SBentley

@DaveEDanna Really happy for you Dave! 🌅

It’s after 11pm and I’m catching up on some work on my day off, while my wife and Baby Alvin sleep (🤫😴🤫) but I can’t help be filled with gratitude 🙏 Mom & Dad only stop hanging out with Baby Alvin to do projects, or take the dog out. I couldn’t have asked for better parents 🙏 today was a good day, a very good day 💙

@Bryan_Duncan 🎶Better coffee a millionaire’s money can’t buy!🎶

Here’s what I used to elevate my perspective lol #NothingReally

@gmk_julie @WifeyNaomi 🤣🤣🤣

Marked safe from being under the delusion that just because 1 founder, or Puritan, or church father believed something then that is what ALL founders, Puritans, or church fathers and indeed all of Christendom and Western Civilization believed for time immemorial.

@the_coral_lea A well-designed island can be the center of great entertainment! Ours is absolutely essential to feeding friends and family!

After moving to a house with a kitchen island, I am now anti island.

@Bryan_Duncan “Hide” is a bit of a stretch. 🐣

I'm sorry.. is this how we hide #Eastereggs now? And we wonder how everybody decided that they deserve free stuff 😂🤔😏

@gmk_julie Gonna be stunning! 😍

Flower arrangements done. China, glassware, linens ready to go out to tables in the morning. Food almost all ready. Husband is putting finishing touches on yard. Lot’s of prep to celebrate what has already been finished, secured, and conquered for eternity.

@DaveEDanna @MsCecileB Folks obviously have used the gas to ignite real logs in the fireplace. It sounds like you now use artificial logs 🪵 Hence the confusion. Btw real wood heats up a room beautifully. 🔥

@MsCecileB The gas fireplace generates a lot more than I thought it would 😅🤣

What is this, and is it supposed to be full 👀

@gmk_julie I simply couldn’t love this post more! Such a testimony to God’s blessings poured out on us when we walk in obedience and wisdom!

15 years ago my husband, Tom, and I boarded a plane for Kona, Hawaii with our 4 sons ages 2, 4, 6 and 7. The plan was to stay for 1 school year. This was to be a 9-month opportunity to enjoy a tropical island experience while Tom took a Jr. High teaching position he'd been offered just 2 weeks prior. He started that same day. His principal picked him up at the airport and I was left to find a place for us all to live. We ended up staying 4 years, adding a 5th son during that time. We would have stayed longer if it weren't for 2 things, the first being my mother-in-law contracting a rare and untreatable cancer. This coincided with the realization that while island life was an absolute kick for little boys, it wasn't great for pre-teens and teens if we wanted to instill any kind of drive, work ethic, survival mentality. Life was frankly just too easy there. During that 4th year the Christian camp near Sequoia Nat'l Park that we had spent the last 9 summers working at offered Tom a year-round position which he agreed to take if they would hold it for him till the end of the school year. This was an answer to prayer in that it meant we would be living just 2 hours from all 4 grandparents and in the rugged mountain environment our growing boys needed to become hard working men. Sadly, it was my own mom who died suddenly a year after our return, followed soon after by Tom's mom, and then my dad. Those years were marked by incredible loss. But also by incredible gain. The mountains and forests did exactly the job we had hoped in forming determined, disciplined, driven, daring young men. Our oldest son, Titus, became a butcher and at 19 left home to take a great job as a meat cutter in Montana. His younger brother, Joel, followed him there at 18 leaving a window cleaning business he had started the previous year in the hands of his 17 y.o. brother, Nathan. Joel then started that same business again in Montana. The next year both Joel and Nathan got married and branched out into installing permanent outdoor LED lighting. They both grew their individual business in 2 different states for a year all while figuring out how they could be making a far superior product to the one they had been installing. This year they each sold their window cleaning operations to other young men in their churches and joined forces to launch a brand new permanent outdoor LED lighting company this time with lighting systems and apps they designed themselves and metal tracking manufactured here in California by their own team. Yesterday Joel and his wife boarded a plane for Honolulu, Hawaii. The plan is to stay however many months it takes to launch and establish a branch of their lighting business there and then return to Montana... Our almost 17 y.o. son, Samuel, leaves for Montana in a couple weeks to run Joel's business in his absence. We wanted hard working men, we had no idea the Lord would cultivate that in them as early and to the extent He did. The timing is in the Lord's hands, as is every other aspect of our own and our kids' lives. We do our best to make wise and sometimes risky decisions for their sake. Sometimes it goes as we planned, sometimes it doesn't. But it always goes according to God's plan, and will always work out for their good, for our good and for His glory. Frankly I'm nervous for them all. There seems to be so much at stake. I lay awake at night worrying how it's all going to work out for them. How can they just leave everything and move to Hawaii? And then I remember the looks on our own parents faces as all 4 of them came to see us off at the airport 15 years ago to take their precious grandchildren to an island thousands of miles across the ocean. God will be just as faithful to our children as He was to us and to our parents who took their own risks and had their own adventures. And He'll be just as faithful to our own grandchildren, the first of which is expected at the end of June.

