Last days burn out

November 19, 2023November 19, 2023 carriedinthecrossLeave a comment

Last days wear out is something no one talks about.

I would like to start this Devotional with the releasing statement that I am not one the great people who study in depth and know great and terrible things involving the end. However, if we believe the Bible (which we do) and read it fully we will know that all the days after Jesus ascended are the last days. So we are in them even if we are or are not fully in the book of Revelation yet.
What I want to speak of is last days wear out.
The Bible says:

‭‭2 Timothy‬ ‭3:1‭-‬5‬ ‭NIV‬‬
[1] But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. [2] People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, [3] without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, [4] treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— [5] having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.

And it says:

‭‭2 Peter‬ ‭3:3‬ ‭NIV‬‬
[3] Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires.
There are many more but we will stay with these for today. The last days for those living in sin will look a big party with no rules or rulers. But for those us who belong to Jesus, we can see the truth. What about those of us who long for righteousness? Those who tread carefully on the narrow path? We see all around us and try and remain pure, untainted and faithful, but as the final days of the end draw closer and closer things are getting worse. The world is dying and we can see it and for many of us it’s frightening and tiring. We feel like we are fighting against so much every day. We have lost friends and connections with loved ones and we wonder if we are doing the right thing. But God.
God warned us that this would be what these days would look like, He’s not surprised by any of it. Is He sad? Probably. Is He angry? Probably. But Is He surprised? No. He is still in control.
‭‭15] Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. [16] He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. [17] Therefore, dear friends, since you have been forewarned, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of the lawless and fall from your secure position. [18] But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.

We are called to stay on guard and to help our fellow Christians do the same. But it does wear us out. I am worn out. My friends talk and I hear how worn out they are. Being a true Christian in these sad and heartbreaking days is hard work. We pray harder and more often. It seems like the list of needs keeps growing. Evil is standing in the center of everything and is reaching its fingertips towards the church and all we want to do is scream or cry. But God is holding us. He is keeping us together and waiting until His time is right for His second coming and in that we have hope. The wars, politics, lies and deceit are banging around in our heads and Jesus is saying, “just be still. You are here for my chosen purpose. I am always with you.”
So maybe some days we need to take a break and rest and disconnect from social media, TV, and the radio just so we can become realigned with what matters and what is true. Then let us stand up and say:
[20] He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. [21] The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen. Revelation 22:20- 21

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They calls us names for they have never seen the true enemy

November 12, 2023 carriedinthecross2 Comments

“They call us all sorts of things for they do not know what we are protecting them from. And we wouldn’t have it any other way, because if they knew they wouldn’t be able to live in the peace they have now.” – Paraphrased from The Fellowship of the Ring.

They do not know what we protect them from. We see the soldiers being torn to pieces on social media so often. But we have no idea what they have faced. Dogs come back broken and scared of everything because of the sounds and scents, the people are no different. The scars aren’t always visible, but they are always there. My family has a military history from my uncle who served in Vietnam to my Opa who was Dutch underground. We know the pain and sacrifice from the stories they brought back that have been passed down through the years, but so many do not have such stories to turn to for learning. I think of my boyfriend from Jr. High, his dad came back from Afghanistan with PTSD. If you looked closely at him you could see the emptiness in his eyes. It was like inside his mind he had never left. It was a frightening thing to see, and so sad. Those who have never seen the death and decay have no right to judge.

In a simile we could say those who do not know the enemy of their souls calls us names. We as Christians are supposed to be soldiers on a different front, though sometimes the same one as well. We are called to fight in prayer and petition against the enemy of our souls. The world attacks us with their words because they see this enemy as a friend and don’t realize that, as Larry Norman once said “he promised to love us, but that was a lie, there was blood in his pockets and death in his eyes.” The world does not see that the devil is a deceiver so they attack those who oppose him, but of they knew the truth their peace would be shattered until they found true peace in Jesus.

Our soldiers fight for freedom of bodies and wills, the Church fights for the freedom of the soul. We need both very very desperately. God help us to see that we need those who are willing to fight and bless and protect the soldiers. Amen.

