Author Archives: Becky Pliego

About Becky Pliego

I am grateful because God, in His grace, called me out of darkness and into his admirable light. When I did not look for Him, He found me. When I was in a pit of sin, He rescued me. I am not walking this road alone, my family is always with me, and we love Him, because He loved us first.

Praying the Psalms – Psalm 32-

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 Saying Grace
Blessed Are the Forgiven
A Maskil of David.
Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah
I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not cover my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah
Therefore let everyone who is godly
offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found;
surely in the rush of great waters,
they shall not reach him.
You are a hiding place for me;
you preserve me from trouble;
you surround me with shouts of deliverance. Selah
I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding,
which must be curbed with bit and bridle,
or it will not stay near you.
Many are the sorrows of the wicked,
but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord.
Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous,
and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!
O Lord, I am grateful, grateful because you have blessed me in spite of all my iniquities.
Thank you, because you have forgiven my transgression;
because my sin has been covered with your blood.
Thank you, because of Jesus’ sacrifice you don’t see my sin but Him, who is my Redeemer.
Thank you, because you don’t count up my iniquity, but count me righteouss through the blood of Jesus.
Don’t let me walk in deceit.
Draw me to you when I sin.
Give me a contrite heart,
a humble spirit willing to ask forgiveness.
Don’t let my heart be hardened, O Lord.
Don’t let my body grow weary,
let my find, at the foot of the cross,
forgiveness and hope.
Father, that I may come to you in prayer,
in prayer day and night.
That I may find you,
that I may find in You alone my hiding place,
my strong tower.
O Lord, preserve me,
surround me,
instruct me,
teach me,
counsel me,
and help me to obey,
to follow your voice today.
I am glad in you today, O Father!
You are my joy.
You are my song,
You alone are my God,
and in You alone my soul
is satisfied!
I am forever grateful for the song of deliverance which you have put in my mouth!

Becky

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>Doxology

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Katie Lloyd Photography
After all this wonderful banquet, in which we have been feasting on the Word of God, I know that we can be sure of at least two things:
1. We still have a long way to go, we still have so much to learn, to grow, to change; and it is only through the help of the Holy Spirit that we will. After all, if we have been called to eternal life, we are Daily On Our Way to Heaven…
2. We are not in darkness, we have the Word of God to enlighten our paths, and this should make us praise God every day, every hour, every minute.
In his commentary to the epistle to the Philippians, John MacArthur writes what is exactly in my heart for each one of us as we end this series of Doctrines in the Kitchen.
“Paul began the concluding portion of Philippians with a doxology. The English word “doxology” comes from two Greek words, doxa (“glory”) and logos (“word”). Thus a doxology is a word about glory; it is an outburst of praise and adoration that honors and ascribes glory to God.

Doxologies in Scripture are fitting responses to doctrinal truth… 

True worship flows from divine truth…
A doxology is also an appropriate response to all that God has done for believers…”
So, my dear friends and sisters, let our mouth sing praises to God today!
“To our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen.” 
Phil. 4:20
“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! 
How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
“For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”
“Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?”
For from him and through him and to him are all things. 
To him be glory forever. Amen.” 
Romans 11: 33- 36 ESV
“Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, 
according to the command of the eternal God, 
to bring about the obedience of faith— 
to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! 
Amen.” 
Rom. 16: 25-27 ESV
“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, 
according to the power at work within us, 
to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, 
forever and ever. 
Amen.” 
Eph. 3: 20-21 ESV
“Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling 
and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, 
to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, 
be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, 
before all time and now and forever. Amen.”
Jude 24-25 ESV

