to where this change in doctrine would lead us. I will save that story for another day. Also for scripture references on this topic see my Husband's Blog where he is in the middle of a Holy Spirit series.