Walk Boldly With Jesus

We Are All On Our Own JourneyPhilippians 1:6: “I pray with great faith for you, because I’m fully convinced that the One who began the gracious work in you will faithfully continue the process of maturing you until the unveiling of our Lord Jesus Christ!”I have always really liked the idea that if things aren’t good then God’s not done yet. I have heard this many places, yet I was surprised to see it in the Bible. I think this a great reminder that we are all on a spiritual journey. I was talking to someone last night who was saying we tend to compare ourselves to others often. We tend to look at someone else and want what they have. She was saying we do with our spirituality also and I hadn’t really thought of it like that. Now that I am thinking about it, I can see how that is true.We look at others around us in church and we compare ourselves to them. Whether we mean to do it or not. We look at the person saying the rosary before mass and we think he/she is so much holier than we are. We look at the person who is coming into mass late or leaving early and we think we are definitely holier than they are. However, we don’t know anyone’s story. That person in church saying the rosary, that might be their first time saying the rosary, or they may have just lost someone or are going through something really difficult and they know they needed something more. The person coming in late or leaving early my have a job nearby and are spending their lunch hour coming to church, but they only have an hour.We can’t compare our journey to someone else’s. We have all been through different things in our lives, and that helps to shape who we are. We have all had different upbringings in the faith, and so we may have different habits, but that doesn’t make one of us more holy than another. God is not calling us all onto the same path. If you look at the saints they all took different paths and yet they all arrived in the same place.Sometimes we can think, or at least I sometimes think, that if I get the formula right I will become a Saint. If I can figure out how many Our Father’s and Hail Mary’s I need to say then I will be set. God is forever telling me this is not the case. He is telling me there is no one way to get to heaven. There is not special formula or checklist of things that we need to do to get there. Jesus said we need to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, and mind and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Jesus said all the law of the prophets hang on these two commandments. Jesus did not tell us how we should love God, just that we should love God. If we want to show Him our love by praying all day, we can do that. If we want to show Him our love by working with the poor, we can do that. If we want to show Him our love by treating our family and loved ones with love, we can do that.Sometimes we can also compare our lives to others and think that people who aren’t struggling must be holier than we are. They must be close with God. In other words, we believe we are struggling because we are not faithful enough, or we don’t trust enough, or we don’t love God enough. This is not true. We don’t have to look any further than Job in the Bible to see this is not true. Job was the most faithful and righteous person on earth and yet Satan gave him a really hard time. Job was miserably sick and lost everything he cared about, except his wife. We don’t have to look further than job and yet the Lord didn’t stop with Job, he points out a few times in the Bible that we are not sick or going through a hard time because we are not faithful.If you look at anyone who is doing the will of God an proclaiming his word in a powerful way, they have all been through some tough times. One way that we build our faith and trust in God is by going through experiences where we have to have faith and trust in God. Faith can be like a muscle. The more you use it the stronger it gets. God doesn’t allow things to happen to us because we aren’t holy enough, He allows things to happen to build us up and to prepare us for whatever He has in store for us.Comparing ourselves to others will not do anything good for us. It will steal our joy and make us feel “not good enough.” This is not what God wants for us. He wants us to remember that we are all on our own journey and that we have no idea what someone else’s journey has been. We can’t know just by looking at someone what they are going through. They may look fine, but their whole world might be falling apart. We just never know. I remind you of this so you can hopefully stop comparing yourself to others. I also tell you this so that when you see someone being unkind, or acting a way you don’t like, remember they could be going through something.I remember a story of a man on a subway. He had several kids and they were acting up and super hyper on the train. They were starting to annoy the people around them and the father wasn’t doing anything about it. The father just

Don’t Be SelfishPhilippians 2:4-5 “Abandon every display of selfishness. Possess a greater concern for what matters to others instead of your own interests. And consider the example that Jesus, the Anointed One, has set before us. Let his mindset become your motivation.”This week, I have been spending some time in the book of Philippians. I have just been reading one chapter a day, and it is only four chapters. I am not sure how I ended up in Philippians 4 last week, but then I decided to stay in this book and read a chapter a day. There is so much in there that I could probably read less than a chapter a day and then just sit and talk to the Lord about it.Today’s verse I chose has meaning as I feel the Holy Spirit lead me to this verse. This week, our youngest son really wanted to go to a concert, and it was on a day when I had mentoring, so I could not drive him. Tony checked his work schedule and did not have to be in the office. He said he would drive him, but he really didn’t want to. It would mean driving into Boston, sitting in a lot of traffic, dropping him off, and coming home again. Boston is about an hour from us without traffic, and you rarely get there without traffic. Tony would have been driving him right when everyone was trying to get home after work. This would be after Tony had worked a full day. It would not have been a great ending to his day. Instead of relaxing after a long day of work, he would have been sitting in traffic for at least two hours.However, at the time, I didn’t see the situation like this. I just saw that Ryan really wanted to go and that Tony didn’t want to take him. I felt like Tony was being selfish as it was something Ryan really wanted to do. It meant a lot to him, and as I said, I didn’t think about all it would cost Tony. I thought it was just driving him; it’s not a big deal. I wasn’t thinking about how tired Tony might be after working a full day and probably wanting to relax and not sit in traffic.When I went for a walk yesterday and I was listening to the Big Life mentoring Session