The tree
Today I ate a banana. Bear with me. I have a point 👉
As I ate the banana, I thanked God for loving me so much that He made fruit. Then later I remembered something. Something we all forget. God made everything. EVERYTHING! First. Then He made people.
He made it all for His own enjoyment.
Here’s the special part.
When mankind sinned and ate the apple, what happened? God cast us out of the garden where all was perfect.
But. Don’t miss this.
God didn’t take these wonderful things from us.
We have to work the gardens and cultivate the fruit. But He let us keep it.
We sinned and messed up big time, so we were punished. But God loved us and still loves us, so much that He permitted us to keep the things He had called good.
The sun. The shade. The stars. The sea. The animals and birds. The plants. The sweet fresh fruit. He let us keep it all. Despite what we had done.
When we mess up we feel like God will snatch away all our blessings. We worry and fall into works over faith very easily. (you need both. Don’t misunderstand me.)
But when the first sin happened and the ‘lie broke the stillness’ as Larry Norman said, God still loved us enough to let us keep things He had made to please Himself. As a Father letting his child keep an object that he himself loves. God let us keep His goodness and what He made out of His wonders.
I hope that thought brings you as much joy as it does me.
Category: True Joy
It so began
God rest ye merry gentlemen
Let nothing you dismay
Remember Christ our Savior
Was born on Christmas Day
To save us all from Satan’s pow’r
When we were gone astray
Oh tidings of comfort and joy
Comfort and joy
Oh tidings of comfort and joy
God rest ye merry gentlemen has been around for so long most of us can sing it by heart. But have we ever stopped to read the lyrics? Even the first verse on its own is so powerful. Christ was born to save us all from Satan’s power. It’s true, but we forget it. We get caught up in everything else that we forget why Jesus came. I forget which speaker said it, and if you remember feel free to let me know, but one minister said that the first great miracle was not at the cross, but in the manger. We did a play as children once where the angels were standing around taking about Jesus being born on earth, and the angels were saying, “but He will take His power with Him won’t He? He won’t be all human… right?”
And another angel said, “He is taking His power with Him, but yes He will be all human.”
“He will be all human… and all God?”
“Yes.”
“Wow!”
“Yes.”
The angels went on to discuss what Jesus would go through as a man on earth right up to His death. The angels were enraged that people would even think of killing the son of God. But then they also knew that it had to happen and that He would be coming back again.
All of it, from the wine at the wedding to the upper room, began in the Manger. So that we could all be saved from the claws of the devil. So God rest ye merry people, because Jesus has come to save us.
Behind her
Behind her
My dad has been transferring over a bunch of our HFV s so we can watch them. One of them was a two hour production of a play I was in. I was part of the choir, which was pretty large. At the end of the production the leader came to the lead mic and gave an invitation for anyone in the audience who had not yet accepted Jesus as their Savior to raise a hand. No one did. She gave the call one more time and then we all prayed the sinner’s prayer. You could see she was disappointed that no person From the audience had put up a hand. She had felt the call from God that someone needed her to give the invitation, but she saw no results.
My mom was video taping the whole event, this part too. Behind the leader who had given the call, two boys in the choir and one girl, put their hands up to receive Jesus. The leader could not see them, so she thought she had made a mistake but had everyone pray the prayer anyway.
In the back there were three young souls who had never accepted Christ who went home with the Holy Spirit in them, because a woman gave a call, and wouldn’t give up, even though it looked like no one had answered.
Don’t get discouraged. You may never see the results. But you have never made a mistake by inviting people to come to know Jesus. Come and see said Andrew. Come and see said Philip. Come and see said the shepherds.
Come and see says the repentant souls who know that of no one had ever told them to come and see, they would still be lost.
All we can do is give the invite, the rest is up to God.
He is the breath
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.
Living a thankful life
When speaking to Timothy he said: But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.
