Hearthorse
A hearthorse is that one horse who loves you more than himself. He will do anything you ask, even when the other horses give up and walk away. Why? Training for one thing. And he has a heart for you. He loves you so much he would walk through fire for you. Most horses would dump you on your tush and bolt if they even smelled a big fire. Not your heart horse. He will carry you through and trust that you know what you’re doing. Do we have a heart for God like that? A heart that says “you lead. I’ll follow. Because I trust in you.”
I like to think that I do. Then I have a day like today. It was a great and fun day, but I failed God badly. There was a woman with a painful and injured hand. I knew I should pray for her but I was afraid, I was afraid of being laughed at and afraid that maybe God would choose not to heal her and then she might doubt God. I feared a lot of dumb stuff, so I did nothing and left. Praise Jesus for my friend who was there too. She took the time to look around, see a large line up behind her of people waiting to go through the check out and said, “I see you are in pain. I promise I will pray for you.” Then we left. And she did. She prayed whole heartedly for that woman. I don’t know if the woman was healed or not because we didn’t see her again, but I do know that my friend pleased God by making a faith statement in public. And I know that I dissapointed Him because I said nothing. Do we have a heart for God? Do we love Him enough to walk through fire for Him? If not, how do we change ourselves to love Him more? I’m not an expert, but I would say from what I read of the Bible, that reading the Bible and praying is the way to draw closer to God. A great way to be fired up for Him is studying Him and remembering how Holy and powerful He truly is.
I don’t want to fail God. But I do everyday. I want a heart for Him, but I know that fear often holds me back. I am just so glad that God understands how limited I am and helps me and guides me and gives me another chance 10, 000 times a day. Praise God for His mercy, power and love.
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.
Blood Fuller
Blood fuller
Before we get started I want to make it clear that yes, I do know that a blood fuller has been proved to have nothing to do with the channeling of blood through the sword’s channel to cause the removal of the blade to be easier or for the target to die quicker. Instead the Fuller is meant to strenghthen and lighten the long blade so it doesn’t wobble like a plastic child’s sword, this was arguably first used in Japan’s Katana swords.
Now that we have covered the facts, I want to use the old myths for my imagery instead. The blood channel full and ready to strike. Weilding with passion and quickly removed to continue it’s defense.
The sword of the warrior, coated in blood and ready to strike again.
The blood channel, as a grizzly image of destruction and strength. Destruction of the enemy. Strength of the defender.
The Holy Spirit is misrepresented in many places these days. He is seen as a fluttering White butterfly, harmless, gentle, powerless. This is not accurate. Yes the Holy Spirit is gentle and unassuming -but- he is still the spirit of the Living God. When God sent his sword through Egypt did you see him as weak, harmless, or powerless? Of course not. He is the spirit of God. He is powerful. He is Ageless. And he is a warrior, and we forget that. We like to think of the Spirit as someone who encourages us and helps us with our gifts and helps us not do naughty things, which is true in part, but He is also bloodstained and ready for battle. He isn’t a pixie flying around causing magic to happen, He IS the powerhouse inside of us battling our demons with us. He isn’t floating around with a harp, he is walking boldly with his sword drawn, ready for battle. The devil is constantly attacking us, even in ways we don’t see, it’s the Holy Spirit in us who is battling for us. God called the sword of the Spirit a sword for a reason.
Going into battle in the days before guns and bombs your greatest weapon was usually your sword. Swords also had a certain claim that came with them, a claim to authority and power, not just anybody had a sword, usually only people a heritage whose background and bloodline gave them a title and a power. Sure some of your average people had swords too, but not high quality swords. Some swords even had a reputation of their own, one that the wielder inherited with the weapon. Our sword. Our Spirit, comes with His own reputation, the reputation of God and all He has done in the past long before the book of Acts. God mentions His Spirit and His Sword often. He has a reputation, but we don’t read the old Testament so we forget. Our sword also comes with a claim to Authority and power; the authority and Power of the Living God. And we have earned this sword not through our own works but through our heritage as children of God. Our bloodline has nothing to do with our DNA or our ancestry, our bloodline that grants us this power and authority in this earth is the bloodline flowing Down the Cross at Calvary and washing our feet in its Crimson Tide. Our sword is a weapon of power and authority. The spirit of God lives inside of us. Whom can harm us? And of whom shall we be afraid?
