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.
Lent day 2
Blog · Devotional · dreams do come true · encouragement · free · guidance · Jesus · lent · Love · power of God · Prayer · searching · The Bible · True Joy

Lent day 2

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Even the little concerns

Lent day 2
Today needed a photo, and if I’m honest I’m not sure everyone will get is being said in this one because this understanding of God is something we all struggle with.
God cares. Hang on, don’t roll your eyes, I know we have all heard this term missused and misrepresented. Just (as my new yoga teacher would say) breathe into it for a moment. God cares about you. Every tiny, crazy, dumb problem; every monumental catastrophe, He cares.
My example may sound odd but give me a chance.
You see that guy in the photo below? That’s my horse. He’s been my horse for over a decade. We have had big crazy dreams, big crazy failures and many learning moments. I’ve been worried about him lately. It’s been really cold (though he usually prefers that) and he has been acting odd. Distant. Even a little aggressive. I checked him over and he’s physically fine, so I chalked it up to the cold air and waited. Then it warmed up and nothing changed. Now I’m concerned and on with horse behaivior experts trying to see if something is wrong on the inside. With a little work on a few bad habbits his aggressive attitude faded away, but he was still playing shy with me. It felt like something I should deal with myself, I have trained horses for several years, I should be able to solve this on my own. Yet I was worried about him, and a little sad to see him acting that way toward me who loves him so much. So I prayed. I’ll admit my prayer began along the lines of “sorry to bother you with this God,” because like I said, it didn’t seem like a big thing, just something that was bothering me. Skip to today. I’m out in my yard, my horse comes right up to me, which he hasn’t done for the past several weeks, his ears are pricked but I give him some space and let him do his own thing. His own thing turned out to be following me around the yard, wanting to be close to me even though I had no treats, nuzzling my hair and being his normal self. It was so nice to realize that God wasn’t bothered by my odd, seemingly unimportant request. I know this story was long, and most people probably can’t relate to it, my point here is that no matter how silly your request seems, even if you feel like you should be able to deal with the problem yourself, even if you’re worried that God will see it as too small for his power, He still cares, it’s never too small of a problem for God. We get it into our heads that God likes big flashy miracles, but don’t forget that God was not in the Wind, He was in the whisper. Ask Him. No matter how silly small or unimportant it seems, bring it to God and watch for him to make things better. Like a loving father He’s never ashamed to kiss and  bandage our scrapes.

Lent day 1
Christianity · CS Lewis · dreams do come true · encouragement · Jesus · lent · Love · power of God · searching · still fighting · The Bible · True Joy

Lent day 1

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Be not cast down

“But do not be cast down.” Said Aslan, “evil will come of that evil, but I will see that the worst of it falls upon myself.” -The Magician’s nephew.
I don’t really need to say it. Maybe all that needs to be done is to change one word here:
Jesus
“But do not be cast down.” Said Aslan, “evil will come of that evil, but I will see that the worst of it falls upon myself.”

(Don’t forget that CS Lewis himself claimed Aslan as a reflection of Jesus, so every moment with the lion has a great meaning.)
Evil came. People weren’t created evil, we were created in the image of God. Yet evil was here. Long before there were any people anywhere, jealousy grew in the heart of one of God’s angels, and evil crawled it’s way into existance. Yet God saw all this coming, why didn’t He stop it? I have no idea. Some may theorize about it, but I am not so bold, I try not to touch what I don’t understand lest I confuse someone else also. But God saw this evil coming and Jesus knew He was going to bear the worst of it Himself in order to save us. The crazy part is that God would want to save us! He could just make new people, start everything from scratch, yet He already loved us. He still loves us, and it breaks His heart when we fall away, because He loves us so much that He sacrificed His most precious treasure to save us. We mean so much to Him that it’s hard to believe, yet it’s true.
As We Begin Lent let us remember why we have the freedom to Lent, a reason to Lent, and why lent begins and ends. It begins in Jerusalem, it climaxes at the cross, and it ends at an empty tomb.

