Tag: never alone

Uncaged
Christianity · encouragement · free · Jesus

Uncaged

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Acts 16:25 and 26

Deafening slams of iron on iron as each door leading to your prison is closed behind you. Damp earth chills you to your veins and the deeper you go underground the more you have to rely on the light from the torches. ‘Be strong and courageous’ keeps echoing inside your head as your wounds remind you of what your captors are like. Finally you reach what seems to be the center of the universe and now you can fully hear the screams, cries and taunts of fellow prisoners. The eerie torch light shows shadows of scarred faces and you reach your own personal cell. The door is closed behind you with a crash like thunder and you are now cascading into a world of darkness as the soldiers and the torches slowly move away.

I suspect this analogy is a close description to what Paul and Silas felt as they were transported to their prison cell after being beaten by the Roman soldiers. Many Christians have been blessed to have never known this level of fear or pain, and yet many Christians suffer just as this if not more so on a regular basis; a suffering they accept because of their faith.

Today however I am going to be speaking on the mental and spiritual cage. If your mind is caged so is your spirit. What your mind dwells on your spirit will inevitably follow. We are all prisoners of this world; unless we know Jesus. However Christains still face the suffering of a caged mind from time to time, our cage just isn’t eternal. Things of this world find us and hold us locked behind bars. Self doubt, sorrow, fear, suffering, anger, even indifference can be cages quite similar to the prison I described in the beginning. Cold, damp, dark, caged. But the same God, the same just King who freed Paul and Silas from their physical prison can and will save us from our mental prisons. What was the secret trick the prisoners from Acts 16 had up their sleeve? Worship and praise. The times when we feel least equipped to worship are the times we need to worship the most. When we clear our minds of the situation and fill our minds with the Holy Spirit we can hear the gates creaking and slowly see the bars bend and break setting us free. God intends for us to live in Spiritual freedom through Him so He gives us ways to keep our minds and souls uncaged. When we are caged, as we will be once in a while, God takes the keys of our hearts and unlocks the doors to free us once again. He is a good king and doesn’t leave His people to suffer.

If you look around your mind and see prison bars please, turn your mind to worship and let God; let our warrior king come in and set you free.

Contradiction
Christianity · Devotional · encouragement · free · Jesus · searching

Contradiction

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Today I was looking out over the lake in front of my grandfather’s cabin, and watching the gentle, grey waves roll in as multi coloured leaves escaped from their branches and settled on the stirring water. My mind flitted back to the ocean. The ocean is so much like God in many ways (and maybe God intended that) but today I thought of how the ocean is the world’s great contradiction. The sea is wild and untamed and sometimes quite harsh, yet it’s also gentle and nurturing. If you are out on the waves during a winter storm it’s a miracle if you make it back to shore! The wind howling, the water in turmoil, ice pellets driving into you like shrapnel; suddenly you realize this is not a place meant to be tamed or conquered and you are very much out of your depths thinking you could control such an controllable force! What you don’t see from the surface of those wild, teasing waves putting you back in your place is the security and comfort of the lives down below. When a big, cold winter storm attacks the animals under the surface swim deeper under the water until they are not affected by the storm. The ocean holds an array of extremely beautiful and delicate creatures who are unafraid and unharmed by the raging storm above. Where they are is quiet and safe and they know they are protected by the water. The ocean is so much like God in this way. To those who do not know God this world can be wild and harsh and untameable. They are like a little boat bobbing around in a wild winter storm, out on a great ocean and if they come out unscathed it’s a blessing. For those who know God and have accepted Jesus, it is like being a sea creature. We are safe in Jesus and comforted by His presence. When the storms of life hit we swim deeper into Him until we are enveloped by Him and are safe. Jesus does sometimes make us ride out some tough storms, but He always gets us through. Even if we don’t see Him protecting us right now He is there and He is keeping us safe. The ocean that crushes rock walls into sand is the same ocean that gently hydrates and feeds the ever so delicate anemone. The same God that conquers armies and parts the seas is the same God that gives dew to the flower and sends honey bees to scatter it’s pollen. What a perfect and powerful, loving and gentle God we serve and love; we are so very blessed to be called His children.