Be a Fesic
In a world full of Indigos and Wesleys, be a Fesic.
If you have ever watched or read Princess Bride (one my fave movies) you will know these three main characters. Indigo was obsessed with avenging his father’s murder, Westley was consumed by saving and reuniting with his love Buttercup, but what was Fesic’s motive? He was the giant. He used his strength many times to save these people. But why did he bother? He gave up everything. All his money went to Mad Max the healer to save Westley so he could help Indigo and rescue Buttercup. He risked his life attacking the prince’s palace. He even let them set his cloak on fire when storming the castle gate. Why? What was in it for him?
Nothing.
There was nothing in it for him. Indigo was his friend, Westley was in need of help. That was it. That was the only incentive he needed to give everything he had to them. It was a Christ like sacrificial love. Giving your all with nothing to gain.
Even for people we have known most of our lives it’s easy to feel that we have given a lot to them and deserve something in return. Loyalty maybe. Sacrifice on their part for us once in awhile. And when that doesn’t happen it makes us angry. Maybe that friend has even betrayed us in the past and yet we kept giving, but getting nothing back and nothing out of the deal has left a raw spot on our hearts. And yet. Christ keeps giving even though we have hated His people and have crucified Him. We have all been Paul on the road to Demascus at one point or another. Oh, we weren’t killing other Christians most likely, but we were hating them, we were angry, we were running from God, we were cursing Him for something at sometime, or even being mean because we saw ourselves as holy and other Christians as not. We have all ended up here, seeking Jesus because we have been knocked off our horse and now know we were wrong. But even in our cruelty we have been loved by Jesus.
Fesic didn’t expect anything for his sacrifice. He just knew it was the right thing to do.
Indigo might be cooler and Westley more glamorous, but Fesic was the true hero, like Frodo wouldn’t have made it without Sam in Lord of the Rings, Wesley and Indigo wouldn’t have made it without Fesic. Be a Fesic, be sacrificial for others and expect that your only reward is in Heaven with Jesus and that it will be greater then any reward here on earth.
We are not the messiah- Jesus is
We are deciples, not Christs. Christ in the Greek means annointed one, or used to define the word messiah. the title, also treated as a name, given to Jesus.
synonyms: Jesus, Jesus Christ, Our Lord, the Messiah, the Savior, the Son of God, the Lamb of God, the Good Shepherd, the Redeemer, the Prince of Peace, the Nazarene, the Galilean
We live in a world where the focus has turned from God’s salvation and miracles to our saving ourselves and us making things happen without a moving of God. I saw book. A book written by theologians of all people. That said that we must not aim to emulate Christ, but to instead become Christs ourselves. My lineage comes from pastors and theologians, when I questioned them on this expecting some sort of answer that showed this statement to belong to one odd writer, instead I was informed of the movement to become Christ, not Christ like. Now. Any true doctorate wielding theologian will tell you how wrong that idea is and that this move comes from people who believe that Jesus was equal to us not above us, or was simply a prophet, which is not true in any sense. Moving along because we could get stuck here for a long time, we should take a good look at Christians these days. What do we see? We see some good Christians who live according to the Bible. But we also see a fair amount of people who act (though not claim to be) as if they were Christ themselves. We hear a lot of, “we must” not a lot of “pray for”.
We must do _______ to save these people. We must do ______ to save the world. We must change ______ or else all will be lost.
I have a question as you all are questing to save the world on your own power, where’s God? “Oh. But we’re doing it for Him.” Are you? If you leave God out of your plans and even out of the final discision to so called ‘save this generation,’ or ‘save the world’ or ‘save the Church’ then are you doing it for Him? If you move the Bible around so that the words fit what you want instead of what God declares then is what you are doing for you or Him?