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Lamas

November 5, 2023 carriedinthecrossLeave a comment

I just want to be a sheep, bah bah bah bah. Remember that song? Maybe most don’t. But when I was a child we used to sing a song about wanting to be a sheep in God’s pasture. But perhaps not all of us are sheep. God said that He would send shepherds to lead the sheep -pastors. But what about those who aren’t simply part of the congregation but have a specific calling inside the church, not as pastor, but as one of the other ministering bodies in the building?
For this let us take a moment to look at a sheep farm. On the farm you have your shepherds, then you have your lamas or donkeys, then you have your collies or terriers, then you have your sheep.
We all know what the shepherds do, but what does a lama or donkey do? We have several shepherds in our area and they will tell you that the lama or donkey is there to protect the sheep. They will fight off wolves and wild cats and keep the sheep safe. They aren’t social and don’t always spend time with the sheep, but they are always there to silently protect and defend. They are our prayer warriors. Our prayer warriors aren’t always social people, they are often missing from group prayer meeting, because they are in their own corner fighting on their knees in a place where they can’t be distracted. They are battling for you against the enemy and keeping you safe. They are the lamas.
Tomorrow we will talk about the collies and terriers. The next day we will talk about the sheep. But for today, be grateful for the lamas in your church. Praise God that He gives us all a purpose.

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Hey there little red. Who have you been listening to?

October 29, 2023 carriedinthecrossLeave a comment

Hey there little Red. Who have you been listening to?

Imagine how that story would have gone if Riding Hood had listened to the wolf. She would have been a lovely dinner for a hungry wolf family and the story would have been shorter and without space for all the sad remakes.
We too are walking through the woods, we don’t really know where we are going or if it’s going to stop being dark. What we do know is that there is an enemy waiting for us. Prowling. If we listen to what he says we will be dinner. The wolf says stuff like, “everyone is doing it.” “It’s legal now.” “It won’t hurt anyone.” “God loves me despite my flaws.”
The wolf isn’t stupid. He takes things that sound good and use them to twist the truth. Lots of things that are legal are that way because they are fine, but some are legal because the law makers gave into pressure, or chose to lower the law’s standards to make extra money. Sometimes when everyone is doing something it’s a good idea, like brushing your teeth or eating less salt. But lots of stuff everyone does is simply people living according to the flesh and not God’s word. It won’t hurt anyone is a good policy, unless it will hurt you and you haven’t considered that a worthy concern.
God does love you despite your flaws. But it doesn’t stop there. God want you to leave your sins behind and follow Him.
See? Twisting. The wolf is always twisting the truth. He speaks softly in your ear and tells you half truths that pull you off the path and lead you to his den. Sometimes he even infiltrates grandma’s house, (the church, your small group, your friends, your family) and gets to you that way.
You have to not listen to the wolf to get back home safely. Going into the woods is mandatory. Going off the path is optional. Listen to the word of God. As one of my favorite preachers once said, “get to know God so well that when the devil comes to tell you lies, God’s voice blocks him out.”
Take God’s hand and stay on the path. Beware the false words of the preditor and trust the Truth of God.

( disclaimer: I do not believe actual wolves are evil. They are wild animals and need respect but should not be killed or trapped due to fear. Use sense and caution when dealing with all wild animals.)

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He is the breath

October 15, 2023October 15, 2023 carriedinthecrossLeave a comment

He is the breath

He is the breath inside my lungs, I am just the breather.
I am simply using what He has given me to get through each day. We make everything about us. We make music meant to worship Jesus about our carnal relationships, we make our bodies meant to honor Him a temple of worldly pleasures, we make our minds that were meant to serve Him a battleground against Him. We don’t even acknowledge that God gave us all these things. That they are gifts from Him.
He is the breath inside our lungs, we simply use what He has given us.
Like CS Lewis said when speaking of God. He said, ‘we are like children, who ask their Father for money to go and buy Him a gift. And like the good Father He is, He always rejoices when we give our lives back to Him.’ -Mere Christianity (rough quote from my memory. I recommend reading the book for he says it so much better than I have here)
When we give our lives to Jesus, we are simply giving back to Him what always was His. We think we belong to ourselves, but we belonged to Him first.
He is everything that is important about us. Do we make Him our desire? Do remember to prioritize Him? He prioritizes us. We are His desire. We are nothing but hollow human shells without Him filling us with life. He is our redeemer. Let Him redeem you.

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Hiding from the light?