Soli Deo Gloria

Becky

Wrapping Up the Series: Doctrines in the Kitchen

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“My doctrine shall drop as the rain,
my speech shall distil as the dew,
as the small rain upon the tender herb,
and as the showers upon the grass”
Deut 32: 2
WOW! We did have a wonderful feast, didn’t we?
I am grateful for each one of the ladies who contributed to this wonderful banquet.Thank you for all the effort, time and prayers that you invested in your articles. Thank you to my beautiful daughter Annie, to Katie Lloyd and Rachel for their generosity in granting me permission to use many of their beautiful photographs in this series. Thanks to J for making our beautiful button.  I am also grateful for each one of you, Readers, who followed along, for those who left comments, and for those who quietly read and pondered. I am grateful for each one of you, I truly am.
We learned so much while reading about so many beautiful doctrines in the Bible. What do we do now with all these?, you may ask, with all these words in my heart? What’s next?  Many words you read here were probably new for you, many others challenged you, others gave you hope, and some others, I am sure, made you cry.
Dear friend, the most important thing you can do now is go to the Father. Pray, pray earnestly, that He will draw you to His Word. That you will find your delight in His Word, in the beautiful truths hidden in the Scriptures, and that the Holy Spirit will speak to you clearly and open you eyes to see and your ears to hear.
We all are living in different seasons in our lives, some of us are still homeschooling our children, others are nursing babies and changing diapers, others are enjoying being grandmothers. We are exactly where God, in His divine providence, has us now; and we should be happy and content in that season. Some of us have more time to read more books, but others don’t, and that is OK. If you only find time, in this season of your life, to read only one book, let it be, by all means, the Word of God. Let is be your delight day and night, your comfort, your strength, let it change you, abide in it, memorize it, repeat it to your self, to your children. Drink from it, until you thirst no more.
If you are in a season of your life when you have more time to read “big books”, and to study, then you are in the perfect moment to invest time in younger women. Help them, teach them, give them godly advice and godly example. Be a blessing to them! Just as you may prepare a nice dish to take to a young mom who has just delivered her third baby; so you can prepare a feast of the Word and teach her while she nurses her baby. Give what you have. Be generous and share with younger mothers what you have been given.
I love doctrine, I love it so much because  for so many years I did not have any structure in my spiritual life and was very easily deceived. Now I face another danger. I can become a woman who knows her doctrine back and forth but doesn’t live it with passion. J.C. Ryle says it well,
“Doctrine is useless if it is not accompanied by a holy life.
 
It is worse than useless; it does positive harm.
 
Something of ‘the image of Christ’ must be seen
and observed by others in our private life, and
habits, and character, and doings.”
I pray that if you are like me, passionate about sound doctrine, you and I  may be also passionate about living it in our private lives, in our prayer closets, in our our habits, and with our husband and children. May God help us!
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This series ends this weekend, (tomorrow, I invite you to come and read the closing post of this series in which you’ll see what is the best response we can have after receiving sound doctrine), and some of you have asked us what’s coming next.  Well, we will love to keep communicating with you, and the easiest way will be through our Facebook page. We will keep it updated with good links to different articles, (many of them written by our contributors in the Kitchen), good recipes, book offers, etc…   And God willing, we may cook something new for you in the future!
Once again, thank you, thank you for you kind response.

 

Soli Deo Gloria!
Becky

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Respecting Our Husbands by Eileen Lawyer

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Eileen Lawyer is a very dear friend to me and a sweet sister in Christ; she has been a beautiful and faithful example to me on how a wife should submit herself to her own husband with love and all due respect. I am grateful to the Lord, for bringing godly women like her on my way.

Thanks for being such a wonderful friend, Eileen!

As I read through the many delightful posts on Becky’s blog, I am filled with great joy that there are so many women across the boundary lines of states and countries, that love the same God that I do. It reminds me, again, that our God is big. He is the God of all creation – of heaven and of earth. Thank you Becky, for asking me to join a fabulous group of ladies who have been blessed with wisdom and knowledge. I pray that this post I write will encourage all of you, as yours have done for me.

Respecting our Husbands

When ladies get together in the kitchen (or anywhere) they like to chat. It is how we get to know one another – how many children we have, where do we attend church, what books we are reading, what our husbands do, and so forth. What we say about our family members is an easy way for others, who may not know them, to get to know them. So what we say about our families (and others), and how we promote them is extremely important. Our words must be chosen carefully. Kindness and love must reign. We do not want to gossip and we do not want to back bite. With this in mind, I would like discuss Respecting Our Husbands.