Keeping up appearances.Revelation 2:12-17God was with the church of Purgamum and blessed them, but they sinned against Him so He turned His hand against them. Do we care too much about our church’s appearances? Many churches do. In Purgamum the church wanted to appear as the rest of the city appeared, so it conformed to the city’s evil ways, in doing so the church lost God’s favour and was punished. There are certain characteristics that a church should have, such as following the bible and behaving as Jesus did, being welcoming and kind to others and ministering to the community. But to change to better please the outside world can strip the church of her Christianity and cause her to lose God’s blessing. What’s that scripture? Be not conformed to this world. We are not to indulge in the sins of the world around us, we are to, what? Be transformed by the renewing of our spirits. We can love the people of this world and show them the devotion of Jesus without becoming like them. It’s hard, but Jesus commends those who are faithful in their service without becoming stained by sin. Jesus served and saved people all over the place during His time on earth. Never once did He start sinning like those He was there to save. We may feel we need to add some of the ways of these people into our lives to better witness to them, and though the intention is on the right track the thinking is not exactly correct. We can’t sin to make sinners stop sinning, trying to just makes a sinner out of us and then the devil wins another one. So let us pray that God shows us how to help this world without becoming a part of it.
Christianity · Devotional · encouragement · free · guidance · holy spirit · Jesus · power of God · searching

Keeping up appearances.Revelation 2:12-17God was with the church of Purgamum and blessed them, but they sinned against Him so He turned His hand against them. Do we care too much about our church’s appearances? Many churches do. In Purgamum the church wanted to appear as the rest of the city appeared, so it conformed to the city’s evil ways, in doing so the church lost God’s favour and was punished. There are certain characteristics that a church should have, such as following the bible and behaving as Jesus did, being welcoming and kind to others and ministering to the community. But to change to better please the outside world can strip the church of her Christianity and cause her to lose God’s blessing. What’s that scripture? Be not conformed to this world. We are not to indulge in the sins of the world around us, we are to, what? Be transformed by the renewing of our spirits. We can love the people of this world and show them the devotion of Jesus without becoming like them. It’s hard, but Jesus commends those who are faithful in their service without becoming stained by sin. Jesus served and saved people all over the place during His time on earth. Never once did He start sinning like those He was there to save. We may feel we need to add some of the ways of these people into our lives to better witness to them, and though the intention is on the right track the thinking is not exactly correct. We can’t sin to make sinners stop sinning, trying to just makes a sinner out of us and then the devil wins another one. So let us pray that God shows us how to help this world without becoming a part of it.

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Do you know Him?
Christianity · CS Lewis · Devotional · dreams do come true · encouragement · free · guidance · Jesus · Love · power of God · searching

Do you know Him?

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“It is well. You know me better than you think you know. And you will live to know me better yet.” -The magician’s nephew


Aslan chose the cabby, the humble man of low means and education, to be his first king of Narnia. The Cabby was the only one who had shown a knowledge of someone greater than he guiding things. In the dark and lost feeling of the world not yet born, the Cabby chose to sing a hymn, and in the midst of them up sprung a deep song of no words; Aslan was singing the world into place. The Cabby didn’t feel he deserved to be anything great in the presence of the Lion. Yet when he saw him he knew him. He had always known him. In a different land, by another name, and never yet in person. And here he stood, and he knew the Cabby too. Because when he couldn’t walk by sight, he walked by faith. He grew to be friends with Lewis’s Christ figure in a world where he never saw or heard him, he simply believed.
We can’t see Jesus and rarely do we hear Him as though He were physically standing next to us, but if we choose to seek after His heart and try to know Him in this world, as the lion says, “we will live to know Him better.” So when we stand before Jesus He will say, “I have known you long, do you know me?”
And trembling, we can reply, “no Sir, least of all, not in a regular manner of speaking. Yet I feel somehow, if I may make so free, as how we’ve met before.”

