Deanna Doss Shrodes

I am so tired of this mentality, I must speak to it. This is making fun of the typical sayings such as: "I complained that I had no shoes until I met a man with no feet." I understand this line of thinking, especially after traveling and ministering in third world countries. The fact that the place I'm staying at doesn't have WIFI is a relatively small problem in comparison to the fact that many of my friends don't have water. I get it!

Happy Sunday!! Anyone enjoying the cinnamon banana oatmeal recipe I posted yesterday ? Yummo!   Today I'm blogging at a place dear to my heart ~ Lost Daughters , where I'm the Spiritual Columnist. The topic is: The Beauty of Coming Out of the Fog and Finally Being True to Ourselves. If you'd like to follow me there, c'mon over! Either way, have a FAB-ulous day! Mine will be super busy with church and a newcomers gathering at our home. I always enjoy these nights of welcoming people into our home and the church family.  This is day 28 of the church 40-day fast. God has been breaking through in some areas we've long prayed for. I can hardly wait to see what He's going to do today!  

In my book, JUGGLE , I give a lot of tips about setting ourselves up for success on  hectic days. One of my favorite things to do is to prepare something for breakfast the night before and wake up to it. This recipe is one I found this past year and I love doing this on Saturday nights as it makes Sunday morning breakfast easy and super yummy. It's all ready when we wake up -- all we need to d o is dish it up and eat it.    While the recipe calls for ba nanas I also sometimes use dried cherries.It calls for old fashioned oats, but sometimes I also use steel cut oats, which is one of my favorites. When I am making it with cherries, I omit the cinnamon and instead use a teaspoon of almond flavoring. FANTASTIC either way! Definite ly be sure to use the non-stick cooking spray and note that sometimes I have to soak my crock pot for a while to get it clean afterwards, but it's worth it.  

Right now our church is on a corporate 40 day fast. To be clear, the entire church is not on the fast. Only 70 people have made a commitment to fast for 40 days, but still...I think that's pretty significant that this many people are committed to persevere for that long, together. I have been believing for huge things on this fast. The Bible says some things will only happen by prayer and fasting. I've been believing for specific things so much I have even asked one of my unbelieving friends to pray for me. (She actually did! Thanks Laura.) You know you're getting desperate when you're asking the unbelievers to pray. Ha ha! Many of my prayers are about reaching hurting people in our city and breakthroughs for  Celebration Church and I have also prayed about things I am longing for personally. One of those things I've never shared with anyone but a few people privately is for a retired pastor's wife to come to Celebration. Not one in transition. Not on...

"Let heaven roar, and fire fall, come shake the ground with the sound of revival!!!" ~Like a Lion I could not be prouder of the women and girls of Celebration Church . Last night many of them came out for W.O.W.W. night at the church (Women of Worship and Warfare) to cry out to God on behalf of our families, our church, our city, our nation and our world.  THEY. WENT. AFTER. IT. Nothing like Pentecostal girls who know how to chase God! Here are some photo highlights of the night -- all photos courtesy of Rachael Rice. What can stop us? What can stand against us? NOTHING. Kaitlyn has such a tender heart. So glad she shares it with us... Sunshine prays over North Tampa... Joining together as a unified force for CHANGE! Cindy knows how to reach God's heart. Love. This. Woman. Angela, sweet Angela...loves God and others, so much. Mary...one of God's gifts to me. So thankful for this lady. Joining together in unity, pre...