for July. Pamela Crim was talking about we should enjoy this time we have during the summer. She talked about how she used to think that being too busy meant she was important. Then someone explained that is not the case. Being too busy has nothing to do with whether you are important or not. Being too busy means you have an imbalance somewhere. She told us not to be too busy to do things with our kids or with our spouse this summer. Our kids will be grown up and out of the house before we know it and then we would give anything to have them be little and ask us to play with them. Pamela gave an example of one of the people in Big Life mentoring who just lost her husband and they have young kids. The woman told the group that her husband invited her to do stuff all the time but she always said no. She was too busy cleaning the house, or taking care of the kids, or whatever it was. She told the group she would give anything to just get one more change to go watch her husband play golf.After hearing this mentoring session, the Holy Spirit got me thinking about my life and about the argument I had with Tony over Ryan going to the concert. I got to thinking about how Tony would regret not taking Ryan someday, and the Holy Spirit turned my attention to myself. He is so good at doing that, isn’t He? We want to condemn others and judge others, and the Holy Spirit takes out a mirror and shows us where we may need to change too. The Holy Spirit put on my heart that I needed to stop being busy and saying no because it is not something I want to do.Tony asks if I want to go to concerts with him and Noah pretty often. They tend to go to a lot of concerts. I usually say no because I am only really a fan of concerts if I know every song they are going to sing and can sing along. Otherwise, I find the concerts boring. I am sitting there, not knowing the music, and usually, I am tired. Did you see how many I’s in that statement? I am just thinking about what I want and how I feel. However, each time I said no, I was giving up a chance to hang out with Tony and Noah. Our boys are teens now; well, actually, Sam is already 20. They mostly do their own thing with very little interaction with us. This is somewhat normal teen behavior, but had I said yes to the concerts, I would have gotten to spend more time with Noah, which is especially important this year as he is going away to college in another country soon, and I won’t get to hug him each night before bed.The verse above says, “Abandon every display of selfishness. Possess a greater concern for what matters to others instead of your own interests. And consider the example that Jesus, the Anointed One, has set before us. Let his mindset become your motivation.” I feel as though the Holy Spirit was pointing out that I need to abandon my selfishness and pay more attention to what matters to others. If there is a concert that Tony really wants to go

Don’t Limit Your JoyPhilippians 3:1a “My beloved ones, don’t ever limit your joy or fail to rejoice in the wonderful experience of knowing our Lord Jesus!”I like this verse because it is a good reminder. Paul is writing this letter to his friends in Philippi. He wants them not to limit their joy or fail to rejoice in the beautiful experience of knowing Jesus. This can be easy, especially if we are surrounded by other people who don’t know how excellent Jesus is. When Paul wrote this, it was a dangerous time for Christians. You couldn’t freely talk about Jesus or preach the Gospel. It was in Philippi that Paul was arrested for preaching the Gospel. He was thrown into a prison cell and beaten. Paul knew the difficult times they were living in firsthand, yet he still told them not to limit their joy or fail to rejoice in the wonderful experience of our Lord Jesus.We live in a time when we are free to talk about Jesus. Well, at least in America, we are able to speak of Jesus, yet Jesus is not popular in today's culture. Today's culture is tolerant of everything except for Jesus. It can be hard to show our excitement for Jesus when those around us tell us He is not real or who He said he was. We have people who try to steal our joy. We need to be aware of this and fight against it.I know many people who live in homes or have family members who don’t believe the way they do. They are the only Christian in their family or in their friend circle. This can be hard. I believe that we are not meant to do life alone. This doesn’t mean you need to be married and have a bunch of kids. It means that we all need to live in a community with other Christians. This means that we shouldn’t live our lives by ourselves without others around us. We shouldn’t isolate ourselves.I know this can be tempting because the world can be a scary place, and there are some pretty awful people in it. People can be so cruel, and I know it feels easier sometimes to hide away. It feels easier not to share our joy of Jesus with others because we fear rejection. I feel this way, too. I feel prompted by the Holy Spirit to speak up to someone about Jesus, and yet I don’t do it because I am afraid they will be upset or they will reject me.However, what the Lord has been putting on my heart lately is that I should be more concerned about what He thinks of me than what the world thinks of me. I don’t always say what I want to say because I wonder what the person will think of me all the while I am not even thinking about what Jesus is thinking about me. It’s ok if the world rejects me, but it is not ok if Jesus does.Where do we want to spend eternity? Is it with Jesus or is it with the people we meet here on earth? Jesus can fill us with so much joy. Did you know Joy is a fruit of the Spirit? Galatians 5:22 states that these are the fruits of the Holy Spirit, “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” So joy in the Lord is something the Holy Spirit can gift to us. However, even if we receive it, it is up to us to share it with others. To display it for all to see.It is our job to bring Christ to others. Do you think people are likely to want to follow Christ if we walk around with an angry look on our face or a sad look on our face. If we walk around all upset and angry they will look at us and think to themselves, “If that is what Christ gives us then no thank you.” People are always watching us, for good or bad, and how we react in situations matters.We are always a representation of Christ. We are called to be “Little Christs” in this world. If people see us gossiping they will think that is what all followers of Christ do. If people see that we are going through a hard time they are going to be watching to see if we have hope in the Lord, if we lean on the Lord, and if we trust in the Lord. Also when good things happen they will be watching to see if we are thankful to the Lord for all He has done. Our focus must always be on Christ.I love that Paul is reminding them and urging them not to ever limit their joy of fail to rejoice about knowing Jesus. It is our joy and our rejoicing that will bring others to Christ. It is our joy and rejoicing that will become contagious and people will want what we have. They will see how full of joy we are and they will want that joy. They will ask what is causing our joy and we will have an opportunity to share Jesus with them. We worry, or at least I do, about going up to strangers and talking to them about Jesus.However, if we walk around so full of joy, people will approach us and ask us what we are so happy about. Why are you smiling so much? How is it that you love so easily? People will come to us to find out what we have that makes us so full of joy. People will want whatever it is that we have. When people see us full of joy in a difficult situation, they will want to know why. When people see that we have hope when the world tells us we should feel hopeles

