From the Muck to the Mighty; My Journey with Jesus

 Oh the should have’s, would have’s and could have’s of Christmas past. How they love to steal our appreciation of the present moments we are blessed with. I feel I myself, like many others tend to take the bait of Satan in this area and unknowingly come into agreement with the harmful psychological warfare tactics that the enemy loves unleashing during the holiday season.  A pattern of remembering the trauma over the years. Remembering the loved ones that should still be here but aren’t. Remembering all the situations, people, places, things, and life you’ve experienced over the years and wishing things were different. Comparing one household to another, one Christmas tree to another one family to another and wondering the what if’s.  Last night while I was getting ready to go up bed, I had one of those moments. I sat down and cried thinking that I should have a ten month old opening presents this year.  Then crying about that led to crying about a hundred other thi...

 Ya’ll. How are we going to handle the rise of the anti Christ and the end of the world if the body of Christ keeps playing around slapping itself and seizing out like someone poured a box of itching powder all over it?! There’s a false one world religion that’s coming speaking unity and all roads leading to the same destination. There’s an anti Christ coming and false prophets that are spreading the wrong gospel. A different Jesus. This is what we are up against. Not one another.  Are we cultivating the character of Christ?! Here we are acting like we are tearing down the spirits of religion and attacking principalities, yet we let offense and suspicion tear down the very thing the Lord is calling to be built up in this time for this era?!  You want to know why generations are being lost to agnosticism, satanism, and other religions??? LOOK IN THE MIRROR.  The Pharisee’s were suspicious of Jesus.  If we can’t come together as a body of true believers seeking to...

Stepping out in faith is one of those things that we all think we can do, until we have to do it.  The word calls for us to be bold and to share the good news, yet many of us remain anxiously isolated in our comfort zones and daily routines sharing memes instead.  Are you as excited about sharing Jesus as you are about sharing your weekend plans? Are you as intimate with Jesus as you are your best friends, family or spouse? Do you know the word like you know those song lyrics or sports statistics?  Who and what are you focused on? Building up or tearing down? Sowing to the flesh or sowing to the Spirit? Praying to obtain favor and things from the Lord or praying to spend time with, worship, honor, hear from and serve the Lord?  Have you ever said, “Here I am Lord, send me?”   Then go!  There comes a time in every persons life when they will encounter Jesus Christ. At some point, every knee will bow, every tongue will confess and everything will change....

  Testimony time! Change is hard for some people, especially during the holidays. While many others handle change with ease, I tend to handle it like a cat thrown in a bathtub. Settling in here hasn’t been much different. So much change.  In many areas it’s been a blessing and the perfect fit, but I’d be lying if I said being this far away from Leah wasn’t the hardest thing I’ve ever done. While she’s amazingly independent, I always thought she’d be away at college before I couldn’t just stop by if she ever needed me for anything.   This has led to me questioning the Lord on a lot of things, and led to me wondering if us moving to Morgantown would be a good fit for the next season the Lord has coming up over the horizon.   How many of you have experienced something similar? You pray, the Lord answers, you obey, then you’re in it. You’re smack dab in the middle of what you prayed for and it ends up challenging you to grow in ways you never thought possible.  You ...

I can’t tell you the number of years I’ve spent winters in the dark. It would be dark when I’d leave the house in the morning to drop the kids off and go to work. It would be gloomy in the office with the beating of fluorescent lights my body would take all day, and it seemed like it was always extra dark as I left work, picked up the kids and headed home.  When the Lord grabbed ahold of my heart back in December 2018, He pulled me out of the darkness and into his marvelous light. I had no idea, only years later, that the Lord Jesus Christ would completely pull me out of the dark ways of the world, painfully incinerating my flesh and forever ending the dark winter cycle I had become so accustomed to as an adult.  As my love for the Lord continued to grow, I fell in love with traveling the world, spreading the gospel, seeing the sick healed and the captives set free during their own personal encounters with the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ. It has been an honor and a blessing to...

    The other night I woke up feeling restless, I scooched over to Dan in bed, and I began silently praying for a bit about the things on my heart. As I laid there on my back, tucked under his arm, the Lord decided to shift the atmosphere. I started to smell a stormy, salty sea air and the soft bed felt like damp, splintered, wood being tossed around in deep water. It reminded me of a cheap wooden raft, quickly constructed after a shipwreck. I sat up in bed to see our clothes wet and torn, to seeing a storm all around us and feeling hard drops of rain pelting my face like rocks. Instantly I was filled with fear, and an eternal trepidation as my husband laid calmly asleep right beside me. There was nothing I could do, but my mind was scrambling going a thousand miles an hour in a panic. The waves began rampantly moving us through the water as we were approaching a rock sided cliff with one small cave opening that was headed straight for us. I threw myself on my back next to Dan...

