Sometimes you are hurting but don’t notice it because you are busy carrying all the burdens. Take a moment and breathe and connect with your feelings. Then take those feelings and turn them over to God. When everyone is relying on you it’s easy to feel like you have to keep a brave face and hold on. But God. God never called you to be strong in yourself, He called you to be strong through Him. Take your pain, anger, fear and sorrow and place it all in His hands, then walk away. I don’t mean stop praying about it, I mean stop holding onto it like it’s your burden to hold. His yoke is easy remember? His burden is light. He is not going to give you a bunch of stuff to deal with and then walk away. God will carry you. Trust Him.
Author: carriedinthecross
I am a young woman who grew up in British Columbia. In BC was all I ever wanted; I had my poodle (Max) and all my friends, Saturdays at the Vancouver Aquarium and Sunday afternoons at one of my favorite beaches it was paradise. But God had a different plan for my life and my dad's job landed us in Alberta and now where I remain, in small town Souris Manitoba. The transitions from paradise to prairie were difficult and I will admit that now 10 years later I still refer to home as Abbotsford BC. Through this crazy pathway trek across Canada I have had one true constant, God; and though none of it was easy, everything that has happened in my life has formed in me a true lasting friendship with the one I call Immanuel. Because no matter how far from home we are God is with us, and thanks to God I have found an almost completely over looked beauty in Manitoba. If you open your eyes you will see that God has planted wondrous things everywhere you go.
Open your ears
Open up your ears and hear. Just like how a dog will perk his ears so he can hear something better, we need to perk our ears to hear God’s voice better. We need to make an effort to listen and to hear what God is saying. It probably won’t come in the form an actual voice you hear, but rather in the form of a feeling or a thought that coincides with the Bible and is clearly not of your own mind. So, cup a hand over your ear and listen, His voice is something we don’t want to miss.
And just like that….
And just like that….
So. You go about your day totally fine. You meet some people, you smile and laugh, and then the next day hits and boom, just like that you have a cold. You were fine the day before, but somewhere along the line you were exposed to a virus and now you are sick. Your cells are fighting the virus with all they’ve got and all you can do is walk around and be host to the battle. One day the cold will leave, but not without a struggle.
Sin is like that. You are fine and go about your day, you expose yourself to some minor things but are not affected by them, then some more minor things add on and some more, until one day you look at yourself and realize you are no longer living like a Christian. But God. God is like your white blood cells, He is fighting the battle against your sin. Unlike your cold, however, you are not just a host to the battle, this battle you fight too. You walk away from sin, you spend more time with Jesus. You fight everyday with your desires and you teach yourself to have only one desire, Jesus.
It’s funny how Jesus helps us fight to get closer to Him, when He is who we are trying to draw closer to.
He battles for us even when we don’t live Him or acknowledge Him. He is our true friend.
Beyond science
Beyond science
Have you ever known someone with an illness? I mean a real illness not just a cold. I have. The moment when the doctors say, “We don’t know, it’s beyond where our science is at.” Is a scary moment. We rely so heavily on science and doctors that when they have no answers we become afraid. Who will help is if the experts don’t know what to do? Where will go from here?
But God.
God made you. He is beyond the science because He created the science. He knows all of it. All of how you feel and where you are at. He knows. He has always known. We feel that means that He should fix us and that we shouldn’t still get sick and injured, but that’s not how things work. It makes mad and hurt when God does not heal, but sometimes the miracle is simply His sustaining power. He is God, He knows it all. He has all the answers, we just need to trust in Him.
He knows
He knows
Those battles you fight. Those problems and pains you go through that you tell no one about. Those needs, fears, desires, fallings, sicknesses, screams in the back of your mind, dark pits that circle, boxes you can’t climb out of, endless nights, days that won’t go away. All of it. Jesus is there. You may tell no one. You may never ask for help or sympathy, but He knows. It’s the moment when you feel you have been fighting alone all night long and you suddenly feel an arm around you. You look and see no one, then you realize, it’s Jesus. Those days when you felt like no one could hear or see you, but He hears and sees you. You feel like you scream alone, but He holds your hand and screams with you until your screaming is done and you feel like you will make it. He will make it so you can make it. You fall, but never hit bottom because He catches you.
No matter what. Jesus is there. In all my circumstances- But God.
Be persistent
In a battle of wills between a dog and a cat, the dog will win. Because the dog is persistent and the cat will get bored.
When you fighting your battles, remember, even if your strength diminishes and you feel you can’t go on, if all you do is keep going forward you will eventually succeed. Never doubt the value of being persistent.
