One person does not define you.
Five people don’t define you.
People don’t define you, God does.
Jesus defines who you are, He directs who you are.
Look at your life through the eyes of the man on the cross, the man walking out of the tomb, God sitting on His throne. If He was willing to die for you, the you who you are right now, then what person has earned the right to try and judge you? If God loves you enough to give up everything for you, then isn’t that enough to show you your value? Because you do have value! You right now reading this, God wants you to know that you have value and are valued by Him.
People don’t define you, God does.
Category: The Bible
Somehow
Jesus is the God of somehow.
Somehow the disease vanished, somehow the pain is gone, somehow they got the job, somehow they survived it, somehow it was all okay.
Jesus is the God of the amazing and unexplainable, the things that happen that don’t make sense- the impossible. When the doctor says, “I don’t know how, but the colitis is gone” -that’s God. When the police say, “there is no reason they should have survived that accident” -that’s God. When the addict says, “I don’t know how but I managed to turn away from my addiction”- that’s God.
God is the God of the unexplained.
He doesn’t prevent suffering all the time, sometimes He let’s us go through something that we need Him to help us through or rescue us from so that we acknowledge His wonders. You may say, “what about when God doesn’t heal or rescue?” That is a painful but fair question, sometimes God’s miracle is simply being sustained through suffering or trial. I know that for some that isn’t good enough, but when you have God the burden is lifted. That doesn’t mean that it is gone, that means that it is raised so that you can keep walking. Someday, somehow God will end the pain, and when He does you will probably say, “somehow, I’m still okay.”
Somehow she kept her faith.
Somehow she persevered.
Somehow she held on to Jesus so tight that she feared at times her hands would give up, but she kept on and saw her redemption.
I know many of you are in the pain moments right now and I would like to take a minute to pray for your somehow moment.
Dear Jesus we ask in your name that you will touch every person who is in pain right now oh, that you will touch them and heal them from there pain and suffering whether it is physical and emotional, psychological, whether it is an outside suffering that is plaguing them or an internal suffering. In their families or in their bodies or in their daily lives. Jesus whatever the painful is help please we ask, and give these people who you love their somehow moments, their moment of ‘somehow I made it through’, ‘somehow I was delivered’, ‘somehow it’s all okay’ because somehow you always manage to work things out for our good even if we can’t see it from where we stand now, we ask these things in your name of Jesus, Amen.
Beyond your cage
Reach beyond your cages and praise God!
Today my beautiful mom was worshiping God behind a covid safe screen in our church this morning and it made me realize that God is reaching down behind many walls and cages, He’s reaching for us. There are people in prisons, in underground churches, in basements, in flood and fire areas, in churches that are restrained by the government, in their own homes- afraid to go out. In hospitals, In sick beds, in care homes. Whatever your cage is. If your cage is literal or figurative. God is reaching down behind your walls and your cages to grab your up reached hands, up reached hearts and to lift you out of your cage. Sometimes Jesus enters in and if you look around you can see Jesus in your cage with you.
Your cage is not God’s cage.
God is working even when you can’t see past the bars. My dad’s old school mate Billy Richards said that faith is a muscle, you need to use it to make it strong. You can either let your cage defeat you, or you can let it grow you and your faith. Believe that Jesus can save you, He has already saved you, trusting His will can hurt- but it is always the right path to take.
No matter your cage, remember that Jesus loves you, and you have the savior with you.
Jesus, we know that you can save us from our cage, no matter what it is, we use our Faith in you and know that you are with us even in our cages- amen.
Read Paul’s letters from prison and see how God can work beyond the bars of your cages❤
Gain through giving?
I once heard it said, that the reason we give so much up in our lives for other people is because they are what we leave behind when we are gone, through them our lives continue. It sounds a little strange until you think about it. When I mention a ‘but God’ moment, it’s my poppa speaking through me, when I struggle and find myself putting scripture in my shoes so all day I am standing on the word of God, that’s my nana. Those who are gone leave their legacy in us, and if they hadn’t taken the time and effort to teach me, serve me and be with me I might not have the strength that their words gave me. Nana is gone to Heaven but she still lives and guides and teaches through all the people she put effort into. We live in a ‘serve yourself first and then you will have the strength to serve others’ theory in this world, even evangelist speakers have said this once in awhile, and not that serving yourself is wrong, but if the only one you serve is yourself then that is wrong. Jesus didn’t say ‘love yourself, that is the greatest commandment,’ He said ‘love the Lord your God, and your neighbour as yourself.’ If all we ever do is serve us we miss out on the true Joy of serving others and through serving others serving God. Our joy comes from fellowship with Christ, you cannot serve yourself only and have fellowship with others. This sounds really discouraging I know, but I’m not saying drop everything and give up all your time for others, I mean we should actively aim and strive to be servants. If you want to spend a day sitting on the couch watching TV that’s fine, but if while sitting on that couch somebody calls you in need and you refuse to go because you’re busy taking care of yourself isn’t that wrong? As in all things there’s a balance, you can’t only serve others because you’ll hit burnout, but you can’t only serve yourself because that’s not how Christians Act. It always comes back to the old adage, what would Jesus do? Would he say no cuz he was too busy taking care of himself? Or would He go to help those in need? I guess that’s a dumb question, considering the answer is so obvious.