October 12, 2023 carriedinthecrossLeave a comment

John 3:19-21
And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their Works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his Works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light so that it may be clearly seen that his Works have been carried out in God.

When people do evil they love the darkness because it hides their deeds. But when people do good they love the light because then people can see the good they have done. This is the same in those who follow Jesus. Those who truly follow Him love Him, and His word and His teachings because they live lives that do not require hiding from judgment. But those who do not truly follow Jesus hate the light and hate getting too close to Him, they hate His word and His teachings because they expose their evil as evil. If you claim to love Jesus but hate His word and teaching then you aren’t a true follower of Him, just a person who thinks claiming the Christian badge will get you an easy pass to Heaven. That’s not how it works. You must love Jesus, pick up your cross daily and follow Him. It’s hard, but true.

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The Shepherds humility

October 1, 2023October 1, 2023 carriedinthecrossLeave a comment

This weekend was my last weekend for camping before winter comes. My dog and I took our first day at our camp spot to go hiking. The fall colors were beautiful and we went for a long hike down the trails. At the end of the trail we had chosen we ended up in a farmer’s field. He had just finished taking off all of his wheat and the sharp unbending stocks stood in our way. My dog is a Jack Russell, so he’s not very tall. The stocks were too high for him so I had to pick him up and carry him. We have been hiking for a really long time or else I would have turned us around and taken us back the way we had come. But the road lay ahead of us just beyond the field so I picked my dog up and carried him in my arms. He’s not a very light Jack Russell. He was too heavy to carry in my arms the whole way so I placed him up on my shoulders, like shepherds do with sheep. In doing this I realized a couple of things. We often see images of Jesus carrying lambs (representing us) on His shoulders as He traverses a rocky or dangerous area. He is always carrying the lamb on His shoulders, because that’s what shepherds do. When I placed my Jack Russell, who’s considerably lighter than a lamb, up on my shoulders it caused my body to bend forward in a position of bowing humility toward the terrain that I was navigating. Holding his little feet on either side of my neck and having him trust that I wouldn’t let him fall all seemed to he symbolic of the way Jesus carries us. And of the way He carried the cross. He humbled Himself. We hear people say that all the time but do we really acknowledge what it means. He humbled Himself. Bowing is often a sign of respect or humility. I see Jesus bowed under the weight of the cross on His back and shoulders, like He would have carried the lamb in the images we see. When Jesus placed the cross on His back, He was carrying us every one of us. Every person, every name that would ever exist was attached to that cross, when He sacrificed Himself for our sins. And like the images we see of Him carrying the little lamb on His shoulders, He had to bow forward. To put a sacrifice of humility on someone who didn’t ever need to be humbled, God didn’t need to humble Himself, if anyone had the right to not be humble, it’s the guy who created the whole world. But He still chose to humble Himself for us, in dying on the cross, in carrying the cross, in carrying us He had to bow forward to take the strain and the weight of our sins upon Himself as He carries us forward toward the end goal. We can’t do it on our own, we just don’t have it in us. We can try and we will fail, but He will never fail. Like I said earlier we have to trust Him, as He places us on His shoulders, to never drop us. But He won’t, He’s God, He loves us. And He buys Himself forward to take our weight on to Him, because that’s just who He is.
Happy October 1

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Are you waiting for answers?

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Are you waiting for answers?

The promise of God does not always come fast. So don’t start doubting even if you have waited 10 or 20 years. He has His time.
Why do we become downcast and fearful when we have a God who loves us? When we have Faith in God and know He is God and He can and will deliver, why do we doubt?
James says that the doubters should expect to receive nothing from God.
But Jesus said ‘if you have faith the size of a mustard seed.’ So where is the cut off?
At what point does faith only the size of a mustard seed turn to doubt?
In the moment where you used to say ‘I know God can do this.’
And now you say, ‘God probably won’t do this.’
You aren’t doubting that God is real or that He is there, but you are doubting that He will answer you. I say this more to myself than anyone else because I have had too many of those moments.
(I have also had moments of complete doubt that God would answer and He did, probably because He knew that I needed to see Him do something because I was slipping. He is still good to us.)
His Word warns us that if we doubt who He is and what He will do that He won’t answer us. That’s not having only a little Faith when we pray. That’s having no Faith at all. We must believe or how else can we expect to see answers.
Now. There are times when we have Faith and still don’t see an answer. There were times like that all through the Bible. But our Faith cannot depend on what we see God doing, it has to depend on who God is. Our Faith is in God not in the works of God. We have to trust Him.