When we pray we can easily feel like nothing is happening and some days we want to just give up. But God. God is working on things we cannot see, yet. We will see the outcome if we don’t give up and walk away.
Slaves? Servants? Or children.
How did God manage to enslave us into doing His will? Answer. He didn’t. So why do we serve Him? Because we love Him. And why do we love Him? Because He loves us.
The world says that we who serve God simply don’t have the power to live on our own. That we aren’t strong enough to accept that it’s all up to us. But it has nothing to do with our inability to care for ourselves. It’s harder to serve someone else than it is to only serve Y O U. We are not slaves to God, doing His will under a lash. We are His beloved children. If a parents asks you to do something or to not do something, why do you listen? Okay. Yes. Some kids listen out of fear. But most kids who obey do it because they love their parents and want to make them happy. Why do they love their parents? Because their parents love them. They care for them and help them because their children are the most important things in the world to them. In return the children love and obey their parents because there’s a part of you that always says, I want to be worthy of this love they give. You don’t need to be worthy they don’t require you to be worthy, they simply love you, but when you love them back you want to do all you can to make them smile. We can never be worthy of God’s love. But we can love Him back and show Him that we care for Him by serving Him, obeying Him, and honoring Him.
Noble gases and God
Noble gases
When looking at the periodic table there are many different groups of elements. You have your highly reactive nonmetal elements you have your highly reactive metal elements you have your non-reactive and semi-reactive and the list goes on.
But all of the elements are trying to be one thing, Noble. Noble gases are the gases that are completely stable. All the other elements want to be like the noble gases. Some elements try and lose one or two electrons so they can reach the stability of the noble gases, other elements are trying to gain electrons so they can become like the noble gases. And yes people will argue that this is science and that it has to do with the pull on the electrons and that these gases don’t have a preference to be Noble, but let us set that aside for now. The noble gases, and bear with me here, remind me of God. We as people, whether we realize it or not, are always trying to be more like God. We see it in the way people continue to create, to understand, to grow to be more than what we are. Christians are always trying be more like Jesus, that’s a given. But I think all people want to reach God whether they know that’s what they are doing or not. Like the elements, it’s set into us to want to be close to our perfect creator. We all want to be perfect as God is perfect, even if we don’t realize it. But without knowing Jesus we will seek after false idols and false goals that we feel will complete us. But only Jesus can complete us. Just as the elements give away parts of themselves or try and gain parts of other elements to try and reach that stable perfection, we try and mimic other people and gain more things, or we give everything away and try to be minimal, all in a constant strive to be perfect and stable. But we can never be perfect, only God is perfect. But praise Jesus that He lives in us! Though, we can never be perfect in this world, the one who is resides within us and perfects us by His presence.
God’s love is more than a chemical reaction
Happy Valentine’s day!
God’s love is more than a chemical reaction. His love is more than what our minds can comprehend. You can’t synthesize it in a lab, you can’t inject it into your veins, you can’t rewrite it, you can’t change it, you can’t edit it. God’s love is so great that He permits us to come to Him as we are and then He changes us into who He knows we can be. Like a butterfly coming as worm only to be changed into the favorite of all bugs, we come to Jesus as nothing and He makes us all we can be.
Whistle
You can be as brave as you make believe you are.
Remember that line in the King and I? I love that line, it reminds me of sound of music when she sings her way to the front door because she is afraid. Music is amazing. All creatures sing, even rocks. Don’t believe me? Well, that gets into molecular science so it may not be a well known fact.
Make a list in your mind of all the creatures and other organics which make a type of music.
I can list geodes, dogs, dolphins, birds and seashells off of the top of my head. I’m sure you can list a whole bunch of others.
I would like to focus on wolves at this moment. Canines sing many reasons. When they are sad, or lost, or frightened or simply because they want to. People are like that. We sing for all reasons too. God loves song. Look at how often He speaks of singing. The biggest book of the Bible is mostly songs. God loves to hear us sing. Singing is such a release. It takes your emotions and let’s them out. That is why worship is so important. It’s singing to the Lord. Expressing our emotions in a raw amd open way. I heard once that singing in the Spirit has become a rare thing. We don’t hear it so much anymore and I’ve listened and have noticed how true that is. But when someone is blessed to sing in the language of Heaven it’s like… everything. It sounds like a balm to the soul.
We tend to hold it all inside and keep our emotions to ourselves. But we shouldn’t do that. We need to be discerning about who we share our emotions with, but we can always, openly share them with God.
So the next time you don’t know what to say, open your heart up to sing. Maybe God will even give you song. You will never know if you don’t try.
Carried in the cross 