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.
Just give in
Devotional · encouragement · free · guidance · lent

Just give in

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Lent devotional 19

No one is coming to save you. Just give in.

The devil has a consistant lie that he tells people, ‘you are alone and no one, no one at all, is coming for you.’
You see he wants to destroy us. That’s his whole purpose, and it’s easier to get people to give in if they believe that they are alone. People stop fighting, Christians give up, sometimes holding on to your own faith takes all the strength you have.
Being hated, rediculed, rejected, thrown away, criticized, beaten, just because you are a Christian makes you wonder if it’s worth it. The pain grows with every comment in your youtube chat feed, everytime your Christian post is blocked as pornographic material on a gaming site’s wall, everytime people stop being polite to you in the grocery store because of your ‘God is Love’ T-shirt, and then the devil whispers, ‘you’re alone. There is no God here. No one is coming to save you. Just give in. Cooperate. Become one of us and this will all go away.’
He’s good at what he does.
But Jesus is worth fighting for. Even if your only proof is the pounding in your heart that says ‘I have hope.’
Don’t forget, someone is coming for you. Someone is dropping in with an army to rescue you away from your tormentors. Jesus is coming to save you. If Jesus isn’t real then there is no point to anything, but He is real, we know He is, we’ve met Him, we’ve called on His name and seen Him answer. In the end Jesus takes us home. The devil wants to barrage our minds with hate and despair until it infects our souls, but we know the truth, and the truth is that Jesus saves.
Sometimes you need to step back and take a break, let your mind rest from the constant banging from the infected on the doors of youe safe house. You are cured and that causes them to hate, because they see the death inside them more clearly when they see how someone who is alive acts. You can share the cure with them, but they don’t always want it, sometimes all they want is for you to be infected too.
When you need to rest and can’t take anymore then just close your eyes and speak Jesus. I once read a wall hanging that said something along the lines of, ‘ask God for patience with the small sorrows, and for courage with the big ones, then close your eyes and go to sleep because God is awake.’ I forget who wrote this but it is so good. When you need a break just give it to God and take a break.

but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
Isaiah 40:31 NIV
https://isaiah.bible/isaiah-40-31

Devotional
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How can we accept others where they are at, when we can’t accept ourselves where we are at? God meets us at whatever point we are at in life, we have to stop feeling like Jesus is waiting for us to come to Him after finishing the race; He is right here, arm around our waist, helping us limp to the end. Stop being hard on yourself, you’re making it, just keep going.

Speak Jesus
Devotional · dreams do come true · encouragement · free · guidance · Jesus · lent · Love · Prayer · searching · The Bible · True Joy

Speak Jesus

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Lent devotional 18

I will speak Jesus and the devil will flee because he knows that name and what it means for him.
Darkness is inevitable, there will always be darkness in this world because it is dying. People cling desperately to things that don’t matter, trying to make it feel like they aren’t about to be consumed. But there is a name the darkness knows and flees from. Speak Jesus. The devil will lie to you. He will try to make you feel lost, left behind, confused, worthless. Speak Jesus. He will show you that you are found, accepted, loved, wanted, valued. Jesus is coming back to take us home. The darkness of this world will not haunt us in the presence of Jesus. Where Jesus is there is no fear. He is light. Brilliant light. When this world dies we won’t be with it. Imagine seeing Jesus coming and picking us up in his arms and laughing and smiling, holding us close and saying, ‘come on precious, let’s go home.’
Jesus drives away darkness, present darkness and eternal darkness.

Fear no darkness
Devotional · encouragement · free · guidance · Jesus · lent · Love

Fear no darkness

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Lent devotional 17

There will always be people who want to stomp on your light and squash it out. But remember that -like a glow stick- when stepped on, part of your light will stick to them as they walk away. Even when they hurt you, because your light scares their darkness, God can use that moment to stick a bit of Himself to them so that eventually they find Him and their darkness fades with His glory. Don’t be afraid of the negative moments that you have with people, because if you show yourself a true believer and respond by turning the other cheek it will scare the negative people off, because they don’t know how to deal with that. And you never know what God has done through you in that moment.