Psalm 104 The Lord’s Majesty (Part 9)Psalm 104:33-35 “I will sing my song to the Lord as long as I live! Every day, I will sing my praises to God. May you be pleased with every sweet thought I have about you, for you are the source of my joy and gladness. Now, let all the sinners be swept from the earth. But I will keep on praising you, my Lord, with all that is within me. My joyous, blissful shouts of “Hallelujah” are all because of you!We have spent the past eight episodes talking about the Lord’s majesty. We talked about all the parts of nature and how amazing God is to have created all of it. We talked about how powerful He is. Today, we are talking about praising the Lord. This is one of my favorite things to discuss and do. Praise is such an essential part of our relationship with the Lord. There have been many times when I have asked the Lord what has helped me grow so much closer to Him, and he always replies, praise, you praise me so often.If we want to grow closer to the Lord, it helps to let Him know how much we appreciate all He has done and continues to do for us. God loves it when we show our appreciation to Him. It is so easy to take Him for granted if we are not careful because there are so many things He does for us that we don’t even see. It is easy to be grateful to the Lord when He saves us from the dangers we know about, the ones we can see. However, what about all the dangers God has prevented from harming us before seeing them?The verse begins with, “I will sing my song to the Lord as long as I live! Every day, I will sing my praises to God.” I hope I can say the same. I hope every day I take time to sing praises to the Lord. He does so much for us. The Lord has protected my family from some pretty scary things. I have had two kids who overdosed on drugs, and yet both are still living with no lasting effects. Our family was falling apart, and the Lord put it back together. I can’t even count the number of times we needed something to work out, and God arranged the solution perfectly. God deserves my praise, and I hope I never forget that!Next, the verse says, “May you be pleased with every sweet thought I have about you, for you are the source of my joy and gladness.” This is expressing a sentiment I think we all have. We all want the Lord to be pleased with us. I also like how the verse reminds us that the Lord is the source of our joy and gladness. This means we can have joy no matter our circumstances. Happiness and joy are two different things. Happiness is usually based on our circumstances. If something good and fun is happening, we are generally happy. However, Joy is different. I love Rick Warren, the author of A Purpose Driven Life's definition of Joy. He says, “Joy is the settled assurance that God is in control of all the details of my life, the quiet confidence that ultimately everything is going to be alright, and the determined choice to praise God in every situation.”Let’s look at this definition a bit more closely. First, it says joy is the settled assurance that God controls all the details of my life. Can you see how we can have more joy when we realize God controls all the details? Everything is not up to me. I don’t have to be perfect. I don’t have to get it all right. God is in control, not me. Then, it says the quiet confidence that, ultimately, everything will be alright. Can you see how it would be possible to have joy in a difficult situation if you knew that everything would be alright in the end? Things might be crappy right now, but ultimately, eventually, things will be alright, and that makes the joy in the hard times possible. The last part of it ties right in with the verse of the day. It ends with the determined choice to praise God in every situation.Did you know you get to choose whether to praise the Lord? Praising the Lord doesn’t have to be based on your feelings. There may be times when you are in the middle of something really difficult and you don’t feel like praising the Lord, yet you can choose to praise Him anyway. You could be in a period of dryness with prayer or under spiritual attack, and you don’t want to praise the Lord. Yet this is a great time to praise the Lord because it can lift you out of both situations. Praising the Lord when you are under spiritual attack from the enemy is a great way to make the enemy flee. Evil spirits will not stick around when you are proclaiming the name of Jesus Christ. They hate that name. Praising the Lord can bring you joy when you least expect it.Today’s verse ends with, “Now, let all the sinners be swept from the earth. But I will keep on praising you, my Lord, with all that is within me. My joyous, blissful shouts of “Hallelujah” are all because of you!” The person who wrote this Psalm asks for all the sinners to be swept form the earth. This would be nice, except that we are all sinners. I am unsure who wrote this and if they had the extraordinary gift of not being a sinner, but I believe that rig

Psalm 104 The Lord’s Majesty (Part 8)Psalm 104:31-32 “May God’s glorious splendor endure forever! May the Lord take joy and pleasure in all that he has made. For the earth’s overseer has the power to make it tremble; just a touch of his finger and volcanoes erupt as the earth shakes and melts.Wow, this verse has a lot of powerful language that helps to visualize what the verse is saying. First, it says, “May God’s glorious splendor endure forever!” God’s splendor is displayed so often when we look at nature. When we slow down and take the time to admire nature, there is no way we can deny God’s splendor. Look at the beauty of the sunrise and sunset. Look at all the beautiful flowers and trees. Look at the birds and all the animals. Even if you don’t find some animals beautiful, you must admire how God created them to work together. Each one has its purpose and its place in the world and in the food chain. It is truly remarkable.Next, the verse says, “May the Lord take joy and pleasure in all that he has made.” I hope this is the case. I hope God looks down on the world and takes pleasure in it. I know we have messed many things up, and He probably is not a fan of all of that. However, I hope He can at least enjoy the parts He made that we have not messed up yet. There is still so much