Hand Up, Not a Push Back!

     I'd like to share a lesson and opportunity with you that I have learned! It might save you the trouble and frustration that I went through! 
     My husband and I went to a conference that we had looked forward to for months! The conference was attended by hundreds of people and had amazing praise, fantastic teaching, and much needed fellowship opportunities.....there was only one little "fly in the ointment". 
     You know how you can have something that you value greatly but it's obvious that others don't think so highly of it? We went to this conference with great expectations and then had a situation that I had to deal with in my spirit. A young couple sat in front of us and while the woman was really "into" every aspect of the conference the man appeared to only be there with the woman!
     I was really caught up in the spirit moving at the time and only slightly aware of this specific couple the first few times, but every session and every day we went into the conference out of hundreds of people the couple kept sitting in front of us, no matter where we sat! We sat to the front, there they were, to the back, yes they were there too! To the left or to the right it didn't matter, there they were! 
     By the last evening they had finally really registered in my atmosphere! The man was sitting directly in front of me and I had to get around his obvious boredom to get into a praise attitude! He looked around at everything going on, appearing bored and distracted, it was hard to not notice!....I began to pray for the young woman he was with, "If you're not married to him, don't marry him! he's not a Christian like you! Your life will be one long struggle!"...but then God (don't you love those words?!) told me to pray for the man, I wrestled with that a bit. Do you wrestle with it when God tells you to do something you don't want to do? It's better to just go with it, you'll save yourself a lot of trouble!  
     As the preaching was drawing towards the end I leaned over to Lane and told him I needed to pray for this man before we left. Small, independent groups praying at the conference was not really something they wanted, so I had to move and do it fast. As we all stood up and were dismissed I reached over the chair the young man had been sitting in and touching his arm i told him that I had sat behind him several times now and he really reminded me of my nephew(It was all I had as an ice-breaker!) and "I wondered if I could just pray a word of blessing over him as an aunt"? He was very open for that! 
     I prayed a word of blessing and I added "a new deeper walk with his Heavenly Father". I had accomplished my assignment that easily! I could feel a satisfaction in my spirit that the seed words were planted! Why didn't I do this the first time I noticed him and was irritated with his boredom? We picked up our bibles, notebooks and things and left the row where we were sitting but the young woman came and caught us and told us "thank you so much" for that word of prayer, it was a small word to us, but in her world it was evident that it was big!
     Now the moral, every good story needs a moral, right? Don't be irritated by those less spiritually mature, pray for them, give them a hand up to a higher level, boost them, don't push them back! .....And if you do this earlier in a conference you may remove irritations that will follow you through the weekend!  

Backs to the Wall?

     Recently I had Pandora playing and was enjoying some Contemporary Christian music, but some of it I didn't enjoy as much. While I was listening a song came on that talked about "having our backs to the wall" and then "throwing our cares on God". 
     If you weren't too concerned about words and their meanings then this would sound like a good idea, but as I listened I considered that we shouldn't see ourselves as walking through life and then when we get our backs to the walls we turn to God. If we walk with God consistently then we will most likely walk through problems and never see ourselves with "our backs to the wall".
     Do you walk your own way and when you run into problems you turn to God? The better plan might be to walk with God constantly, then we would have put everything into God's hands, not just our "cares". And if we've put everything into God's hands, even where we go and what we do, then it's not as likely that you'll end up with your back to the wall. What do you think?

In all your ways acknowledge Him,

And He will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:6

Love, Betrayal, Forgiveness

All Christians have heard of Judas, and many have wondered why Jesus allowed Judas to stay with the rest of the disciples. It has been growing in my heart to understand this very thing. 

     Surely we all have people in our lives that hurt us and have either betrayed us or we would not be terribly surprised if they do, and there are even ones that we are terribly surprised when they do turn against us. The ones that surprise us are the ones we love deeply and we do not all have the insight that Jesus did to know that it was coming. Yet even if we did have the insight the love we carry for these people is too deep to allow us to do anything except try to survive the hurt inflicted. So even as Jesus loved His betrayer, we love ours. 

     The next step we have to add to this path is forgiveness. In the full picture of Jesus' path that we're called to walk out, is forgiveness of the betrayer. It's not always easy, but are we called to do only what is easy?

     And we need to face that in the end, all of us have chosen to go our own way and we have all betrayed Jesus. As those who have betrayed and who have been betrayed by others we have to come back to walk in forgiveness. If we do not walk in forgiveness, it is all wasted, all of Jesus' sacrifice for us has not fulfilled it's full purpose.

What Does God Mean When He Says...