We claim we want to serve God by saving people. But we leave God and the Bible out of what we are doing. Then when something amazing happens we take the credit for ot ourselves instead of giving the praise back to God. We are not Christ, we can never become Christ, all we can do is try to be like Christ. We can want to save people, but we must do it through God’s power. We can want to save the world, but we must do it through God’s power. We can want to even save this generation, but we must do it through God’s power. We can not do these things on our own or else we just use God as an excuse to promote ourselves. Even Jesus, the one true Christ, while on this earth prayed for God’s blessing before moving forward, and Jesus is God Himself. He did this to show us what we must do.
If we are trying to be Christs instead of trying to reflect Christ, then we are missing the whole point of being like Jesus. We are supposed to reflect Him not try to replace Him.
Encouragement
As my mom once said: we are in the boat with Jesus. Our muscles are straining as we pull on the nets, we’re working hard and He’s there, and He’s calm. Our lives are in that boat with Him as we are called to follow Him, we are given nets to catch the fish with and we get tired and stressed because we are working hard with no resault. We repair the nets, we weave new nets, somedays we may even need to build the boat, but it all has purpose. Then when God’s time is right our nets fill to overflowing. So if you feel discouraged, don’t. Don’t get discouraged because God is in the boat with you.
All powerful, all merciful
We get so caught up in the mercy of God that we forget the holiness of God.
Listening to some of the soon to be graduates from seminary, there is a trend that is being pushed that even the future pastors believe: God does not punish.
It is claimed that God is so merciful that He no longer reprimands or diciplines. In fact if you spoke of the consequences of angering God to these people their response would be, ‘oh, but you must not forget how merciful God is.’ Or, ‘you must not judge your life on old testament values.’
That’s crazy people. Jesus said that He did not come to erase the law of Moses, the old testament still holds value.
Yes, God is merciful. He even says of Himself that He is the God of mercy. But. God sent rules to live by. He told us what were sins and displeasing and despicable to Him and He told us that we were not to do such things. He also warned us about continual sin without repentance and willingness to change. And that is not simply old testament; Jesus warns about these things too, but we somehow manage to skip over those verses to the nice ones where He talks about having power and peace through His Spirit. If you don’t love Him enough to follow His laws then do you really have His Spirit? That’s a little harsh isn’t it? Okay, let’s go back to the nice parts where Jesus gives us the B attitudes, yes, now we feel good. Have you ever kept reading past the nice blessings of the B attitudes? Jesus gives a famous sermon on how you can miss or gain the kingdom of God. We can lose our saltiness, we can dim our lights and we can hide behind believing that God is a God of only mercy and never anything else. All love and kindness and no power; fluffy clouds and cherubs, not keys of death and seraphim. We can’t fall into that. Yes, the thought that God will let us do whatever we please and we still get to go to Heaven is nice and relaxing, but it is a false belief. God is all powerful! I realize that for a long time the Church preached that God was a dictator and nothing but power and authority and skipped the mercy and love of God, that was wrong too, but at least with that we learned the fear of the Lord, what value does a God who lets you get away with everything and then blesses you abundantly just because you’re you have? Sounds like a trick to me. And that’s because it is. It’s a trick of the devil to destroy you. The devil has set up a big glowing version of Jesus, that blesses and loves and lets you be whoever you want to be without consequence of actions, so that you stop following the real Jesus and turn to this easy on the conscience, fake version instead.