beauty and majesty in the world. I have a friend who is on a cruise right now, and the other day, she visited Iceland and said it was beautiful! There is so much to see in this world, it is impossible to see all of it.Then the verse says, “For the earth’s overseer has the power to make it tremble; just a touch of his finger and volcanoes erupt as the earth shakes and melts.” This part of the verse serves as a stark reminder of the power of our Lord. With just one touch of His finger, He could make volcanoes erupt, and the earth shake. Yet, we know God wouldn’t even have to touch it; He could make anything He wants with His voice. God spoke the whole world into existence. He can certainly speak other things into existence.We can look at this line in the verse in two ways. We can view it as something to worry about. We can read that verse and get scared that God could reach out and touch a volcano, and it would erupt. We could fear that God will get mad at us and do something like this. I mean, if we are honest with ourselves, we have been taking God out of more and more of our lives. We have done our best to take Him out of the school, the government, and most places. That can’t feel good to Him. I can’t imagine He is looking down upon us and thinking we are doing great things right now, especially in this country.It's important to remember that not everyone is turning away from God. Many good people are doing good things, and I am sure that pleases the Lord. There are people fighting to include God more in schools and the government. However, it's also true that many are doing terrible things, not just to God but to one another. Boston held a Satanic Conference this past year, and I doubt that made God happy. However, God promised after the flood with Noah that He would not do that again. This promise of mercy is a source of comfort and reassurance for us all.The second way we can look at this part of the verse is to recognize the power that God has and to apply that to our lives. If God has the power to reach out and touch a volcano, and it erupts, then what could He do in your circumstance? Could he make a way for you to pay your rent and car payments? Could He heal that cancer or that sore back? Could He take care of your tenant who is not paying rent or fix your car that needs to be fixed? We can look at this verse and realize that the power of God has no limits. He can do ANYTHING!Once we realize this, once we truly believe this in the depths of our hearts, then we start praying bigger prayers. Once we realize there is no limit to God’s power, we start to ask for the things we really need. We start to ask for our loved ones to be healed, even though the doctor said there isn’t a way. We ask for a car because ours just died and we need a car to get to work to pay our bills. We ask for supernatural provisions because we know that we do not have enough money in our account to pay our bills or enough food in our cabinets to feed our family.Sometimes, we look at the faith of those who live in other countries, and we are so envious. We wish we could have the faith they have. They trust the Lord so much, and we feel like we would give anything to trust the Lord that much. However, I have discovered that they trust the Lord that much because they truly need Him. They know they can’t feel their family on their own. They know they are powerless without Him. They can’t save their children. They don’t have the medicine we have here in the United States. Their trust in God is necessary because life would be much harder if they didn’t believe.I know my parents love the Lord, and listening to their stories in High School and meeting up

Witness Wednesday #118 More PopWe (Healing)Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today I chose four testimonies from the Healing Category. I know so many people who are praying for a miraculous healing right now. Oftentimes, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we hear others tell their story it helps us to see we are not alone. When we see that others were healed it gives us hope that if God could heal them then He can heal us too! I pray when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that you and your loved ones could be healed too!Savannah: This story isn’t about me, but my brother. It was August of 2020 when he was admitted to the hospital with COVID. We were told right from the beginning that it didn’t look good. What followed was a long battle for his life. He needed a form of life-support that had extremely limited availability. He needed so much blood. His wife and children couldn’t come to see him. At one point, his heart stopped for 8.5 minutes. The only thing we could do was pray. It was nearly spring when he finally went home to his family. He’s alive, and nobody can deny that a miracle has taken place. We prayed without ceasing, and God has answered our prayers.Deborah: I grew up in an extremely dysfunctional family. I wasn’t allowed to listen to music, watch animated movies, or basically like any food or activities that my father did not like. I was often told that if I asked for help I was bothering people, that I was stupid, and that a “good guy” would never like me so I would have to settle for a “bad one.”I’ve gone to counseling for awhile and with God’s help, I have begun to heal in many ways. However, there was one thing that I had not been able to do and that was to let myself cry. Crying when I was young was dangerous and was always met with the words, “Jesus doesn’t love you if you cry.” Intellectually, I knew this wasn’t true and that it was okay to cry but it didn’t feel safe. I had taught myself not to cry for so long that I wasn’t sure if I could. It was as if the tears were broken.Last night, I was at the concert in Gadsden, AL, and I began to feel emotional as I listened to dad jokes and as Matthew West talked about being a girl dad. Memories of my childhood and the things I was told began to pop into my mind. Still I did not cry. I sat on the front row wondering if anyone could tell that I was fighting tears. Then something changed. John 3:16 was read and everyone was told to insert their own name. As I was fighting tears, I was saying the words “God loves me.”Suddenly I didn’t just know that intellectually it is okay to cry, I knew it in my heart. God loves me even when I cry. During the next song, I felt something on my face and I reached up and there was a tear. For the first time in probably thirty years I was letting myself cry and I felt safe while doing it. I am not who my family told me that I am. I am a child of God. I am safe in his arms and loved when I’m happy and smiling and even when I’m sad and crying.Kathleen: Not the healing I wanted…thank goodness, God knew better what I needed. In late 2016 and 2017 I was suffering from a crippling case of Bi-Polar disorder.My doctor prescribed me several different antidepressants, however, all of them left me with feelings of deep depression and high anxiety. By mid-January, my husband and I agreed to discontinue all medication