I can hardly believe my baby turns sixteen years old tomorrow. Her birthday is April 21 but we had her party this evening. I always wanted a daughter. And nothing compares to the blessing of her. So grateful for sixteen years, with Savanna Rose... Yeah, so...I'm a princess. My brother STILL enjoys making faces behind me when I'm taking a picture... Cupcakes, cupcakes and more cupcakes Friends of all ages came to celebrate  Ready to serenade me? Hanging out on the patio Yeah, so we had a few cupcakes. Alexa, Cheyenne and George stopped in to give their love and well wishes! Chillin...  Once it got dark Savanna and her friends gathered around a fire on the patio. Part time princess, part time ballerina...Multi-tasker Beautiful girl...we love you

Some girlfriends took me out this week and treated me to a night on the town and then presented me with this little gift...an "EASY" button. You push it and you hear, "That was easy!" I pushed it, and pushed it and laughed myself silly. :) For all the silliness, here's truth: Life has it's twists and turns, but it sure is a lot easier when fully relying on God, and the supportive people He provides. There's nothing like the power of God and community. So grateful. I am blessed.  

"God is too good to be unkind. He is too wise to be confused. If I cannot trace His hand, I can always trust His heart." ~ Spurgeon Storms come in life. Strange circumstances. Unfair and senseless situations. Sometimes it's spiritual warfare - clearly something devil-sent.

I look back when I was dating my husband and think of how simple life was back then. Not that we didn't have any problems in life. Everyone has problems including teenagers, which is what we were. (He was still 19 when I married him. Yeah, we practically raised each other. Ha ha!) You can't turn back time, nor would I want to for some reasons. (Namely that I have my three amazing offspring!) But just for one day, or even a few hours, I'd like to go back to when our greatest concern was hoping we could spend time together before curfew or wondering why the school meatloaf was orange. I remember the exact moment these photos were snapped and what I felt like in that time. Oh for just a moment of that weightlessness... We're 27 years into our relationship and I'm so thankful we have each other and even more thankful we have Jesus. I love you, babe.

“I'll take fifty percent efficiency to get one hundred percent loyalty.” Samuel Goldwyn, U.S. Film Producer I often share with those I'm coaching about loyalty. In job coaching we talk about hard skills vs. soft skills. Things like knowing Microsoft Office or how to operate a forklift would be a hard skill. Things like honesty and loyalty are soft skills. It really doesn't matter how skilled you are, if you aren't loyal nothing else matters. I can teach someone to do a lot of manual skills. Matter of fact I could instruct someone who isn't even a Christian how to present the Bible in a compelling way. But I can't manufacture a pure heart.

Yeah, it contains typos, but I liked the pic too much not to share it.   A while back I wrote this critically acclaimed much loved post among my friends about  what to do about Facebook status guilt trips. Due to the soaring popularity elevated stats from that post, I followed up with my failed attempt at responding to vaguebooking. Not to be outdone by those two blockbuster well received posts, I ended the vaguebook series of sorts with writing about why I stopped responding to vague Facebook statuses entirely. A lot of people seemed to really relate to these posts. Evidently I'm not the only one who loathes vagueness. Down with vague. Let's kill it in it's prime. Smash it to social media bits. It's on like bing bong,  Jack! Since vague-arity a cousin of vulgarity to those who hate vague seems to be heavily making the rounds on my newsfeed this weekend I thought I would share two ideas:

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke  Our church is fasting together as a congregation for 40 days, until May 10. Last night I preached a message from Isaiah 58 entitled, “The Fasting Compassion Connection". Did you know fasting and compassion are directly connected? There will be no breakthrough as a result of fasting unless we have God's heart  of compassion for other people. This means addressing injustice, specifically.  The people in Isaiah's day learned that all of their fasting produced absolutely nothing since they lacked genuine compassion for others. This isn't my word, it's T HE word. (Read all about it in Isaiah 58:1-12.) The people wanted blessings from God but did not care deeply enough about the needs of others. The wounds and injustices around them were not on their radar. And so, God did NOT HING in response to all their sacrifice. All they ended up doing was giving u...

To understand where a person is now, it helps to know where they've come from. I believe it's even essential to know where they've come from. Photo Credit: Photo Logic, Creative Commons We often judge people without knowing their story, which is sad. It's pretty pathetic that we judge them at all, but anyway... I was blessed to lead someone to Christ in the last few years who had been out of church for many years. Some had judged them for being away from God or church which only drove them further away.