{"id":17541,"date":"2023-02-09T04:29:45","date_gmt":"2023-02-09T10:29:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/?p=17541"},"modified":"2023-02-09T04:29:50","modified_gmt":"2023-02-09T10:29:50","slug":"beaming-with-pride-and-joy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/?p=17541","title":{"rendered":"Beaming with Pride and Joy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Living in Austin, one of the many perks for me is to be a part of my two youngest grandsons\u2019 lives. Last Saturday, Shawntel and I spent the day at the Delco Center watching my youngest grandson, Bryson, in his District Wrestling Match. Though a sophomore, he is determined, strong and agile thus moving from junior varsity to varsity. Pride and joy made his mama and me wild, crazy fans. We were delighted with his winning matches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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While the two gals watched Bryson, the dad, Ryan, was in San Antonio, TX watching Brennan, a Senior this year, play baseball. Just a little gloating. They won 16-5.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Okay, I am beaming with pride and joy with this season of life when I get to be a part of my last two grandsons’ many activities. Yesterday, was another one. I left the family center where I volunteer, to get to Brennan\u2019s Regents School of Austin. It was signing day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The high school beams with pride and joy when athletes sign to a university. Brennan will be playing baseball for University of Mary Hardin Baylor in the Fall. Just look at us wearing our UMHB shirts to declare He is ours and we\u2019re mighty proud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pride and Joy \u2013 Yes, that\u2019s where I\u2019m going today. We, moms and dads, grandparents, aunts and uncles and other folks take ownership of those we raised or helped raise. We are beaming with pride and joy when they are born and they haven\u2019t even accomplished anything except for their slide through the birth canal, and making their big debut!

Even St. Paul said in Philippians 4:1, \u201cTherefore, my brothers and sisters, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, dear friends!\u201d In 1 Thessalonians 2:20, he said: \u201cIndeed, you are our pride and joy.\u201d He spoke of those who were serving God with all their hearts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, we are joy-filled over the accomplishments of our children and we can even be joy-filled over our own accomplishments. But, in truth, our greatest PRIDE and JOY is in found in the ONE WHO sincerely deserves it — Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, if we think we have an indescribable love for our kids \u2014 it no way compares to how wild God is for us. He is cheering us on even greater than we cheer for our children.

He wrote all about His love in His Holy Word and His wild display of affection for us is written there \u2014 living and active: Zephaniah 3:17, says: \u201cThe Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing.\u201d Three words jump out to me: delight, quiet and rejoice. \u201cHe will quiet you with His love.\u201d His love takes delight in us, and that settles us, offering a sense of peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The underlying message for me is that God loves us just as we are. I love the thought that He takes undeserved delight in us. We do not have to do anything to earn it. It is a gift. Of course, that prompts us to respond, but we don\u2019t have to perform in order to receive it. We cannot buy it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That love of God is after you and me. It doesn\u2019t care about mess-ups and our past. His love is way beyond our crazy love for our kiddos. He is beaming with pride and joy when we conquer another challenge and have the faith to finish strong and win another victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

May we live our lives making God beam with pride and joy over our accomplishments of trusting Him in our darkest times; holding our heads up high when the flood waters rise; loving the unlovables when they mess up; feeding the hungry; giving a cup of cold water in Christ\u2019s name. Why don\u2019t we give Him even more reasons to beam with pride and joy because of OUR great love for Him and others?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Living in Austin, one of the many perks for me is to be a part of my two youngest grandsons\u2019 lives. Last Saturday, Shawntel and I spent the day at the Delco Center watching my youngest grandson, Bryson, in his District Wrestling Match. Though a sophomore, he is determined, strong and agile thus moving from…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17542,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25860,25861,25862],"tags":[25858,4719,1210,25852,1769,25859,40,41,25857,25856,2679,4452,25850,25854,19583,25855,25851,25853,6524],"class_list":["post-17541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-signing","category-university-of-mary-hardin-baylor","category-wrestling","tag-1-thessalonians-220","tag-baseball","tag-blog","tag-cedar-park-high-school-wrestling","tag-christian","tag-god-beams-with-pride-and-joy","tag-inspiration","tag-joy","tag-joy-and-crown","tag-philippians-41","tag-pride","tag-pride-and-joy","tag-regents-school-of-austin-2","tag-signing","tag-take-delight","tag-umhb","tag-university-of-mary-hardin-baylor","tag-wrestling","tag-zephaniah-317"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17547,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17541\/revisions\/17547"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}