I love the thief
Christianity · Devotional · encouragement · Jesus · searching

I love the thief

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Ladies, I bet you could name at least one movie where your heart was momentarily stolen by the suave and handsome thief. Whether he was the main character, a secondary character or even a minor character I bet you could think of at least one. He steals for a good reason maybe, kind of like Robin Hood, or maybe he really is a scoundrel but there’s just something about him. I know a robber who steals for a good reason, a good guy who many don’t see as a thief. But there’s the catch, what He is taking already belongs to Him. Jesus is the grave robber. He comes like a thief in the night and steals us away, isn’t that fabulous! When we die we don’t just lie in our graves with nothing to do; Jesus comes for us and only our bodies go to the grave, our souls, our personalities, us… we go to Heaven. Jesus isn’t trying to be alluring to falsely take from us, He steals our hearts with His love and His truth and His sacrifice because He adores us, and once He has our hearts we belong to Him and Him to us and we no longer are of this world. If we give Him our hearts while we are still alive then we can have no fear in death because Jesus is our grave robber. He snatches us away so we are not captives of the grave but are captives of the one true King. I don’t know about you, but Jesus is my favorite robber, a robber who steals us away because He loves us. He is not a thief in truth because He owned us even before we knew what life was and now death is life and this new life is the greatest adventure because it’s an adventure where we can see and touch Jesus, the thief who stole us from death and suffering.

Heroes
Christianity · Devotional · encouragement · free · Jesus

Heroes

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It happens often in movies and in novels, where the hero is backed against an impossible wall and there is no way to escape. Suddenly the hero cries out for help and out of nowhere appears an all powerful friend who turns the entire situation around, and now the hero and her/his pal are beating back the enemy until they are victorious! That’s us with Jesus. So often we find ourselves backed against a wall and realize there is no way we can save ourselves so we cry out to Jesus, “Help Me Lord! I am trapped! Deliver me!” and like the friend in all the movies Jesus comes to us and changes our whole situation until we can see a new horizon and an escape from our enemy. Unlike the fictional movie friend, Jesus is already there waiting for us to call on Him. He’s not far away and has to come running, it’s not that He’s just showed up at the right time, it’s that He is with us already, we just needed to come to Him for help. Now notice also how in the movies the friend and the “hero” have to still battle their way out? that can also be the case for us. Jesus comes to our aid but we still have to fight through our problems with constant prayer. We will be delivered it just sometimes takes time; the defeating blow to our enemy is that we are no longer fighting alone, the minuet Jesus is fighting with us the tables turn and we have the winning hand. Another thing I want to point out, have you ever noticed how the “hero’s” friend is often the true hero of the story? For example: Sam from Lord of the Rings, Toto from Wizard of Oz, Little Creek from Spirit, and so many others, always remember that we are not the hero of our story, Jesus is. He’s that friend who drives out the darkness and brings us hope. Our friend is there to help us because He loves us, and heroes always come to save those in need. Isn’t it nice that we have a real and alive hero who came to save us and is there to help us? A hero who goes by the name Jehovah.