and look for a more holistic treatment. I was on antidepressants for a total of SIX WEEKS when I began the withdrawal process. By mid-April, I was finally feeling free from the effects of the medication and 30 pounds lighter. My anxiety was greatly reduced and my depression was almost a non-issue. Then a week later, after a nice hot soak in the tub, I started experiencing weird “pins and needles” in my left leg, from the knee to my ankle. I tried rubbing, slapping it, walking around the house-nothing worked and I ended up going to bed hours later with the buzz still going strong.Within a month, the buzz had moved to my entire left side, from the neck down. Another month down the road and it was on my right side also. Trips to my doctor, the neurologist, MRI, CAT scan, EEG, EMG proved fruitless- except now I had a name. Spontaneous Paresthesia. You know when your foot falls asleep and in the “waking up” process you get the feeling of pins and needles? By the middle of June, paresthesia was affecting my entire body. One day, while working around the house with my husband, I became completely unglued when I started feeling my stomach, intestines, internal organs, all buzzing. Everywhere I have nerve endings I felt buzzing. By July, 2017, I felt like I had bugs crawling in my

Psalm 104 The Lord’s Majesty (Part 7)Psalm 104:27-30 “All the creatures wait expectantly for you to give them their food as you determine. You come near and they all gather around, feasting from your open hands, and each is satisfied from your abundant supply. But if you were to withhold from them and turn away, they all would panic. And when you choose to take away their breath, each one dies and returns to the dust When you release your Spirit-Wind, life is created, ready to replenish life upon the earth.”The Psalms are so beautiful. If you have always wanted to start reading the Bible but have no idea where to start, may I suggest the Psalms? In today’s verse, we hear about how the creatures wait expectantly for God to give them their food. It says they all gather around Him and feast from His open hand. Every one of them is satisfied with God’s abundant supply. There are a couple of things just in the first few sentences.First, it says all the creatures wait expectantly for God to give them their food. Are we included in this? I mean, it does say “all the creatures.” Yet, are we waiting expectantly? Do we know for sure that God will provide all that we need? I think sometimes we pray, and yet we don’t expect to see results because we aren’t really sure results are even possible. For instance, Yesterday I prayed over a woman who has breast cancer. She is starting chemo today. I wonder if she expected to be healed when we prayed over here. I wonder if she was expecting big things. I know with cancer it is hard to test out and see if you are healed. You usually won’t notice anything until you go to a doctor's when they do some test. I wonder if that makes it hard to have expectant faith.When I first started praying over people for physical healing, I thought I had expectant faith, yet I was afraid to ask people how they were feeling or if they were feeling any manifestations of the Holy Spirit. I was scared to ask because I wasn’t sure what to do if they said no. Since taking the Encounter Ministries class, I learned that often the miracle doesn’t take place until the person steps out in faith an tests to see if they still have pain or if they could do something now that they couldn’t do before. Like in the story of the man with the withered hand. This story can be found in 3 out of the 4 Gospels. I will read the account from Luke’s Gospel. This takes place in Luke 6:6-11.“ On another sabbath, he entered the synagogue and taught, and there was a man there whose right hand was withered. The scribes and the Pharisees watched him to see whether he would cure on the sabbath so that they might find an accusation against him. 8 Even though he knew what they were thinking, he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come and stand here.” He got up and stood there. Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?” After looking around at all of them, he said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was restored. But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.”The man’s hand was restored after he stretched it out. He had to have expectant faith to stretch out his hand. Jesus had to have expectant faith to ask the man to stretch out his hand. We need to have expectant faith, too. It is not just about healing, although that is important, it’s about everything. We need to expect that God will provide for us just like He does the other creatures. We need to come to Him believing that He will answer our prayers and He will provide all we need.Next, it says, "They all gather around, feasting from your open hands, and each is satisfied from your abundant supply.” I like this sentence for two reasons. The first is because it says they were feasting from God’s open hand. Can you picture that? Can you picture being so close to the Lord that you are eating out of His open hands? That would be amazing!! I also love when it says that each is satisfied from your abundant supply. We tend to have a scarcity mindset. We think that there is not enough to go around. We worry there won’t be enough money to pay all the bills. We worry there won’t be enough food for all the people. We worry if we ask God for something small He won’t have anything left for something big when it comes along.However, this verse reminds us that God is one of abundance. He has more than enough of everything we need for each one of us. He has more than enough provisions, more than enough love, more than enough grace, more than enough mercy. God has more than enough. Don’t be afraid to come to Him with expectant faith and ask Him for whatever it is. The next part talks about how God has the power to take life away and the power to give life. The verse says that if God were to turn away from the creatures, they would panic. Is this us, too? Do we panic when we think God has turned away from us? God never leaves us. He doesn’t tu