The wicked lies of the devil lead to death
Christianity · Devotional · free · Jesus · Love · power of God · Prayer · searching · still fighting · The Bible · True Joy

The wicked lies of the devil lead to death

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The devil has been lying since the beggining. It’s one of the things he’s good at. He lies about your value, he lies about your identity, he lies about God, but he most often lies about himself. He pretends to be good, kind and loving. He pretends to be cool and exciting. He uses words like equality and acceptance, and shared power and universal unity, but he doesn’t mean it. In the end, those who follow him will never feel equal, accepted, powerful or unified. Because he is the ordinator of lowlyness, seperation, weakness and devision. He uses words from people that make it sound like if you follow his path you will be going down a good and kind route, but you aren’t. He makes God sound like He is judgemental, inconsiderate and unaccepting. So what does he do to replace God? he replicates Him, he makes a new version that is labeled with acceptance and understanding and equality, yet this false god lacks everything the original had. For starters it’s fake and God is real. Second, it has no authority, no power, it’s just there incase you need someone to pray to. Third, it has no rules, hence the accepting and understanding part. And of course it isn’t higher or greater than anyone, hence the equality part, because we as people can never be equal with the true God. And people come to this puppet god, they believe in it and worship it and call themselves Christians, thinking they have a found an easier to follow version of Jesus. Yet they have found the devil in disguise. The devil’s biggest lie is that he cares about you. He doesn’t. You will never rule in hell, you will never have authority in the devil’s realm, why? Because he wants to be the ruler, the king, he wants equality with God and that’s why he was thrown out of Heaven. You will never gain all the devil has promised you, he will only give you enough to keep you coming back, never more. God is not unaccepting. He accepts us as we are, then His love changes us. We don’t change first and then find Jesus, we can’t change without Him. Yes, He does not accept our sins -any of our sins- but He died so that we can come to him sins and all, and he will purify us and set us free from them. Yes God is intollerant to sin. He wouldn’t be God if He wasn’t, but He loves us enough to take us as we are and to help us change. God considers us everyday. He is so considerate of us that He forgives us. He knew we would sin, so He always made a way out, first with sacrifices, then with the sacrifice of His son, because of that we can now sacrifice our old selves and become new creations in Christ. All of this was possible because God was and is thinking about us.
God judges our sin. Yes. But He gave us a solution in Jesus. We sin everyday, but God looks at the heart and mind and knows when we are trying to do better and knows when we are truly sorry.
The devil is conniving with his lies and makes them easy to accept and easy to follow. God is just and righteous in His truth, sometimes that is hard to accept and hard to follow. But one way leads to hell and the other to Heaven. Don’t follow the easy path. Seek after the true God. Pray and seek His heart, then you will be truly free and accepted by the one who loves you.

Starving
Christianity · Devotional · encouragement · Love · Prayer · searching · The Bible

Starving

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Starving

Have you ever been so hungry you felt like you were starving? I’ve seen animals get to the place where they eat plastic containers, because they once held food and still smelled like something you could eat. That’s starving. Our guest speaker last Sunday spoke on hunger. She asked: Are we hungry for God? Good question. We look around and see a world that is so hungry for God, but they don’t realize it, so they settle for anything that seems like it might satisfy that knotting and aching. Yet all they are eating is plastic that smells like food, it’ not real food. The only satisfaction for our pangs of hunger, is God. It may sound like a cliche, but reading your Bible and praying is truly the only way to satisfy the need. As the English say, we need to strap on the ole’ feed bag. We pick and nibble at God’s word and prayer, but do we get so into being with Him that we are willing to strap ourselves to Him? Do we set aside time and dedicate to reading the Bible and praying? Or do we just treat the filling of our hunger like a child with a bag of snacks, picking out some of what we like and then hiding the rest under the couch so we don’t have to eat it?
We are in a starving world, yet we don’t reach out and take from the only one who can satisfy us. His hand is open and ready to give to us, yet we play shy. Like my horse last night. I brought him out extra oats. But did he come and take them from me? Of course not. He tossed his head around and acted like I had nothing to offer him. Why? Because he was being a brat, he did take his feed eventually because he did want it, but he had to pretend like he didn’t, just for the sake of it. We know God has what we need, yet we refuse to take it from Him, we shake our heads and act like He has nothing to offer. The difference between God offering to us and us offering to someone, is that eventually we will give up and move on, but God will keep reaching out no matter how many times you reject him. I am so grateful for that character in him. So? As our guest speaker asked last week, are you hungry?

