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Which stream
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Which stream

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Lent day 12

Which stream should I choose in life? With which path should I go? I say ‘why should I be stuck in a stream at all! Forced to go with the constant flow.’ If all streams lead to the ocean, then someday won’t I be free? But along the pushing path that others forge, will I forget to be me?
If God reaches down His hand from Heaven and traces a small path away from the crowd for me, then shouldn’t I follow that path with eagerness? Then shouldn’t I go willingly? The path has only room enough for one person, and I fear to travel alone. Yet if Jesus is with me, then I do not go alone. The hero often stands by herself, when the true battle begins to wage, but with the Spirit as my sword, Faith as my shield, I will not be afraid. I will follow my path to a greater ocean. Away from the pushing crowd, I will swim this special causway, I will not be drowned. If God has a path just for me, then why would I swim to the same sea, as every other fish in the stream and lose who am and sacrifice my dream? I will follow this path alone, with the cross before me and Jesus leading me home. – LVB

From the time we hit first grade we are being pushed toward a path. People say that each of our paths are unique, but if you are following along with the rest of the world then you are just another part of the crowd. Only Jesus gives us uniqe and individual paths, but they often lead us to be on our own. The path to Heaven is narrow and hard, the path to hell is wide and easy. Which path are you on? If you see the narrow path open up before you will you follow it? In my mind I see the narrow gate like a hidden entry that only reveals itself to the few who choose to look for it. If you aren’t seeking Jesus then you won’t find the path to Heaven. Which path are you walking? Would you like to switch and find the narrow gate? Then ask Jesus into your heart. You don’t need the sinner’s prayer specifically, you can come to Him with your own words and your heart open to find Him. Maybe you’ve lost the path and have been wandering in a fog. That’s not hard either, you can get back to the right path by asking for Jesus to help you. The answer is always Jesus. It doesn’t matter what the question was. If you talk to Him and look for Him you will find Him, because He wants to be found.

Only traveling through
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Only traveling through

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Lent day 10

Like it or not, we are part of the world around us. -Pat Terry

I like the world around us less and less. There is so much evil and sin. Today I saw that a kid’s show meant for six year olds and up has had adults, with clearly nothing else to do with their time, going on the internet and discussing how the two little boys that are the main cheracters are probably gay and if they aren’t, should be. Little kids. Forced by adults to be something they are not. Friendship has been killed by this way of thinking. When I was a kid, not very long ago, two little boys walking down the street holding hands meant nothing, now it is forced to mean something. Caring about your friends is seen as a sexual desire and pure innocence is left hanging for the vultures to pick at. On an add for another show meant for children I saw covens, people being possessed and animal sacrifices used to increase dark magic. This show was intended for eight years old and up.
It’s hearbreaking if not simply outrageous to see what is happening to our minds and the minds of those around us. Sometimes it feels like there is no hope or escape for or from thos darkness as it gains ground over the world. But God. God told us to be not conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewing of our spirits. Our bodies may be stuck in this world, but our souls are from another world, our souls are Heaven bound and belong to Jesus who died for them. The battleground between carnal body and eternal soul is in the mind. The mind can convince you that evil is good and that there is no such thing as sin. That’s not true. The mind can be a safe haven from the darkness if we give it to Jesus and let Him have dominion. It can also be a place of desolation if we let it be beaten down by what goes on around us. Like it or not we are part of the world around us. But we don’t have to be sold out to that world. We are supposed to be strangers to this evil planet and to help show others the way out, the way to Jesus. Thank God that, as Larry Norman once said, we are only visiting this planet. Our home is in Heaven and we aren’t supposed to be comfortable here, we are supposed to long for our eternal home.
Gaurd your mind and fight for it’s sanctity, because it is the final ground to fight on and too many of us forgo that front and let it be taken by the enemy. Take heart and have hope, Jesus has a plan, He has a future, He has not forgotten or forsaken you and someday, if you hold true, you will be with Him in paradise.

Oil on my head
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Oil on my head

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Lent day 9

Let a righteous man strike me- that is a kindness; let him rebuke me- that is oil on my head- Psalm 141:8

David was a man after God’s heart. That doesn’t mean he never screwed up, it means that he repented when he did. He was human and made human mistakes, however he truly loved God and wanted to make things right with Him as fast as he could when he sinned. Few true followers of God commit sins on purpose, and when we do sin we try to repent quickly. I like the second half of that verse the best: let him rebuke me-that is oil on my head.
David was a shepherd, so he would have known that oil on the head of the sheep was there to fend off flies. We do this on the bellies of our horses on the farm too. To him being rebuked by a righteous man was the same as having insect repellent placed on his head. It warded off the attacks of evil emotions and desires. He didn’t take being rebuked by someone closer to God than himself as an offense, rather as a kindness. David didn’t shy from a corrective word from the pulpit, he knew that being close to God was greater than his feeling of self importance.
May we all have a spirit that thirsts after righteousness, because we long to know God’s face.