Two weekends ago, my family and I attended one of the many weddings that will be held this spring. The vows were not surprising, but they were, none the less, very important because through those vows, the world became a witness of the bride and groom’s commitment to each other and to God. The husband was admonished to love his wife and the bride was encouraged to respect her husband. Have you ever thought about the difference in the commands? Husbands are to love; wives are to respect (see Eph. 5).

We all understand that God has wired men and women differently – women enjoy Jane Austin stories, men like explosions. One of the wonderful differences He has created in us, is the fact that men need respect. We know this is true because the Bible tells us to render them respect. But what does respect look like so that it can be rendered? Let us turn to God for our answer.

1 Peter 3:1 says, “Wives, likewise wives, be submissive to your own husbands….” Again, in 1 Peter 3:6 we read, “…As Sarah obeyed Abraham calling him lord.” Sarah is commended for her obedience to Abraham calling him Lord and master. When we submit to our husband’s authority, that is showing respect. When we praise him to our children, that is showing respect. When we organize our home in a manner that is pleasing to our husbands, that is showing respect. When we defer to him how to educate our children, that is showing respect.

Obedience is one of the outward displays of the respect you have for your husband. And your respect for your husband has greater consequences than you can imagine for in obeying him, you are obeying God. And in obeying God, you are blessed!

When we respect our husbands, others respect our husbands. Look at Psalm 31:23 “Her husband is respected at the city gate, where he takes his seat among the elders of the land.” Why is her husband able to sit at the gates with the other elders? Because he is respected by the men of the city. The only way that can happen is if he is respected at home. And that begins with us.

Let’s return to chatting in the kitchen. Chatting refers to light, easy conversation. Conversation refers to words, and words can be both a blessing and a curse. These are ways to show respect for our husbands when we speak about them, or to them: Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bone (Pr. 16:24); a gentle answer turns away wrath (Pr.15:1a); the tongue of the wise commends knowledge (Pr. 15:2a); A cheerful look brings joy to the heart, and good news gives health to the bones (Pr. 15:30). Therefore, when we respect our husbands with our actions and our words, even to others when our husbands are not around, our attitude will reflect back to us, making us lovely in the eyes of God. Husbands and wives lift each other up with respect and love as God has instructed us to do.

I know there are some husbands out there that many wives feel are not respectable. So, do you only respect them when they deserve it? Is that what God says? No. God gives no qualifiers to his command. He says, “Respect your husbands”. When you don’t, you are telling God that He doesn’t know what He’s talking about. But, how can He not know when he’s God – your Creator, your Savior? Your husband may not be respectable, but I do believe that if you begin to speak to him in a manner that renders respect and act toward him in a manner that brings respect, he will become more respectable than he was. (see 1 Peter 3:1-2). You will be blessed by your obedience.

According to the Apostle Peter, women who submit and obey their husbands are beautiful.

“Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.”
(1Pe 3:3-6 NIV)

Submitting and obeying is beautifying because obedience to God can only come from a heart that belongs to God. It is He that has made it beautiful. We know that “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” (Mat. 12:34) So if our hearts, which belong to God, are filled with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, and our mouths are praising our husband, what greater blessing can there be?

May you be women loved by God, full of virtue, the greatest admirers of your husbands, and their biggest fans.

“Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value.
She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life.”
(Pr.31:11-12)

Eileen

©Eileen Lawyer

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And We Are Raised with Him by Rebecca Stark

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Rebecca Stark is a woman who has challenged many of us to study God’s Word. She has invested a great effort into a project of several years, and her arduous study is clearly seen in her project: The Theological Term of the Week.I encourage you to subscribe to her blog, you will be blessed indeed.

Thank you, Rebecca for sharing in the kitchen with us today,  and thank you also for sharing the best recipe for Beer Batter Deep Fried Halibut on your blog.