     There is something I don't understand and I have not had the nerve to ask people about. I haven't asked because I don't want to offend people that I look up to, but they are the only ones that might be able to explain to me why it is acceptable for them to use the name of God in a conversation where they say "My God" when they are not discussing something about Him or praying to Him. 
     I know and understand the freedom and grace that Christians have through Jesus' sacrifice, so I'm not questioning basic freedom, but God was concerned about His name enough to include the commandment in the basic "10 Commandments". 
     I have asked some people about this, but never the ones that actually do it, from fear of offending...maybe I should be more afraid of offending God by accepting this use of His name?  I have pulled these verses out in trying to work this understanding for myself~ 

‘You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain. Deuteronomy 5:11

You shall not swear falsely by My name, so as to profane the name of your God; I am the Lord. Leviticus 19:12

and then I checked the definition of the words, because sometimes we think we know what a word means but we might have a wrong understanding~

     "vain" is~ "marked by futility or ineffectualness:having no real value".
And~
     "profane" is~ "to treat (a holy place or object) with great disrespect; to debase by a wrong, unworthy, or vulgar use".

     If we are using God's name in a casual conversation, are we using it ineffectually? and yes, I know some people will wonder what "ineffectually" means, so here is it's definition~ "not producing or able to produce the effect you want". So if someone is telling you a story and then pauses to say "My God!" is it in vain, or ineffectual or of no "real value"?
     This is probably not a big issue for many people and I don't know that it issue it is to anyone besides me! ....I just wonder if we are glorifying God or degrading Him by our use of the slang term, "My God", that many Christians and non-Christians use.
     I'm just curious, what do you think? Please keep your comments loving and not condemning, let's consider what pleases our Heavenly Father.

Life and Death

     As a Christian I know that death is not the end. For a Christian there is no end, life is eternal. There is a passing over, from this existence to the next. For me there is no doubt that after our life on Earth we will still live on in a new body, exactly how that will be I'm not sure of. I trust God and know that He knows how it will be and that it will be good, that's enough for me. Actually I may like to know more but until my own passing I won't really "know".
     I do know that Jesus said that He has gone to prepare a place for me, John 14:1-3, and that He will return to receive me unto Himself. and that I will be in paradise with Him, Luke 23:43. I also know that I will have a new body, 1 Corinthians 15:51-55
     So, logically I have no issue with the process we call death, it's actually only a transition, right? But it is something that we try not to think about or for some to only consider with fear.
     At this point in my life with a loved one facing the transition, I am looking at the emotions that surround this time. Grief for the ones left behind, even when we know they will go to be with Jesus.
Maybe our lives are so intertwined that we are like the plants that when one is pulled up the others who have shared the root space feel the shaking and rending of losing the one they had been close to.
     Even as I try to understand my feelings I realize there is not always an explanation for our emotions. Even so, God created us as emotional beings. His word tells us there is "a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance", Ecclesiastes 3:4.
     I think this means that when one of our loved ones leaves our presence and moves into the presence of Jesus in Paradise that yes, we will grieve and we will cry, it doesn't mean we doubt that they are in a far better place, it means that we will miss their presence with us until we see them again.
     This is kind a self involved article trying to make sense of my sadness even when I am at the same time rejoicing. Thank you for your patience with me as I talked myself through all of this to reach an understanding that my tears are not an insult or distrust to God but part of the loving celebration of my mother's life.

Stand in the Gap

I searched for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand in the gap before Me for the land, so that I would not destroy it; but I found no one. Ezekiel 22:30

United We Stand

Good day!

     I want to share an urgent item that God laid on my heart yesterday morning. He woke me with clear instructions to decree unity over our Nation. He showed me how all of the factions are being used by our enemy, the devil, like a pack of many smaller animals that will take down a great and mighty animal when it is outnumbered and not prepared.
     We are part of the great and mighty and the devil is the one that has stirred up many small groups. You know the small groups, they are covered and glorified on the news everyday.
     God's instructions to me were to decree that we are ONE body! That we will not be pulled apart and that we are ONE body under God. He said it's not just a Nation, we are a body and we are letting our body be destroyed.
     It is our place to decree, each of us over the whole country of the United States and also over our own home town and state(that's where we have more authority). "We are one body, we will not be destroyed, we are one body under God!"
     As God's children and members of His Kingdom we have the authority to decree this and to stand for our Lord and our country at the same time.
     When I first learned of "decreeing" I struggled to grasp it, but it is simply standing in the position that you have been given. You are in Christ, you are His hands and His voice on Earth. As His voice you are simply calling things on Earth as they are in God's universe. And scripture tells us that what we bind on Earth is bound in Heaven, Matthew 18:18. So we need to step in and start binding.
     United we stand, divided we fall. I want to stand, don't you?