Um. Lord. That’s a really large mouth.
Christianity · encouragement · free · guidance · Jesus · lent · power of God

Um. Lord. That’s a really large mouth.

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Lent day 4


When God prepares a big fish, no boat is big enough to save you.
As the original News Boys wrote in their song about Jonah, “lord how long is this gonna take? Stuck in the belly of a whale.”
God asks some crazy big stuff of us as His people. Not always, but some times, He sends us to speak to people we hate because He loves them. Sometimes He asks us to go where it is dangerous. Sometimes He breaks our bones so we will be in the right hospital at the right time to speak to someone about Him.
I admit a soft feeling toward Jonah. He didn’t want those horrible people of Ninivah who attacked travelers and raided towns and did all kinds of evil to be saved, and he certainly didn’t want to be the one to do the saving. Let them rot, it’s the least they deserve, was his point of view.
Yet God loved the souls of the people and wanted to forgive them and to save them.
We all have people we can’t stand. Some are fellow Christians. Others are lost people in need of Jesus, that doesn’t mean they aren’t terrible people, people who have hurt you or make you feel just sick inside; what it means is that God loves them and wants them to come to Him. I think of Corrie Ten boon speaking to the Nazi Soldier who had beaten her sister. The man had come to know Jesus and had sought her out to ask her forgiveness, and in her heart she said no, she admits to hating him fully and completely and nobody can blame her. But. She prayed and told God that if he wanted her to forgive that man he was going to have to do it through her, cuz she couldn’t do it herself. And he did, and her heart was filled with love for him and compassion. God may send us to Nineveh, but he won’t ever send us alone. He will always go with us, and will help us to love those we would prefer to hate.

Lent day 3 Stop putting your chains back on.When Jesus died and rose again He took our sins on Himself, He set us free from our chains- so why do we keep setting the locks back in place? We claim our sin as our identity, we tattoo it on our arms (or on our foreheads) we announce it with pride, yet it is what is killing us; it is holding us back, tying us down, and making us defeated. Those sins are nailed to the cross, stop tearing them off and sticking them back on yourself, you deserve more, you deserve better. You are loved so much more by Jesus who says to cast your sins aside than you will ever be by the devil who says to keep your sins and to wear them proudly, in fact mr. Do what makes you happy not what the Bible tells you to, aka the devil, doesn’t love you at all. The devil hates you. That’s why he encourages your sins. Jesus loves you. That’s why He tells you to leave your sins behind. Jesus set you free. So be free. Stop being a slave to the devil. Be a redeemed, set free, undefeated, friend of God. For He called you by name.
Christianity · Devotional · dreams do come true · encouragement · free · guidance · Jesus · lent · Love · searching · still fighting · The Bible · True Joy

Lent day 3 Stop putting your chains back on.When Jesus died and rose again He took our sins on Himself, He set us free from our chains- so why do we keep setting the locks back in place? We claim our sin as our identity, we tattoo it on our arms (or on our foreheads) we announce it with pride, yet it is what is killing us; it is holding us back, tying us down, and making us defeated. Those sins are nailed to the cross, stop tearing them off and sticking them back on yourself, you deserve more, you deserve better. You are loved so much more by Jesus who says to cast your sins aside than you will ever be by the devil who says to keep your sins and to wear them proudly, in fact mr. Do what makes you happy not what the Bible tells you to, aka the devil, doesn’t love you at all. The devil hates you. That’s why he encourages your sins. Jesus loves you. That’s why He tells you to leave your sins behind. Jesus set you free. So be free. Stop being a slave to the devil. Be a redeemed, set free, undefeated, friend of God. For He called you by name.

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Stop putting your chains back on.
When Jesus died and rose again He took our sins on Himself, He set us free from our chains- so why do we keep setting the locks back in place? We claim our sin as our identity, we tattoo it on our arms (or on our foreheads) we announce it with pride, yet it is what is killing us, it is holding us back, tying us down, and making us defeated. Those sins are nailed to the cross, stop tearing them off and sticking them back on yourself, you deserve more, you deserve better. You are loved so much more by Jesus who says to cast your sins aside than you will ever be by the devil who says to keep your sins and to wear them proudly, in fact mr. Do what makes you happy not what the Bible tells you to, doesn’t love you at all. The devil hates you. That’s why he encourages your sins. Jesus loves you. That’s why He tells you to leave your sins behind. Jesus set you free. So be free. Stop being a slave to the flesh. Be a redeemed, set free, undefeated, friend of God. For He called you by name.

Lent day 2
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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.

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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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?
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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
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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.

Let your stones fly
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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.