Katie Lloyd Photography
If you are a believer in Christ, then the good news of Easter brings you wonderful personal benefits. Yes, Christ’s resurrection makes a bold statement to the whole world, declaring to everyone everywhere that Jesus is ruler and judge of all and that he ought to be worshiped. But for believers, the resurrection is more than that, because we are united with Christ in resurrection, and that changes things for us.
For one, the resurrection means that we can look forward to a glorious future. Christ’s present resurrected life is a promise to those who belong to Him that when He returns, they will be brought with Him into the same resurrected life.
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. 23 But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. (1 Corinthians 15: 20-23 ESV)
Death, says Paul (quoting Isaiah), has “no sting” for the believer. Not that death, both our own and that of our loved ones, doesn’t hurt, because of course it does. But the hurt of death is temporary, like the pain of childbirth. Death ushers in a brand new eternal reality—the reality of resurrected life—and in the end, all our tears will be wiped away and forgotten in the glory of what will be.
I could go on and on about the resurrection life to come, but I won’t. I’ll just say that I am eagerly anticipating my resurrection body. Paul tells us that the kind of body that Christ had when he walked the earth after His resurrection and with which He ascended and now rules from heaven is the same kind of body that we will have when we are raised at His coming (1 Corinthians 15:42-49). Our resurrected bodies will be a reproductions of the one the man of heaven has. Just as our identification with Adam brought us perishable bodies, our identification with Christ in his resurrected life will bring us imperishable bodies.
There is a time in our lives, if we are healthy, when our bodies are getting stronger and better.But we all have a turning point when we begin to see from experience that our bodies are perishable. We can’t help but understand that we are dying, little by little, and that our bodies will just keep on withering away for the rest of our lives. I am still strong and healthy, but I’m not what I used to be. I look forward to what call Paul calls a spiritual body, which might sound like something wispy and unsubstantial, but is truly more real—stronger, healthier, and more substantial—than the body I had when I was in my prime. Best of all, my spiritual body will be incapable of any withering. “When I was in my prime” will be a nonsense phrase in the age to come.
We have a future: We will be raised with him. Hooray (or better yet, praise God!) for a future resurrection and imperishable resurrection bodies!
And there’s more. We look forward to being raised with Christ when we enter into the life to come, but there is also a sense in which we have already been raised with Christ.
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus…”(Ephesians 2:4-6 ESV)
The resurrected life that comes into completeness at our glorification when we receive our resurrected bodies is already within us. We have been made alive together with Christ and a new sort of life—not resurrected physical life, but resurrected spiritual life—has begun. Our new life is grounded in our union with Christ’s resurrection.
We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. (Romans 6:4-5 ESV)
If you are a believer, you have already begun to live in the realm of the resurrection. This new life you live in the power of the Spirit came to you because you have been united with the risen Christ.
I’ll admit that it doesn’t always feel like I live in the reality of resurrected life. I’m guessing that I’m not alone or Paul wouldn’t have had to write letters urging believers to live lives that are true to their new reality.

“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is,seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” (Colossians 3:1-5a ESV)

Here’s what I think this means: If we have been raised with Christ, then our minds and hearts should be where he is, and he’s in heaven. How can we live in our new raised-with-Christ reality if we still love the earthly passions that are in us? Being what we are means that we must put aside the things we once loved and the passions we once followed as the old kind of person we once were. We are called to have new loves, to seek heavenly things, and to live according to the fruit the Spirit produces within us.
Are you a woman who is raised with Christ? Then Paul calls you to “present yoursel[f] to God as[one] who ha[s] been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. (Romans 6:13 ESV).” This, you see, is where the doctrine of our present resurrected life gets practical. Yes, it’s a command, but it’s a command with resurrection power behind it. It’s a command with a reason, and the reason is what fulfills the command. It’s a command, you might say, to go ahead and be what you already are in Christ. It’s a command to live out the truth.
Hooray (and praise God!) for this, too: Resurrection now and the power of the Spirit to live as new women with new lives!
Rebecca

©Rebecca Stark

 

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