Oranges
Devotional · Jesus · lent · Love · True Joy

Oranges

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Lent devotional 16

Never forget the imortance of oranges. They are sweet and full of vitamins. You can use every part except the stem in food, they are a bright pop of color annnnnnd, they didn’t need to exist. The world and every animal or insect that eats oranges would have been fine eating a different fruit, in fact, the world only requires 1 fruit that has the same nutrients as oranges or grapefruit or any of the other fruit in that catagory. That’s why they are so important, because the world doesn’t need them, God simply chose to make them. It pleased Him to create them because He knew we would enjoy eating them. God cares about the little things that make us smile. He takes of the big stuff too, but He also likes to give good gifts to His children, sweet things that are unnecessary, like oranges.

St.Patrick, the true story
Devotional · Jesus · lent

St.Patrick, the true story

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Lent devotional 15

Patrick

In the midst of human sacrifices and superstitious fear the voice of a mother holding a sick child cried out, “with all the gods we serve is there no god of mercy?”
In the same area, out in the fields with his flock, cried another voice, “as a slave in the land of my captivity I have found freedom in you God.” That was the beginning of Patrick’s mission to Ireland, he wasn’t even Irish, but he was a Christian. As a boy his father’s religous pious irritated him, but as a captive in a new land, brought as a slave by Marauders, he found that his mind traveled back to God. Alone with his sheep Patrick prayed about everything, and found God near and ready to answer. After God caused Patrick’s sheep to be the only healthy livestock after a year of drought, the man was then brought before the clan chief. Patrick gave all the credit to the one true God who saw him in his weakness and helped him. This caused the chief’s wife to ask Patrick to pray for her son. After God healed the bed ridden child the clan’s priest devised to have Patrick killed, but our loving Father made a way for his servant to Escape and find his way by boat back home. Then after troubling dreams Patrick returned to Ireland twenty years later to find the human sacrifies to have gotten considerably worse, as had the famine and disease. The priest of the clan ,after seeing Patrick had returned, demanded the man walk the ‘trial of fire’ to prove his God true. Patrick agreed to walk fire laced walkway to the pyre for sacrifies but said that the priest of the pegan gods had to walk with him. Without looking back to see if the pegan priest followed, Patrick strode to the fire and prayed to God in his heart, we don’t know what he prayed but I suspect it went something along the lines of ‘but even if you don’t God, my trust is in you.’ Patrick had ash and flame fall all around him, but like the three Hebrew boys in Nebuchadnezzar’s day, no flame touched him; the clothes of the other man, however, lit on fire and he ran away.
After that Patrick and the son of the chief went through Ireland spreading the gospel and telling people, ‘yes, there is a God of hope and mercy, His name is Jesus.’
The true story of Patrick makes you realize why he was so important to so many people, because he was just one more reminder of what happens when God is in control.

Disclaimer
This story rendition is taken from the story done on St. Patrick by the Christian History Institute. If anything doesn’t seem possible or accurate to you in this story please take it up with them. For me, I started to realize that God makes the impossible possible a long time ago, as for accurate, I have to believe that the people who have degrees in historical study know what they are talking about.

Sit on your spot and don’t move, ‘kay God?
Blog · Christianity · Devotional · encouragement · free · guidance · Jesus · lent

Sit on your spot and don’t move, ‘kay God?

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Lent devotional 14

I don’t want Jesus to simply have a place in my life, I want Him to have my whole life.

There are times when I feel like I am telling God to wait His turn. I’m busy right now God, give me a second to finish this please. Will He wait? Yes. Should He have to? No. It’s like I’ve put God into a spot in my life and He gets His time but has to stay put. Remember when we were kids and we sat in Children’s Church or Kindergarten and we had a mat to sit on? That was our spot and the floor was lava so we had to stay on our spot as the teacher read. There are days when I feel like I have given God a listening mat to sit on and that’s where I tell Him to stay. But as Stormie Omartan said once, I had let God into a room in my heart and had locked the door. That was where He supposed to be. But He kept knocking on the door to the next room until I opened it. Then the next one. And the next. Until I threw open all the doors d simply said ‘here God, I am yours’. That’s us. God doesn’t want a mat or a room, He wants all of us. He desreves all of us. What area of your life have you locked God out of? Pray, and ask Him to give you the courage to open the door and let Him in to every area of your life.