Psalm 104 The Lord’s Majesty (Part 6)Psalm 104:24-26 “O Lord, what an amazing variety of all you have created! Wild and wonderful is this world you have made while wisdom was there at your side. This world is full of so many creatures, yet each belongs to you! And then there is the sea! So vast! So wide and deep—swarming with countless forms of sea life, both small and great. Trading ships glide through the high seas. And look! There are the massive whales bounding upon the waves.”It feels so good to be back! Please explain if you have been wondering where and why I have been doing replays. I tested positive for Covid two weeks ago. I woke up and completed a new episode, but I wasn’t feeling well. I took a COVID at-home test, and it was positive. I went back to bed and slept for most of the following week. After my 10-day quarantine in my room, I went on a family vacation with my parents and many siblings. It was a lot of fun, and I am so thankful to the Lord for getting me better in time to enjoy that! I am happy to be back writing new episodes. This week, we will finish up the series on Psalm 104.I like this verse because it praises the Lord for being so amazing. I believe the Lord loves it when we praise Him. Who doesn’t want a little acknowledgment? It begins with, “O Lord, what an amazing variety of all you have created!” Have you ever thought about that? Have you ever taken the time to slow down and look at all the nature around you? Have you ever really thought about the variety of things the Lord has created? He created humans, all the animals, all the vegetation, all the rock formations, the seas, the skies, the stars. When we take the time to think about it, the variety of things He has created really is amazing.There are 400,000 types of flowering plant species all around the world. Over 1.5 million living animal species have been described, of which around 1.05 million are insects, over 85,000 are molluscs, and around 65,000 are vertebrates. It has been estimated there are as many as 7.77 million animal species on Earth. There are around 1,097 different vegetables around the world. God didn’t need to give us all of that. We don’t need that much variety. Plants provide us with food, oxygen, and energy. However, we don’t need 400,000 different types of flowers. However, God wanted to give us variety. We also don’t need over a million different kinds of animals, but God gave them to us anyway. Let’s take a minute and appreciate all God did for us.The verse says, “Wild and wonderful is this world you have made while wisdom was at your side.” This verse reminds us that God did not accidentally create anything. He knew what He was doing, and each thing He made had a purpose. He thought about everything. He didn’t leave anything out. He made sure that every living thing had something to eat. This includes the plants, the insects, the animals, everything. Take a minute and imagine how much thought it would take to not only create all that God created but also to make sure they had the right environment to live in, the right resources, and the food they needed to survive. It really is remarkable.Next, it says, “This world is full of so many creatures, yet each belongs to you!” Each creature on this earth belongs to the Lord our God. The animals don’t have to worry about where their food will come from. They know they are creatures of God and that He will take care of them. We are also God’s creatures, and He will take care of us too! We don’t have to worry either. Worry is something that comes pretty naturally to most of us, and yet it is not necessary. This morning in Philippians 4:19, I read, “I am convinced that my God will fully satisfy every need you have, for I have seen the abundant riches of glory revealed to me through Jesus Christ. This was Paul talking to the Philippians, but He is speaking to us too! God will take care of all we need. He has abundant riches, and he wants to shower upon us. He has so much glory, grace, love, forgiveness, and mercy. We don’t have any reason to be anxious; God will take care of all of our worries!Next, it says, “And then there is the sea! So vast! So wide and deep—swarming with countless forms of sea life, both small and great.” This is just reiterating the vastness of the Lord’s creation. Think of how many different sea creatures there are. There are known to be more than 260,000 different species living in the seas, and we know that there are many yet to be discovered. Some scientists believe there are more than a million species in the seas. How amazing is that? Each one of them has everything they need to survive. I wonder if it would be helpful to remind ourselves of this when we get anxious. Hundreds of thousands of species live in the seas, including species of plants. There are millions of species of animals, and God provides for all of them. If he can provide for the plants and animals, how much more will he provide for us?The verse ends with, “Trading

An Unexpected HandstandJeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”This is a great scripture verse to memorize or to put up somewhere where you will see it often. Sometimes it does not feel like God is for us. Actually sometimes it can seem like He is against us. We can go through long periods of life where it feels like everything is against us. This is when it is good to have this scripture verse to look at to remind you that God is for you. Someone in my prayer group asked for prayers for a friend the other day. She said this couple is really struggling to see God’s plan in everything that is going on. The couple has been trying to have a baby for a long time. The wife has had several miscarriages and is really starting to wonder if she will ever have a baby. They turned their struggle over to God and they asked Him for help. They asked what they could do and for God to reveal anything that might be getting in the way of them having a baby. The other day they found out that she was pregnant and they are very much praying this is the time they get to carry their baby to term.When you are in one of these really difficult stretches of time, it can be really hard sometimes not to lose faith. You may ask yourself, what is even the point of continuing to believe when it seems like God has forgotten about you. I promise He is still with you, even in this hard time. If you continue reading after this passage in Jeremiah 29:12-14 it says, “Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” The couple that was trying to have a baby, they continued to pray, even though they didn’t understand why this was all happening. They continued to seek where God was in all of this and they found Him.I know that depending on your situation and how long it has been going on, it may be difficult to pray. You may want to, but just aren’t sure what to say at this point. Or, maybe you feel like you have been praying for so long that God is not listening anymore. I assure you, He is still listening. He always listens to us and wants good for us. The Lord is always truthful and always keeps His promises. So, when He says that His plans for us are to prosper and not for harm, then He means it. If you are struggling to pray, reach out and ask a friend, co-worker, priest, minister, family member, anyone to pray for you, maybe even to pray with you. It says in Matthew 18:20 “ For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”There is power in praying with fellow believers. If you are praying for something and not seeing the results that you wanted to see, ask others to pray with you. I went to a healing service the other night and instead of having one or two people pray over those wanting healing, the priest had everyone sitting around that person put their hands on the one needing healing and pray for them. It was very powerful to see all the people that needed healing surrounded by fellow believers praying for them. God wants good things for you. He wants