Now. I am not in anyway saying that God is not all loving and all merciful, but He is also all powerful and He warns us that if we disobey He will punish us because He loves us. God wants every single soul to make it to Heaven, but Jesus didn’t die so you could go and have fun without worry of repercussions. He died so that the Vail would be torn and you could be a friend of God and not a slave. But. God is our father, and as a good father He does punish His kids. God’s mercy and Power seem to contrast each other so much that it makes sense that people struggle with only believing one or the other. How can He punish when He is merciful? How can He show mercy when He is all powerful? It’s because He is God. Think of it this way. A daddy lion has his cubs clambering all over him. They pull his tail, they chew his whiskers, they eat his food; but he is merciful to them because they are his kids. Yet. If they cross the line, especially if they have been warned already not to, he is going to punish them. Say one cub disobeys, again and again, the lion gives him another chance, and another, and then he gives him a swat. Why? Baby lion won’t survive if baby lion doesn’t learn. Now you could go many places with a lion annalogy, but this is not meant to be taken literally, lions are wild animals. God, however, is similar in the way that He loves us and forgives us, but when we go too far He punishes us; because He loves us and wants us to be saved. God is merciful to us because He does not want a single one of us to go to hell, God punishes us when we continually do wrong for the same reason. I know that I am grateful for God’s mercy everyday, because everyday I deserve to be punished, but I also know that I keed to repent and try to change from all my failings (and there are many of them) because I know that my father punishes and I don’t want that.
Do not be descouraged by this post. I am not saying that God is not a loving and merciful God because He is, but He is also a just and powerful God and we must not be deceived, He will reprimand us if we need it, and we can fall away from Him if we live a careless life. Read you Bible. Get to know God better. And aim for an NIV or NLT translation when reading your Bible, they are the ones that are the closest to the orriginal text, according to Bible translators.
God loves you. And He wants you in Heaven with Him, so don’t give up, keep striving for the cross and hoping for Heaven.
A prayer of Thanksgiving
Today I simply want to pray.
Jesus I thank you for the people who follow this blog I think you for the people who read it I thank you for the people who are searching after you or are just curious about you I thank you Jesus for the Lost Souls that you love and are searching after Jesus because you can find them and you can support them and you can guide them back to you I thank you for our brothers and sisters who fight alongside us and serve you and help your cause and pushing back the powers of Darkness. I thank you Jesus for my family personally and my friends and my pastor in my church, and I thank you Jesus for the families and friends and pastors and support teams of my fellow Christians. Most of all Jesus I want to thank you for you for you as God, for you as our savior and I want to thank you for your Holy Spirit. I want to thank you Jesus for loving us even though we’re on Lovely and thank you Holy Spirit that you are constantly within us guiding us. I want to thank you God for sending your son your beloved treasure to save us the we’re not worthy of it, I thank you for this God not just because it’s a great sacrifice but because I am sure I could not do the same if it came down to my beloved treasure or someone in my family who is extremely dear to me to sacrifice them for people who didn’t love me and even hated me I know I couldn’t do it God so I thank you that you sent Jesus because that is the greatest gift you could give anyone ever. Thank you for all you are and all you do God. Amen
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He cares about it all
God cares about so much!
We all get caught up in the master plan that we forget that He also cares about the little things, the day to day things that probably have no effect on the master plan at all. Like when you get a cold and ask to feel better, or when you plan to go to the park and pray that it doesn’t rain, or lose something and ask to find it. None of that matters for the big plan for your future! If you can’t walk in the park or don’t feel better from your cold makes no difference to the end resault of your life. You could spend your whole exisitance never finding your lost gold hoop earings and it wouldn’t change a thing in God’s master plan, but it matters to you so it matters to God. He care about more than your destiny, He cares about you.
And I will cling to the old rugged cross
Straining toward the cross and hoping for Heaven. I forget who said it, but I recall a pastor speaking on straining towards the cross and hoping for heaven. It’s such a beautiful image, and an image that we sometimes forget. We’re always straining towards the cross, because we can never actually reach it. We see the cross as lowly. We see Heaven as glorious. We think we’re straining towards heaven, but we as Christians are straining towards the cross, because without the cross you cannot reach heaven. You can’t skip the cross and get to the gates. We think because the cross is lowly it’s not something to be sought after, but the cross is the true Stairway to Heaven. Without those pieces of wood and those nails we have no hope. We must strain for the cross. And hope for heaven.
Carried in the cross 