Panic
Christianity · Devotional · encouragement · Jesus

Panic

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Do you ever feel panicked? Not necessarily from something bad, but just from general life? The, ‘this deadline is coming up’, or ‘that paper is due’, or the famous ‘I can’t believe I have not gotten that done yet’ panic. Our world’s not falling apart it just feels like we are. It may be a panic caused by good things that you don’t know how to fit in your schedule, or something you’re excited for but you don’t know how other people will react. All kinds of things can cause us to panic. Then we see the amazing happen, the things we are panicked about start falling into place as if they were always meant to be there. We meet our deadline and it’s the best work we’ve ever done, our paper gets on the prof’s desk just as the bell rings and we can breathe, our schedule suddenly has room, our exciting new life experience is the making of an amazing new future, We find that thing we needed to get done goes by really fast. So on and so on. Guess what friends, that’s Jesus. When our panic turns into prayer we see it turn around into purpose. My grandfather preached once that to see miracles we first have to see problems. I know that’s not a new concept but it’s still true. Until we have the privilege of saying, “okay God, I give this to you,” we haven’t yet seen Him work. Jesus gives us what is best for us and sometimes that’s hard to see. Philippians 4:6-7 says (say it with me) worry about nothing, pray about EVERYTHING. Jesus longs to prove Himself to us, He desires to hear our prayers about everything. Nothing is too personal, too hard, too dirty, too scary for Jesus to hear us say. He knows already, so feel free in unburdening yourself to Him. Only Jesus can give us peace and only He can make perfection out of our panic.

Christianity · Devotional · encouragement · Jesus · Uncategorized

Refreshed

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Everyone has had to use it at sometime in their lives, the refresh button I mean. Whether it was the one on your phone, your computer, your video game console; the point is we have all probably had a point in our lives where it was necessary to hit that little button. There have probably been times when your device wouldn’t operate properly until you got out your paper clip, pulled out the end and gave the button a tap; Suddenly your device turns off, then back on and everything is as it should be.When God refreshes us it is much the same thing. I know that usually things aren’t completely they way they were but they FEEL better. My grandfather once preached on how a fair portion of our sufferings are caused by our minds, our situation or hurt might not be nearly so bad as our minds are making it out to be and when God refreshes us we can suddenly see the bright side. Our but God moment as my grandfather would say. That time when we were at the end of our strength, but God reached out His hand and pulled us through. God refreshes us and our souls have peace, we now feel we can take on our lives. Have you ever noticed how small the refresh button is? If you didn’t know it was there you probably wouldn’t even notice it. Sometimes that’s hope; so small that if you didn’t know that Jesus was there with you, loving you, you probably wouldn’t even notice it. The hope just needs a little focus to show us that we will be okay. If our eyes are on our frozen screen, we can’t see a solution around our problem so we panic and get frustrated; but if our eyes are on our refresh button (Jesus) we know that there is someone who can fix everything. We need to press into Him and feel Him take away all our fears and hurts and worries and refresh us. So try to remember that in our lives there will be problems, but we have a refresh button that can set everything right again, a refresh button that has overcome the world.

Shared Suffering
Christianity · Devotional · encouragement · Jesus · Uncategorized

Shared Suffering

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But if a man suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God in this name. -1Peter 4:16

Suffering, now that is something everyone knows a little about. The verse probably means to suffer for Christ, but when you think of it can also apply to suffering in general. When you suffer as a Christian you always have someone to turn to. When you suffer as a non-believer, you suffer alone. Suffering with God means you always have someone there, wiping your forehead, wrapping your bandage, helping you up the stairs, letting you cry on His shoulder, giving you a word of confidence and so much more. I have had suffering where I feel like I am completely alone; fear builds up and I feel like my tears are mine to bear in isolation, and then I feel Jesus. It can be something as little as opening my Bible app and the verse of the day is exactly what I am experiencing, or a song that comes on the radio that describes my situation. The one common thread in everything about suffering is God reaching out His hand and pulling the one in need through. The one bright light that makes all the trouble seem like it will come to an end is the mention of God. I almost said the simple mention of God, but there is nothing simple about Him, and bringing our eyes up to His level is AMAZING. Why would the Lord of all the earth allow us to be near Him? Why would He care? Because He loves us and always will! So if you are suffering; whether it is depression, illness, pain, fear, doubt, loss or anything else, turn your eyes to Jesus because He loves you! He is waiting for you to see that He is there to HELP, He never leaves us to suffer alone, our tears He always shares with us. So praise the Lord and trust him, through all your sufferings, and know that they are temporary, but Jesus is eternal.