you to have a future and to have hope. So, why don’t we, what gets in our way of seeing this future that God wants us to have? There are several things that can get in the way. Sometimes, we get in our own way. Even though we know how God is calling us to live, we deviate from that because it is really hard or because it is not the norm in society today. Living the way Jesus wants us to live can go against what we are taught in society. We can look foolish when we follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Have you ever had a still small voice in your head that was telling you to do something that didn’t make sense at the time? Did you listen to it?The Holy Spirit is inside each of us and He tries to guide us to the right path. But sometimes we can’t see where He is leading us. Sometimes He asks us to do things and we don’t because they seem crazy or we don’t understand where it will get us. I heard a story in a book I read called “The Cross and the Switchblade” by David Wilkerson about a woman who had learned to listen to that voice inside her. One morning she was heading out to work when she felt prompted by the Holy Spirit to bring her fuzzy socks to work with her. She thought this was a very strange request, but since she had learned to listen, she went and grabbed her fuzzy socks and threw them in her purse. When she got to work, there was a prostitute on her front step and she was passed out. She brought her inside and warmed her up. They got to talking and this woman asked the prostitute if she could have anything, what would it be. Do you know what she said? Fuzzy socks. The woman was so surprised and gave her fuzzy socks to the prostitute. The prostitute was so happy and said, “They even match my outfit.” There is another story I heard from a person in a le

If You Only Knew The Power Living Inside Of You…Matthew 8: 16 “When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick.”I was talking with a friend last night and we got on the topic of the Holy Spirit. I love to talk about the Holy Spirit because I am still in awe over the whole thing. I am in awe that God gave us the Holy Spirit. I am in awe that we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us. I wish each and every single baptized person on planet earth knew how powerful they were with the Holy Spirit living inside of them. The verse above says, “When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed al the sick.” Jesus was able to chase away demons with a word. He was able to heal the sick just by saying be healed. Actually there are many different ways that Jesus healed people. If you read the many healing stories in the Bible you will see there wasn’t just one way that Jesus healed the sick. Sometimes he said “be healed” sometimes he just told them to do something like “take up your mat and go.” Other times he did a physical action like when he put mud on a blind mans eyes or put his fingers in a deaf man’s ears. I think there was so much variety so that Jesus could show us it is not what we do that heals people, it is who we ask. We come to God in faith and He does the healings. I was talking to my friend last night because we were doing an inner healing session. Part of the process I was using for inner healing was to renounce the lies that we tell ourselves. I was explaining that we can do that at anytime. She can do that on her own even when I am not on the phone with her. When she starts to get anxious she can sit down and ask Jesus to help her figure out what specific lies she is telling herself. For instance, my car will break down and I won’t be able to get to work. Something bad will happen to me if I go out on my own. My children might get hurt if I let them do what they want. I am not sure what it might be for you. We all have things we tell ourselves that are not true. Things like I am unworthy of love, I am unloved, I am stupid, I am a bad driver. Whatever it is that you are telling yourself, you can renounce that lie once you realize what that lie is. If you aren’t sure if you are telling yourself any lies, take a minute and think about what that inner voice is saying to you. Maybe take a minute and ask God to reveal any lies you are telling yourself. Once you have the lies it is easy to renounce them. It is a simple sentence, “In the name of Jesus I renounce the lie, and then you state the lie.” For instance, “In the name of Jesus I renounce the lie that I am not good enough, I am not pretty enough, I am not enough.” Ideally you would repeat the sentence for each lie. I just named a few so you would get the idea. Once you renounce the lie you can ask God to replace that lie with the truth. It is amazing what you will hear when you ask God what truth He wants to give you in place of that lie. You will see just how much God loves you. You will see a tenderness that you probably didn’t know was there. My friend was saying that although renouncing lies is so simple, she didn’t know she could do that. I explained that she was not alone! So many of us don’t know we can do that. I definitely didn’t before enrolling in the Encounter Ministries class I am taking. Another part of the inner healing session is to renounce any evil spirits. For instance, the spirit of anxiety, the spirit of depressions, the spirit of unworthiness. When Jesus sent the 12 apostles out to spread the word that the Kingdom of God was at hand He gave them the power to do signs and wonders. When He sent out the 72 He did the same. Jesus made us all, each one of us part of the great commission. He tasked us all with spreading the news of Him and all the things that happened in the Gospel. He wants us to make sure that every person on the planet has had a chance to hear about Him. To do this He gave us all the Holy Spirit. With the Holy Spirit we have the power living inside of us to cast out demons in Jesus’ name. We have the power to heal the sick in Jesus’ name. Well, we are not healing the sick but God is healing the sick through us when we are brave enough to step our in faith and to ask. Did you know demons don’t have any power of you unless you give it to them? It’s true, you have to consent to them being there. Now, it’s not as if they ask you and you say yes or no. They find ways in through the sins we commit and often times we didn’t know that we opened a door or that we let them in. However, whether we knew we were doing it or not, if they find an open door they enter. However, they can’t stay once you tell them to leave. You, yes you, have the power to tell them to leave. If you notice you have a persistent feeling, such as anxiety, depression, worry, anger, irritability, l