Sheltered by sin?
Christianity · Devotional · encouragement · guidance · Jesus · lent · searching

Sheltered by sin?

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Lent devotional 13

The black haron circles it’s wings around it’s body and makes a canopy to imitate shelter and create shade. This way fish swim under it, thinking it is safe, when really it’s a trap.
The devil is like the black haron. He creates things, places and people that look safe, they look like a shelter, but in truth they are a trap to draw you in. The common lie the devil uses is the lie of acceptance. Christians are becoming more and more accepting; not of people, accepting people is not a new thing, Jesus has always required and encouraged that, but of accepting sin. We do the ‘I have to accept their sin to accept them’ dance, and all we end up doing is opening ourselves to cause the same sins. The people are not their sin, we are not our sin, Jesus accepts us with open arms and a heart full of love, but He does not accept our sin to come with us. He doesn’t accept the sin, He accepts us despite the sin. We do not have to accept the sin to accept the person, we do not have to act like the sin is okay to love the sinner. Saying that the sin in okay is simply a way to not be faced with the anger of a person who doesn’t want to stop sinning but does want to go to Heaven, you can’t have both. We are all sinners and people who fall short of Christ, but we repent of our sins- sometimes we repent of the same sin a thousand times a day- but we acknowledge that it is wrong, we ask for forgiveness and we try to not do it again. You can not cling to sin and claim it as okay and be a Christian, but the devil wants us to fall into being tolerant so that we let darkness slip in without realizing it. Be tolerant of the person yes, but not of the sin that binds them. If we became tolerant of the sin that binds us we would not be a new creation in Christ, our lives would not be changed, we would be the same person we were before we accepted Jesus into our lives and what point would there be in that? Now, coming to Jesus will not immidiately change you so your sin is no longer pestering you, and we may even fall back into that sin after coming to God. Sin looks like a safe place sometimes. It’s the devil trying to hold us down and keep us back from God, and he doesn’t want to give up his hold on us, so don’t be discouraged if you find yourself in a battle against your sin and don’t seem to be winning, hang in there, persistance will drive the devil away. If everytime you sin you choose to confess it to God the devil will get uncomfortable, if everytime you feel like you are about to sin and start to pray you will defeat the devil’s hold in your life. We all sin. Everyday. The differnence is when we confess our sins and start new with Jesus, each time, no matter how many times that is. We cannot be tolerant to sin and say it’s okay because that is like saying the devil is okay, but we must always be loving and accepting of the people, because those people are us too. Turn away from the sin chains that hold you down and know that Jesus loves you, He sees that you are trying, and doing your best- even when you fall back and have to try again- and He is fighting with you, and He always loves you. He doesn’t love our sin, He can’t, but He always loves us.

Know my heart?
Christianity · Devotional · encouragement · guidance · Jesus · lent

Know my heart?

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Lent devotional 12

Psalm 139: 23
Search me oh God and know my heart.

This is a a scary verse. I know people quote it like it’s something soothing or peaceful, but it’s scary. We are literally asking God to search us, to test us, we are putting ourselves into His hands and saying ‘come on in God and de-clutter as you see fit.’ That’s scary. You don’t know what God will want to throw away from your life that He doesn’t like, it may be something of great value to you, and suddenly it’s gone. This is a verse of complete surrender. You do not say this verse lightly. Being rid of things that God does not want in your life is always a good thing, but that doesn’t make it easy. But when God is your ultimate, when He is your everything, your life will have a new direction, you will become more steadfast, you will have greater peace. Don’t say this verse if you don’t mean it, and if you say it and do mean it then be ready for God to do some throwing away, and have Faith that the end result will be worth the loss.