 

The prayer named Goliath
Christianity · Devotional · encouragement · Jesus · Uncategorized

The prayer named Goliath

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Sometimes I find things coming up in my life that I just don’t want to pray about, because praying means facing my struggle. When we pray we are meeting with God, taking His hand and staring down our problems together; that’s the hard part though, staring down the problem. It’s so nice to take my fears, my anxieties, my hurts, my angers, my sorrows and just curl up in a ball and pretend they’re not there. The old saying out of sight out of mind comes to thought and it’s so true. If we can bury our faces under our pillows and not see what’s happening we can make the hurts artificially go away. The minute we start to pray we are first acknowledging that a bad thing has happened, second we are confronting that bad thing. This can be very difficult, sometimes the bad things are things we don’t want to think about let alone face; but when we look that problem in the eye and say, “I’m not afraid of you!” It loses its power over us. When David took on Goliath he walked out with God hand in hand and looked that giant in the face, he didn’t hide and hope that he would go away because he knew that would not change anything. David went out without fear because he went out with God and He knew that God had him and wasn’t going to let anyone defeat him. The only way to defeat our problem is with God, and we need to pray. Yes praying forces us to confront the problem we don’t want to face, but until we face it and pray the problem is going to stay there, taunting us. So let’s go get our sling shot and pray with Faith, because I know that God knows just where to plant the stone in the canter of our troubles.

Light houses
Christianity · Devotional · encouragement · Jesus · searching · Uncategorized

Light houses

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Recently I fell in love with a song about Cape Breton island that refers to the island being rimmed with lighthouses. The song says how the lighthouses are more than just beacons in the night, they are lights to guide the wanderer home, which of course made me think of Jesus. Jesus isn’t just a beacon in the night to help us on our way and when we are back on course we turn our sails away and continue without Him; Jesus is a bright light guiding us to Him, showing us the way back to truth and into His kingdom (our home). Jesus sends out His light, reaching over the dark expanse between us and Him and He touches us with His pure guiding hand and we are drawn home. Not only is Jesus a true, strong, active lighthouse but He has given us range lights along the way in the form of our pastors, and missionaries and evangelists and so on. A range light is a structure similar to a lighthouse, but it’s there primarily to guide ships through treacherous and shallow water when traversing a canal or other small body of water. So a range light is there for the small community, for the group that it can reach. Our ministry leaders are put in place to guide us through life and direct us toward our savior Jesus who is there to show us the only way into Heaven. Range lights are very important and sometimes do great work in assisting the lighthouse, like all people who do the work of Christ by reaching their community and guiding people into Jesus’ light. It doesn’t matter if your audience is small like a canal or endless like the ocean Jesus has a special place for you to shine. Sometimes all you need to do is be there, you may never know who you’ve helped by just shining your way through life. When we are guided into our savior’s presence and find a safe place in His harbor we are on our way to becoming more of His range lights to help others come to Him.

Christianity · Devotional · encouragement · Jesus · searching · Uncategorized

My favorite blanket

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Sometimes talking to God is like wrapping up in a warm blanket. You know the moments? Those times when you feel like your heart can’t handle any more and you begin to pray. Maybe not immediately, but eventually you start to feel a security and a peace, a warm feeling that comforts you. Like sitting on your couch and wrapping a blanket around your shoulders. The prayer is a hard struggle at first, you don’t know what to say except, “help me God!” “God where are you?” “Jesus, you said you would never leave me nor forsake me.” Then you feel a release of the spirit that says, ” but may your will be done Lord.” Then you find yourself praising God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit, telling them how amazing they are and remembering the times they’ve saved you and pulled you through, and now you’re smiling. How does God do that? Isn’t He amazing! Jesus is a professional at finding lost sheep and drawing them into shelter from the rain, He can find you and bring you into a place of shelter too.

He will cover you with His feathers and you will find refuge in the shelter of His wings- Psalms 91:4