Devotional

We are not sharks

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Sharks swim to stay alive. It has been proven that most sharks will suffocate if water is not moving through their gills and filtering in oxygen. That’s just how God made them. We act as though we are sharks. Keep moving! Keep driving! Onward and upward! Go! Go! Go!
So when God decides to make is stop, even to make us pause, we panic. We feel as though we are going to suffocate. An image flashes before our eyes of us sinking to the bottom and never moving again. Do you know what happens if you take hold of a shark’s tail so it can’t keep swimming? It panics. It thrashes around and fights to get free. Of course it does, it will die if it stops. But we won’t. Sometimes God makes us stop to protect us. Sometimes God makes us stop to get our attention. Sometimes God makes us stop just so that we take time to be quiet and be near Him. He always has a reason for making us stop, so don’t panic. In moments of ‘stop’, be still, quiet down and ask God what He has planned. He has a plan you know. You just have to listen to Him.


P.S.
Please do not go around harassing sharks to see if these facts about them are true. Scientists have done the work already, and in such a way that the sharks were not harmed. So please. Leave them be.

Palms laid before him
Devotional · encouragement · guidance · Jesus · lent · The Bible

Palms laid before him

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Lent devotional 35

Enter Jerusalem, the city streets are filled with celebrating and cheering as a humble and gentle donkey colt strides down the streets.
Palms are laid at the sweet animal’s feet and a sense of pride wells in the donkey’s heart. He is carrying Jesus, as all animals know Jesus is the king of kings, God’s one and only Son; but the donkey senses sonething, a feeling of pain in the heart of his Lord. The donkey is confused and turns his head to nuzzle the King’s foot, a gentle hand strokes the animal’s neck in response. The donkey stretches hard to see Jesus’ face. The beaming smile is a shock to the donkey because it can sense the sadness within the savior’s heart. All the gentle colt can do is continue to carry his Lord.
The animal saw both joy and sorrow and could not understand, but the joy was love for the King’s people, and the sorrow was knowledge that these people were only a breath away from condemning their King to die; but one small donkey showed his love and carried the weight of the savior as the savior carried the weight of the world.

Jesus was recorded as having great anguish as He neared Jerusalem. Anguish that simple human senses could barely begin to understand. To suffer is one thing, but to know you are about to suffer is another. If we saw the suffering that would come in our lives we as people could not handle it. Jesus knew every bit of His suffering to come and that caused Him greater pain than He would have experienced if it had all been a shock or surprise. Days of waiting are too much to bear, but He bore them for us. The false love of the people must have stung and the lies of Judas must have made His heart sick, but He suffered them all because He loves us. Oh what a love that is, who else could give such love? Who else would? Only Jesus loves us so much.

Credit to owner for image

Let your stones fly
Christianity · Devotional · dreams do come true · encouragement · free · Jesus · lent

Let your stones fly

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Lent devotional 30

Do not let your giant’s shadow block out the light from the Son- He is there and He knows you and He wants you!

