We are all trying to hear God’s voice, to have His guidance, but as we wait and listen what happens? We get busy, we have things we gave to do and if God has not spoken yet then we feel forced to do without Him. We think, ‘I’ll go on ahead and God will catch up.’ Does that ever work? No! If going on ahead has taken you down the wrong path then you may end up with a very long trek back to the beginning where God is waiting for you to return. Or sometimes you go forward on the right path, but you go so far without taking God with you that you get used to doing things yourself. You stop asking God for His will and start doing your will and hoping God will guide you in that, not that you have asked Him to guide you in what you want to do, just that you expect Him to follow you around and go -(‘poof’) ‘what do you need’- whenever you pray. You say, ” but God has stopped talking to me.” Has He really? Or have you stopped listening? We want our way so we try to control God but that is not the answer. Unless we are guided by God we will end up where we don’t want to be. If God is sending you into a thorn infested jungle but your friends are going down a rainbow path, which guide are you going to follow? Hopefully God. Only He sees that the rainbow path has thieves and muggers and high taxed toll bridges, only He knows that the thorn path may be prickly but in the end will be safer. God knows all, so listen for the Spirit’s prompting. It may not be a voice, it may be a nagging thought, or an unignorable feeling. You don’t know how the spirit is going to communicate, that is why you need to pray about every decision and then go forward in faith.
Category: dreams do come true
I’m going to be okay
So many days I find myself saying “this is crazy! I shouldn’t be okay!”
Yet, I am. The world is literally falling apart, I can’t see past my own nose when it comes to the future and yet…I’m okay. Why?
Answer, Jesus. Jesus is the own reason I am okay, without Him I’m sure I would be depressed and imploding like so many around the world are somehow, I don’t know, but somehow Jesus makes it feel like things will be okay. Isn’t that what Paul said?
(For Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses for when I am weak I am strong) <paraphrased from 2 Corinthians 12:10
Even from prison Paul said that he was okay because of Jesus. Even when we aren’t okay, we are with Jesus.
Right from the fish’s mouth
Matthew 17:24-27
I have always found a profound sensation of peace and excitement when I read the story about Jesus and the coins in the fish’s mouth. God could have provided the money for them to enter the city in any sort of way. He could even have made the guards wave the fee, instead He put two coins in the mouth of a fish. A fish that just casually swam over to Jesus so He could retrieve the money. That’s amazing! Why would God do it this way? Perhaps to simply show us that He can provide in crazy ways that we would never have expected. I chose this image of a fish with three coins because it made me think of the way Jesus has paid for us. My family has three people in it and there are three coins, to me it reminds me that each of us has been paid for. (Yes. I know this is a Buddhist symbol. But I colored it and I choose what it means to me.) Why do we worry over finances, income, funding when God put money in a fish’s mouth? He can do anything. Just believe in Him.
Christmas Sunday 2020It’s all part of the show.
One Christmas tradition that often gets over wrapped in tinsel and stage perfection is the tradition of having a Christmas pagent.
I used to love the pagents. Every year but one I was a sheep, and everyone knows that the sheep has the best role. We get to go all over the stage and crawl on our knees and bahh every so often. No elaborate speaches or moments of forgetting lines. Just being there, part of the show.
Perhaps that is the problem with Christmas these days. We get so caught up in what we should do we forget to just be part of the story. We feel we need to put on a great spector of glitz and glory more suited to the glittery gifts of the Wisemen but we forget to be the lowly sheep, on our knees before the King. No words to say. No spotlight. Just there. Part of God’s story.
Molded by His hands
Molded by His hands
Ginger bread houses. One Christmas tradition that we love is making gingerbread houses. Crafted by hands that desire ingestable art. If you ask the child with the house that has broken walls and missing gummy lights if their house disappoints them do you know what they will tell you, “it still tastes good.” Even with it’s missing parts and broken hearth the gingerbread house still has the quality of tasting good. And the artist loves that part of it, so the artist loves the whole of it. Just like how God loves us. We are His. That’s enough. He loves all of us, from our shattered dreams to our scarred pasts, He still loves us. Why? Because we are His. And He knows that we still have the chance to become what He wants us to be, and He hasn’t given up on us. Just like our gingerbread house, falling apart on one side, we still can serve our initial purpose. We can still, “taste good” no matter what we look like, it’s what’s inside that counts.
Let’s build a snowman!
Let’s build a snowman!