  During prayer this week the Lord took me back to tend the soil. We were in a large back yard with an area that was tilled up. There were several plants He was weeding from the garden. The different weeds He pulled would come out of the dirt with the large tap roots attached.  From the surface things looked finished and clear. Then the Lord took a sifter and began sifting the soil. What ended up in that sifter were many smaller feeder roots that broke off as the tap root was pulled.  What the Lord put on my heart is that many of us, myself included tend to tackle the immediate problem but we fail to make sure we remove everything that is feeding the weeds under the surface.  What we feed ourselves physically, mentally, emotionally and atmospherically is what hinders us or helps us grow. What we surround ourselves with and allow in our lives can either feed the soil as nutrients producing a fruitful harvest, or drain the soil of those nutrients as it regrows the root...

Testimony time!!! Let’s talk about sowing and reaping.  I remember coming back from a mission trip to Mexico back in 2021, I was single at the time, and remember shopping in the little shops before we headed home. I clearly heard the Lord telling me that I needed a ring on my finger from Him but I didn’t find one there.  I didn’t have a lot of money at the time and I told the Lord, Jesus I want what you want but I’m not spending a ton. I can’t. I remember Him months later leading me to overstock one random day, and I found the perfect London blue topaz ring. It was rose gold with a halo and diamonds down the side. The kicker was it was the exact price I told the Lord I could pay.   I got that ring and fell in love with it. It was perfect for me. It reminded me of the Lords “oceans deep” love and I wore it religiously. I didn’t have it long, not long at all when I went to a friend’s ministry event.  At that event I clearly heard the Lord telling me to give that ring a...

   One of my favorite aspects of this walk with the Lord are the spontaneous ways that we are led to just what we need, exactly when we need it. This weekend we were led to a church where the beautiful Emma Stark was holding a conference. In that room during worship the Holy Spirit fell so thick I could barely stand. In that room were people that joyfully received me with hugs and people I honestly thought I'd never run into again. And in that room, when the Lord showed up, it didn't matter one bit who was there. That room filled with so much love, so much joy and so much of His purifying presence that everything else ceased to exist. In that moment, I felt the Lord healing a part of my heart that I didn't realize was still cracked open and bleeding. I heard Jesus softly whisper in my ear, "It doesn't matter, Ash." and with that sentence the fear of man was uprooted and pulled out of my heart by the hand of Jesus himself. I think this is the part of healing th...

  The Lord is calling you. He's calling you deeper. He's calling you higher. He's calling you to become more of His and less of what this world calls "Christian" and gets away with. He's calling you, to gather all the broken pieces of the past and He is leading you, to help you put them back together again.  This morning during worship the Lord led me to an open field. There was a half broken down stage like the aftermath of a weekend music festival. I was walking the disheveled grounds kicking through trash and broken down campsites. So much mess left behind without a care or thought in the world. Our pasts can feel the same. So much junk, so much carnage, so much chaos left behind.  I grabbed a large trash bag and began cleaning. As I continued to gather things up, the ground was transforming. The season was shifting. The air felt lighter, the leaves in the surrounding trees began to change and a fresh autumn breeze began to blow through the field. As the la...

  Seems like you stuck your finger in a hornets nest, Eh Ash? One I had no idea was even there Lord. Reminds you of something Ash? A little. Mostly reminds me about how things started a long while ago and it hurts my heart Lord. It hurts my heart for the body. It hurts my heart for a lot of people caught in a lot of things that they don't realize they are caught in. Like the hand punching the foot Ash. Everyone is in their process. I remember coming into a group of friends early on in ministry. Everyone had their niche, everyone complimented one another. It was good, until it wasn't. I remember being in meetings, or worship events and this one close friend would "confide" in me and others about other people in attendance. She made it seem like she had extra intel, or that she had this spiritual superiority. She would say that the holy spirit told her this or that or that. She would point out the way a person prayed, walked, danced, or flagged and say that it was witch...

  They care Ash. I know Lord. Funny thing is what caring really looks like, eh? Fair enough Lord, fair enough. My flesh wants to rise up, to say a whole lot about a whole lot, but Jesus is my redeemer. He will fight my battles. But I also have a blog so I’m gonna keep giving this keyboard a tapity tap tap. 😂 I’ve heard the words I love you a lot over the years. The Christian community says it frequently. They call it the love of the Lord. I’ve had a lot of people voicing concerns over the last week and a half. A lot of people have a lot to say in the guise of love, concern and prayer requests. While my flesh wants to remind people to take a look at the phone calls, messages and in person conversations you have had with me over the last few years and to place your opinions and advice in an according place…. Jesus reminds me to step back and let His blood and time paint the picture.  The Christian folks love those whitewashed tombs.  No one was concerned when I was crying ...