@farmingandJesus Bahahaha! Staaaap!!

Wait for it ….. 🤣

@Bryan_Duncan @chalackey 😂☝️

@chalackey @Steves4ever Lol one lady specifically came up to thank me for pointing in the right direction at the end of the song I said well if you hadn’t been to heaven, I wanted to leave instructions

Play the #pantagestheater in Tacoma sure didn't take long to take down the Taft Taylor tour and put up Michael W Smith LOL #AlmostFarewellTour

@Bryan_Duncan @chalackey 🙌So Perfect!

@Steves4ever @chalackey Thanks by the way on the concert, I would tag the ending with a single stanza from I surrender all it just puts the cherry on top

@chalackey @Bryan_Duncan Oh man!! You can still croon a tune buddy!! Goosebumples!

@Bryan_Duncan My fav part

@tomascol @donnaascol I have to say that I’m guilty of lumping them all together. I’m learning better.

I love @donnaascol! Our early morning discussions are a gift from God. Today’s was especially challenging—> Wife: Help me understand the various Reformed Baptist camps. Me:

@DaveEDanna Just . The . BEST! 🥰

Long day Needed this 🤠

@Bryan_Duncan I know!! Why is everything so much more complicated away from home?🤷‍♀️

OK, so now I know why only people don’t want to go places… is at home at least you know where everything is lol 😂 #ObservationsOfAging

@Bryan_Duncan Still … 💛

@Steves4ever Well, I gotta say it was a long time coming

"Man pops ... you are good! I know I have said before I legit like your music but jamming to it today and just had to let you know it... " Devin Alan Duncan text message from my youngest son yesterday #highlightomyDay

@HeatherACofer 💛Not a waste!! Not at all!!

A reminder: our cultivated skills are of value far beyond using them as a career. I spent a significant amount of time studying piano growing up with the intent of possibly pursuing a degree in music. However, the Lord very clearly changed my plans. My husband and I married young, went to a small Bible school, and began having kids at 21. Some felt like I was possibly wasting all the time I’d spent investing into piano, especially the hefty classical aspect. It was something I had to wrestle with to some degree, too. But the Lord has increasingly convicted me since then that cultivating skills like have such far-reaching value, and amazing potential to bless my very own family. Whether it’s inspiring my children who are musically inclined, drawing us all into worship when the grumbles and squabbles need to be driven out, or showing my children the tangible, joyful outcome of discipline over years, or teaching the appreciation of varying types of music, it’s been a means by which I can bless my family. This in turn has blessed me, too. My older kids were getting ready for their enrichment program, and the twins were fussy. They love sitting near me and “singing” while I play, so I decided to sit down and entertain them. I wanted to capture a snippet of this, when my other kids began joining the fun and turn it into a dance party. Pretty soon I was laughing so much I could hardly play 😂.

@5Solas2 The “Lol” is true however. 😂

Neither one of those statements are true.

#IFollowJesusBecause… for a brief moment I saw God‘s purpose for everything… And then I lost it 😂 😏