Since the beginning of time people have loved to create. Not just useful things to our survival but wonderful things that grab our attention and hold us in awe. We even create fleeting things, like snowmen. Why do we build something that is just going to fade with the sun? Why does the ball shaped man bring us so much joy when he smiles? Good questing. Perhaps it’s because all throughout every other season God is constantly creating. He makes flowers and babies, He causes the leaves to change color and the grass to grow, and grow and grow and grow, if you live where I do. When winter comes, however, everything goes dormant. It’s almost like God is letting His creative arts take a break. Outside of the beauty of sunrises and sets, and the horror frost, nothing new really happens. We are so used to creating that the pause makes us sad and restless, so what do we do? We create while waiting. Now we see snowmen and forts and garland on trees. Why not? We aren’t as amazing as the Creator but we love doing it, and it gives us a small look into what God does every day. We feel the snow crunch together under our fingers and soon there is a snowball fight. We find the perfect carrot in our fridge and we begin the human construction of a snowperson. Without God having created the snow we wouldn’t have anything to work with. But because He has we suddenly have a new world that we can play in.
I believe in you
A friend is someone who believes in you more than you believe in yourself.
It is so easy to doubt yourself. All most people see is their failures and that’s so sad. Why do people ask for someones opinion and then get angry when they don’t like what the other person says? Because we are all insecure and need someone to pat us on the back and say ‘well done kid!’ We search for compliments and assurance from others because we don’t really believe in ourselves. That’s why we need friends whom we can trust. If a trusted friend gives their opinion you are more likely to accept that it is true. A real friend will always cheer you on and spur you forward, but will also give you advice and hold you back from reckless things. If JRR Tolkien hadn’t had great friends to encourage him he might have never published the Lord of the Rings. Usually our friends can see more to us than we can see ourselves. You know what I am about to say. Jesus is the one true friend we all have and He is known for spurring us forward in the right things and holding us back in the wrong. Listen to Jesus because He believes in you. Even if He is pulling you back it’s not because there is something wrong with you, it’s because there is something wrong with the situation. Trust His words and His timing, He is a friend who will always believe in you, you just have to believe in Him.
Why do we need pastors?
‘Why do we need pastors?’
This is a question that I have not heard spoken out loud in a long time, but through people’s actions and subtle hints behind their speech it is clear that this is still a pondering. To be honest, I have never really had an answer, until today. I like to do something different with God each day instead of having the prayer time each night. This is just me, not saying that a prayer list is a bad thing. Tonight I chose to read one of my dad’s books on Biblical study and finally I have the answer to that question I was asked so long ago: we need pastors to interpret.
You say, ‘but any adult can read the Bible, it’s not like it’s written in Pig Latten.’
True, but that’s not my point. As the book says, ‘we all read the Bible thinking our interpretation is the right one.’
But it’s easy to misinterpret. For example (my example is also borrowed from this book) in Romans 13:14 the King James version states ‘make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof.’
Where the New International Version explains that what Paul meant by “flesh” was sinful nature. If it wasn’t for the people who took the time to interpret this statement, we would believe that Paul meant our bodily comfort as so many assumed, but what he meant was the sinful nature that can come on us so easily. Pastors go to school and study the Bible, the interpretations, the deep delve discussions and weigh the different opinions against each other and against what the Bible says long before they ever grace a Church platform. They study so they can teach us. We need pastors so we can understand without those four years of College. We need people who asked question and gotten answers to answer our questions so we can answer other people’s questions. And now that question that I had no answer to has been explained. We have pastors to interpret for us.
Ref. How to read the Bible for all it’s worth
How does it end?
I have often said that once you write something down in a story, no matter how scary it was in the beginning, now that you know what the ending is it can’t control you anymore. The same is with our spiritual lives God wrote it all down it is all in the Bible and we know the ending so this world, the fears that can manifest themselves in this world, the one who controls this world, can not control us. We know the ending! God has told us how the story of this world ends.
He who is the faithful witness to all these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon!” Amen! Come, Lord Jesus! May the grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s holy people.
Revelation 22:20-21 NLT
In the end, the hero comes back for his people. In the end, all evil is destroyed. And like any great story, in the end there’s a massive party to celebrate the victory! In the end Jesus comes and takes us home. Nothing can hold us to this world, if we believe in Jesus, if we Proclaim his name, then there is nothing of this world that can control us.
The end.
Falling into myself
As humans we often describe ourselves as having a hole inside. That can mean different things for different people, but many still have the hole. And as people we do all we can think to do; we find a way to plug the hole. We plug it with entertainment, food, friends, even family. And it plugs up happily. Except… Just like wet sand to fill a gap in a wall, these small fixes -no matter how hard we try to make them stick- crumble and fall away. We need the right mixture to create concrete to repair the hole for good.
Friends and family are a good start, but to make the mixture complete we need Jesus. We need Jesus or else everything will fall apart. If we lack God our hole will eat everything it sees and fill up with nothing but darkness, hurting those around us. We all have a hole, except those of us who have Jesus because our hole has been filled by His perfect and unfailing concrete solution. We are whole through Christ.
I pray your hole is also filled by Him.
You may say that you still feel hollow even with God. Many do. Why? I once heard it said that Jesus fills our gaps but only the ones we let Him fill. If you still feel empty take a good look and see if your emptiness is something that you simply haven’t given over to Christ.
Fill up your soul with Jesus.
Carried in the cross 