2 Tim. 3:1â€-‬5 NIV‬‬‬
Our Era is an Era of thanklessness. It was prophesied by Paul that the spirit of thanklessness would come, the question is why? Perhaps it is because the devil knew that if we had a thankful spirit, a mind set naturally to be grateful, we all would look upon the sacrifice of Jesus on and all the way up to the cross, and be so grateful that we would all turn to follow Him. Perhaps that is why the devil fights to keep us ungrateful. Being ungrateful damages your soul. A soul with the Holy Spirit in it will always lean toward gratitude even if things are bad, because the Spirit knows that even when the season we are in is hard God has still given us things to be thankful for. Those who give in to thankless attitudes permit their souls to be damaged and they become jaded.
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.
Colossians 3:15 NIV
We can find peace in situations that call for chaos due to the Holy Spirit within us. That is something to thank God for. Much of Paul’s writings seem to be a call to action. When Paul here says and be thankful I feel he is using it as a weapon against the enemy. Your peace that comes from Jesus is a weapon against the devil, your thankfulness that comes from Jesus is a weapon against the devil. So be thankful and use it as a defense against our enemy.
If you disagree that Paul is calling us as soldiers to use thankfulness as a weapon, then check out Chpt. 4 verse 2:
Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.
Colossians 4:2 NIV
Thankfulness is a weapon. So wield that weapon today as you look around at what you have and thank God even for the bread crumbs. Praise Him for He is holy and worthy to be praised.
Happy Thanksgiving
The Shepherds humility
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
Signs of love
Signs of love
We all talk about signs of life. I even have a favorite album by that title. But do we discuss the signs of love? As I have been staying in our trailer during these fading months of warm weather, I have had the same picture to look at every morning. It’s a photo of the design a puffer fish makes when he is trying to attract a mate. The male fish will dig his body into the soft sand of the sea floor and score into it many intricate lines until he has made a picture he is proud of, then the female fish sees the picture done just for her and goes to him. It’s his sign of love.
God also leaves signs of love for us. Flowers. Butterflies. Seashells. Sunsets. Extras.
Sherlock Holmes once said: “Flowers show me that God is good. We need food and air and water to survive, but flowers are an extra.”
God shows His love for us in the extras that we take for granted each day. So many feel like God doesn’t love them, simply because they don’t know how to look for the signs of His love. In the big miracles yes, but also in the psithurism as the wind tickles the trees, also in the soft sand beneath your feet, also in the smile of a loved one, the twitch of a bunny’s nose, the wag of an old dog’s tail. Look for the extras. The signs that God loves you enough to do things to make you smile, things that you don’t even give Him credit for. Next time you smell a flower or gaze at a sunset remember, that’s an extra and it shows that God loves you.
Are you waiting for answers?
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.
What will we teach them?
What did we teach them?
I saw recently a scene that made me think hard. An old man and a young man sat together, their shopping carts full of their lives on either side of them, the old man encouraging the young to do drugs. It was a raw moment and we passed by so quickly I had to thick about it to make sure I hadn’t been seeing things. It’s not an uncommon sight in many places, but it still made me sad. You don’t have a house or food, but you have drugs and have now encouraged another to do the same. We lived in the city long enough that I knew what I was seeing. But there’s where God said, “it’s what you teach them.” If that boy had been sitting next to my grandfather, he would have throw the drugs aside and heard a message of Faith and the truth of Jesus. He would have been taken for a hot meal and gotten in contact with a safe, Christian group that looked after housing kids from the street. Yet he sat next to a man who was just as lost as he was. And to my sorrow I wouldn’t have stopped even if there had been a place to, because I don’t know at all what I would have said to them or how I would have helped them. Be better than me. I’m not good at going and speaking with strangers and I need to work harder on that. But what I can do is teach the people I am given. I can teach my cousins love and gentlenss. I can teach my clients giving and charity. I can teach my fellow dog walkers respect and the power of a smile. Through my words and actions I can teach these things. And hopefully I will not be too afraid to speak the life giving truth of Jesus at every chance I get.
So. What will you teach them?
Are you as alone as you think? No. Never. Jesus is right there feeling your pain and holding onto you through it.
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.
Carried in the cross 