Ah the giants. We see them, hear them and manifest them in our own minds. They are big, ugly and can proliferate into thousands of clones that kill all the good around them. Where do our giants come from? They come from a dark section of your mind that fills you fear and nausea until you can’t think. That section could be caused by what you see in the world around you, or by a life circumstance that has you afraid, it could be because of a lack of faith that God can take care of things, or by lies that you have been told that bang around inside your mind and make you doubt who you are or where you’re at or the goodness of God. But He is good. Your giant may look like a huge oozing mass of all your fears staring down on you ready to destroy you, but God has given you armor. You are protected by His Spirit, by His Salvation, by His Faith, by His Righteousness, by His Truth, by His Readiness. He fills you, He enters your heart and mind and fights for you. Your Goliath cannot defeat you if your eyes and mind are fixed on Jesus. He is there taking care of you. Have Faith in Him and courage because of Him. Don’t let your giant win, no matter how big he may seem, your God is bigger.

Finding Jesus
Christianity · encouragement · free · Jesus · Love · Prayer · searching · The Bible

Finding Jesus

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Where is Jesus?

His knees ached as he prayed, he swung back and forth in agony as his soul searched for something, anything. Around him others prayed to their gods and the pain was clear in their mumbled as they searched for the same thing. A woman was kneeling beside him, a book clasped in her hands as she prayed silently, a dim smile spread across her face. He leaned over to her. ‘What god do you pray to?’
She whispered back, ‘I pray to Jesus.’
‘Oh, what is Jesus the god of?’
The woman thought a moment, ‘well, He’s the God of everything. There isn’t anything that He isn’t God over.’
‘Really? Who is He?’
‘He’s the one who died for you. He came to earth from Heaven and was sacrificed for our sins. Then He rose again and took deminion over death. Now we who love Him can join Him in Heaven.’
‘Interesting. How did you get to know Him?’
She began to answer but a rod came down with a crack between them, ‘no talking!’ The guard bellowed, ‘just do your worship and leave.’
The woman went back to her praying, the book clutched against her heart. The man looked around him, some people beat their heads and chests in anguish, some had knives and drew blood from their palms, some merely mumbled to themselves the same things the man had heard them say every time they had come, he looked at the statue of the god he was praying to, it seemed so indiferent to him to his needs, it never died for him, it didn’t care about him. Then he glanced at the woman again, she was smiling, then she laughed softly, she cried but it seemed like a happy cry. He glanced at the guard, the person had moved on. He leaned forward, ‘how do I contact her god? Do I need a sacrifice? She seems to have just come here. He whispered again to the woman.
‘How do I get to know your God?’
She grinned, ‘just talk to Him. Call Him by His name, Jesus, God, even Father.’
‘That’s it?’
She nodded. He began to pray, ‘um…Jesus. Are you there?’ Suddenly a wave sweapt over him. Peace. Fear of the power that surrounded him seized his soul, but the peace chased it away. Then he began to cry as another wave hit him. Love. It was sufficating and beautiful.
The guard rang the bell that said free time to worship was over. The man got up and saw the guard take the book from the woman as he collected all the religious items from the worshipers. He saw her stop herself from reaching after the book. She left. He left. But the feeling of her God didn’t leave him. It followed him as he went to his house. On the road he saw the woman again, he rushed over to her and she startled back from him.
‘Don’t be afraid. But I have to know. Why does it feel like your God is following me?’
She smirked, almost laughed and then said gently, ‘because He loves you.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. He wants you and is with you wherever you go. I don’t have to attend the worship hour in the chamber to be near my God, He is always with me, I go because they keep the Bibles and I love holding His book in my hands.’
The man didn’t know what to say, the woman suddenly whispered, ‘guards coming.’ And dissapeared.
The man returned to his home, sat on his bed and said ‘Jesus. Are you here?’ The peace and love swept over him again and he decided that day that he would aim to get a Bible too during the allotted worship hour, then he could learn more about this God who clearly loved him. Now when he prayed he knew someone was listening and cared about what he had to say, now when he cried he knew someone was there to comfort him. Now he was loved. And had purpose, if that purpose was simply to worship the god called Jesus.
He never saw the woman again, but as he learned about Jesus and gave his life to Him he knew that some day he would meet the woman again in Heaven, and then he would thank her.