Heaven’s angels
Today there is an angel with a dog bite on his hand, yesterday there was an angel with oil on his clothes, the day before there was an angel with too much heat as he stood guard today there is an angel watching over my heart. Every day there is an angel set upon us by God to watch over our actions as we do our part each day. Everyone has an angel the angels are gifts given to protect us by God, they never let us fall. There have been times when my angel has been dirty and worn because I know that that’s been my day and that he followed me through it. Those thorns in our skin as we worked in the yard and as weariness clowded our eyes God sends His angels to watch over us, and though they are not to be worshipped we should never forget the gift that they are. There have been days when there were angels who had been hit by another car as they pushed mine out of the way and kept me safe from the driver behind the deviating wheel. There’ve been times when my angel watches over those I love. There are days when I’m sure the angels have had enough but God is there watching over us each day, He sent his angels to guard us that’s what the Bible says.
Drowning in God
There are times when my Faith makes me feel like I could walk out to Jesus on the waves without a doubt, and there are times when my fear makes me not want to even get into the boat. We are all afraid in part of going deeper into God. We like to have control of our lives just like we like to have control of the TV remote, when we go deeper into God we start giving up control. Stormie Omartan said ‘we let God into one room of our hearts and tell Him to stay there, but soon He starts knocking on the door to another part of our hearts, then another, then another until He fills our whole hearts. We hate losing control so we shove God in a corner and say we are Christians because we have Jesus, but that’s not what God wants, in fact that behavior is probably to blame for so many people claiming to be Christians but not acting like it. You can’t act like Jesus until He holds your whole heart. We have to trust God and be guided by our Faith so that we can fall so deep in God that we see nothing but Him.
Hate is easy, love… that’s the hard part
Hate is easy, love is hard.
Charlie Brown was asked why it is that people didn’t mind you asking them why they didn’t like you but why they did mind if you asked them why they did like you? He replied that it was because the latter was a harder question to answer.
Disliking someone is easy, it takes no effort. I once heard a movie character say that she was now free to hate, unburdened by the ties That Force us to love she felt the freedom of being allowed to hate. It’s a terrible sentiment, and yet it almost makes sense. As Christians we are demanded to love, it’s not a suggestion, it’s not a request, it’s a rule. Jesus said ‘and the greatest of these is love,’ and spoke on love being the sign of your Faith over ten times in the Bible, He also speaks against hating others several times, it is not a request.
Why does God demand it? Because it’s a sign of Him, He is love. Why does He repeat this demand over and over? Because it’s hard to follow. There are so many people that would be so easy to hate, having to love them may even cause you to feel ill or in pain. There are really awful people out there. Think of Corrie Tenboom speaking to the crowd and having that German soldier from the prison camp she was in come up to her and ask for forgiveness, what nerve! He had no right to do that after all she had gone through, right? No. He had the same right to ask for forgiveness that we all do because of Jesus. Because God forgave us we must forgive eachother. Love forces us to forgive the unforgivable, to help those who have hurt us, that’s why love is so hard. If we do not love we are not Christian, love is a sacrifice for Christ, and sometimes loving one another is our way of bearing our cross up to the Place of the Skull. Love is pain. Hate doesn’t hurt in the moment,-though it may hurt in the long run- but love hurts often, that’s why it’s a sacrifice, that’s why so many give up on it, and it’s what separates us from the rest of the world. It’s easy to love your friends, but what kind of crazy person loves their enemies? The kind who is crazy about Jesus and knows they have to love to serve Him.
Do I show Jesus or just speak Jesus?
How do I tell Jesus to the boy sleeping in the cardboard box?
Lately I’ve been reading and re-reading some of the old classic novels. What are the three main things I find in all these novels? 1.poverty is rampant. 2. God is mentioned often. 3. Faith and perseverance are what cause the main character to win.