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Built on the Graves of the children

August 2, 2023August 3, 2023 carriedinthecross1 Comment

Built on the Graves of the Children.

It has been said that certain modern cities were built on the Graves of the children. The ones who were left orphans, the ones who starved in the subway stations, the ones who were abandoned. Perhaps most cities could say this. But what about in our modern cities? What about the city around you? What about now? The city keeps on growing and changing, is it still being built on the Graves of the children? Or perhaps we shouldn’t say city, but rather, society. Modern society is being built on the Graves of our children.
The government tells us what we can and cannot say, and can and cannot agree with. Things that should be obviously wrong are being not only promoted to but forced upon our children. Kids so little that they can’t even write their names yet, are being told that they aren’t actually boys or girls. They are being told that if you are a boy and like flowers than you must be a girl deep down and should change. Or if you are a girl and like monster trucks you must actaually be a boy. I had a six year old come home from school who had been taught that day that big foot was real and was a fault in evolution. Come on people! Schools are teaching your children that big foot is real to promote evolution. Little children are being read stories in class that cover certain kinds of explicit sex so they are taught to be inclusive, and we don’t think that this is a problem? You shouldn’t be teaching any kind of sex to these kids. They are kids. We often hear about the death of innocence and it is too true. Super heros who once stood for justice and truth and told your kids to stay in school and not do drugs are now cussing and torturing people. Kids are told that if they don’t support certain people that they aren’t heros but villains. Kids are told that lying is okay. That hurting people is okay. They are being sent home from school with notes from their teachers saying that it was against school policy to bring their Bibles to read, not out loud, not in class, but quietly to themselves during lunch period. Because our Bibles are banned from being read privately in the class room but books that describe that most intimate parts of a sexual relationship are being read out loud by the teachers.
Kids aren’t being permitted to think for themselves or to choose for themselves, they are being ground into mindless society conformists who do and think as the TV and the government tell them to.
Now tell me. Is our society being built on the Graves of the children? On the minds that no longer know what an intimate friendship looks like because of the lies the government shouts in their ears. On the minds that don’t know wrong from right because everything is grey. On the minds that should be out there playing and envisioning butterflies that can take them to other worlds, but instead have lost the innocence of stories for the government agenda. When will we let kids be kids again and stop shoving adult problems down their throats? When will we stop building our warped society on the Graves of their innocence? When will freedom, true freedom, return? Perhaps not until the return of our Savior. But until then we are called to be occupiers and to help grow the next generation. Are we helping them grow? Or are we turning a blind eye as they are fading into the cracks? Stop digging the Graves that will bury your children. Fill in the holes and lead them to a safe place where the entity of this world can’t touch them. And remeber that Jesus loves your children more than you do, so don’t be afraid to trust Him with them and to bring them to Him where they are truly free.

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Are you as alone as you think? No. Never. Jesus is right there feeling your pain and holding onto you through it.

June 5, 2023 carriedinthecrossLeave a comment

Up till now he had been looking at the lion’s great front feet and the huge claws on them. Now in despair, he looked up at his face. What he saw surprised him as much as anytjing in hiw whole life, for the great tawny face was bent near his own, and wonder of wonders, there were great tears shining in the lion’s eyes. They were such big bright tears compared with Digorie’s own that for a moment he felt as if the lion must really be sorrier about his mother than he was himself.

How like Digory are we? We have brokenness and heart ache and worries that we think God doesn’t see or understand. Then in a moment of wonder and fear we look up and see God looking back, smiling, big tears in His eyes. There’s an old Petra song that says, “you care so much more than I do.” We forget that. God cares more about our broken hearts, our loved ones who are slipping away, our forgotten dreams, our lost jobs, then we ever could. We feel we are the ones suffering, yet everytime we break, so does He. Jesus took all our pain on Him, past- present- future. He feels it too, and like the ragman, He comes to us saying, “let me take your old rags and I’ll give you my new. Let me take your pain and loss and I will give you my healing.” He loves us and feels what we feel. We must stop forgetting that. We are never alone in our grief, we have Him and He loves us.