Poverty. It’s not a word often stated involving North Americans, though many experience it still. Back in the day, however, (and I mean back around the 30s and earlier) poverty was simply a life style. It was just how it was. You read about the little kids smoking and chewing tobacco because back then it was cheaper than food and quenched hunger; kids, worked in the streets and the sweat shops and the ones that didn’t work stole to survive, sometimes the ones who did work still had to steal. And it was a world wide problem. From the kid in Asia hitting the traveler with a rock and searching the body for food or something to trade for food, to the kid in the old factory in the US, hiding because his dad beats him and he can’t risk going home, poverty ran the streets and that was just how it was.
In these novels God is often mentioned as someone that the adults have learned to trust in despite their hardships, but the kids are still learning and they don’t understand. How can God take my family away? How can He let me go days without food so I dig in old gardens to find three year old dead roots to eat, just so I can have something? How do you explain God to them?
You meet them on their level. There was a time when all sidewalk a preacher did was read the Bible and people came to God without needing what they heard explained, that’s what God can do. But you can’t take a kid off the street, fill them full of rules and say ‘that’s God’s will so do it right or you don’t go to Heaven.’ It’s too much. You need to start on where they are at that moment. Tell them of Jesus’ love and how He is there with them, explain how Faith in the hard times will get them through. Most of all, show them love. Don’t look sideways at the dirty kid with barefeet who just entered your Church, take them and get them a water and let them sit with you so you can explain things to them when asked. We preach too many words, we need to live like we were listening to Jesus’ word more. The kid who had lived in moccasins her whole life can’t be expected to suddenly wear shoes, you can’t demand that she dress like you just to hear the word of God! What part of the Bible says ‘thou shalt wear suits to chapel’?
The kid who has run the streets his whole life with no one caring what he did can’t be expected to sit quiet and not fidget, he can’t suddenly be told to pray and receive but not be told what that means, he might pray for a toy truck and never get it and think God doesn’t care. Explain. But keep it to the Bible, not your opinion.
These kids in the stories learn to fight hard, with the right help they learn to trust God, then they win the battle. But if we try to break them to be in our image, they may never learn how to live in God’s image.
Oh, and all the books I’ve been reading are based on true events, so, how many of those true event kids found Jesus and how many were sidelined by people who wanted them to be respectable, but didn’t care if that stopped them from becoming Christians?
How many people have missed out on Jesus because the Christians got in the way?
And how many people met the right Christian? The Christian who wanted to help, the one who was Jesus’ hands and feet and therefore that person was able to guide the lost to Jesus?
I’m saying get out of the way, I’m saying that we need to pray about our approach before speaking. I didn’t think I could ever find a way to speak to a kid who had been mislead by false teachings and show them Jesus, until I prayed about it and God gave me the words to say, and in the end the biggest thing I could do was love and trust God to give me the words. I didn’t say ‘go change and then try again because God won’t see you when you are like this.’ I said what everyone at my booth said, ‘we are all sinners and make mistakes, but Jesus loves us and is our friend.’
Because that’s the Jesus people will respond to, and that’s what Christ Himself preached and that’s how He lived.
Feeling a little splashed?
Jesus being in your boat doesn’t mean you won’t face storms, Him being there means that your storms will not overcome you❤
-Pastor Dennis Shram
I don’t know what storm has hit you, or if you’ve gotten to the – ‘but I have Jesus, so why is this happening?’ – Point or not, but I hope that this encourages you, because it often encourages me. Jesus sometimes has to let is see the storm and feel the waves before saving us so that we are more aware when He causes a breakthrough, now we will see His miracles more clearly because we are looking for them. Sometimes we have to ride out a storm too, because God knows that it is growing something necessary in us. But never forget, that Jesus will never let you drown.
What makes Him a King?
I don’t want to be a Christian in name alone.
There was once a story about a prince who loved his people more than anything, he would dress up as them, leaving behind his royal clothes to dress as a soldier or a peasent so he could be with them, and in being with them he learned more about them and was able to be a better prince because of his love for his people. He said his reason was that he didn’t want to be a prince in name alone, but instead in action and record as someone who cared for his people. He is so like Jesus in that way. Our king came down from Heaven and went among us, caring for us, and loving us so we would know Him better. He has never been a king in name alone, but are we Christians in name alone? We claim to be Christians but we don’t act like it. I never want that to be me, but I know that there are days when it is. We need to have people be able to know we are Christians by our actions, by our love. Just like we know our God is good by His actions and love.
Carried in the cross 