Today’s witnesses come from the bethel.com/testimonies website. I found the first testimony because I have a friend who is struggling with Fibromyalgia. I believe that Jesus can heal even chronic diseases that have no human cure and, I know testimonies build faith. I searched specifically for a testimony about a miraculous healing of Fibromyalgia so my friend would know it is possible and hopefully she would keep asking and believing she can be healed too. On that same website I saw the second two witnesses, which are actually the same event just from two different people who were involved. The second witness is about curing of cerebral palsy. If you know anyone who needs a healing pass this witness Wednesday along to them and maybe it will give them the hope they need to believe that God can heal them too!Healing of FibromyalgiaJanuary 5, 2021A woman is healed of the pain and symptoms of fibromyalgia.When I was only 12, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. I have heard that about 85 % of women with fibromyalgia have had some kind of severe childhood trauma, and that was the case with me.I had it for 17 years. I could hardly walk or stand. My pain level was ten. I was on 16 medications, 86 pills a day for six or seven years. I received very limited help. In those 17 years, I probably received prayer about 700 times. I had seen other healings. I believed in healing.On December 6, 2009, I was at a church service call for prayer, but I wasn’t going to go up. I told the Lord I knew He could heal me, but I didn’t have the energy to hope that He would.A friend said to me, “You are going up for prayer.”I said, “No, I’m not.”My friend added, “Either you are going up yourself, or I’m dragging you up there.”I went up, and they laid hands on me, and I knew 95% of the pain had already gone down. I don’t know if they got two or three words out of their mouth before all the pain left.Before that, I went back to my doctor, who was a Muslim and asked to be taken off all my medications. He was skeptical. I told him I believed in Jesus, and Jesus had healed me.On my medical chart, it says “spontaneous remission.” Those words don’t actually exist for fibromyalgia. Doctors are limited in what they can say because it doesn’t go away for them. There are pressure points for fibromyalgia, and they were not there anymore for me.Two first-year BSSM students experienced a miracle when one prayed for the other, and breakthrough from a lifelong affliction resulted.Karina’s StoryOn December 1, 2022, I went to our activation, Healing and Pastoral Care. The leader, Roy, was talking about The Chosen, a Season 3 episode in which a disciple spoke to Jesus and wanted healing, and Jesus said He wanted to heal him but it would glorify Him more if he stayed with his infirmity. That was uncomfortable for me because I really liked The Chosen and did not want to criticize it, but that scene was disturbing to me, too. As we discussed this in our class, we decided, “Let’s pray the actor gets healed!” He has cerebral palsy, and we thought that maybe they wrote that in the script because of that. We said we did not want to change our theology according to our experience, but to model our theology to fit who God is. We prayed for that actor to be healed so they would have to change the storyline.We came to worship afterward. I usually don’t go to the front, but Payton (my friend) always does. That day, I was in the front with her. I turned around and said to her, “Healing on your body!” Payton said, “Yeah!” She receives so easily. I thought, Maybe I can be a little more intentional. I turned to her and said, “Hey, we just talked about cerebral palsy this morning. And we prayed. Can I pray for you?” I had already prayed for her before because she had told me she had cerebral palsy.I just put my hand on her and prayed for realignment in her body and for every cell to vibrate to the frequency of heaven. I asked her to test it out. To be honest, I was expecting, but not expecting at the same time. She straightened and said, “Oh, my back just cracked.” She held her arms out and said, “Are my arms the same length?” Her right arm was about an inch shorter than her left arm before. She started crying because she realized they were the same length. I started crying, too.I asked her to try out her leg which would always hurt. I understood that her whole life, her foot would spasm every time she stretched it. It would hurt when she stood on it the whole day, and she would drag her foot a little behind her at the end of the day. She took her foot out of her slippers and stretched her leg out, but it did not spasm or hurt. She kept crying. I said, “You have to go up on stage and share!”The next day, I thought, Is she still healed? I was happy I experienced this, but I wanted it to be permanent. I texted her and asked if she was still healed, and she said yes.Her brain is now able to control her right side properly. I was so overwhelmed with joy and so honored to be th

Backseat DriverPhil 4:8 “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things.”“Peace of God, which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Peace that transcends all understanding. Have you ever had this? Have you ever felt at peace in a situation that was not peaceful? Have you ever had peace about something that you didn’t understand? There are so many things to be anxious about, especially in the world today. However, God can give us a peace that transcends all understanding if we ask him too. If we trust that he is in control. We don’t have to worry about everything because we are lucky and we have Him taking care of everything and working all things for our good. Romans 8:28 says, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” God is working for our good if we just let him work. If we just rely on him to come through for us. There are some situations that seem impossible. I get that. Some of you may be thinking that God offer’s peace to some, but not to others. Maybe you haven’t felt that peace before and you are wondering if God has forgotten about you. I assure you, he has not. God is offering his peace to all who want it. The thing is, we need to accept it. We need to step out in faith and hand our troubles, no matter how big or small they are, to God and let him take the wheel.There is a song by TobyMac called Backseat Driver. It is a really great illustration of how we tend to want to take control back from God. God wants to go through this life with us and He wants to be the driver. He wants us to rely on him to get us to where we are going. There is one part of this song that says: “I'm putting my trust in You, putting my trust in You. It’s a little bit overdue, but I'm putting my trust in You” Isn’t this so true! We put our trust in God, when we have no choice, when we tried everything we could to fix it on our own and nothing has worked. Then, finally, when all else has failed we put our trust in God. We finally realize that nothing we have done has fixed our situation and so we turn over control to God. What if we could begin to do this sooner? What if we did this at the first sign of trouble? Imagine how great it would be to save all that time that we usually spend trying to fix things ourselves and the countless hours we spend worrying about things? Imagine how nice it would be if we could turn everything over to God, before we waste that time. There is another part in the song that says, “Silly me, silly me, aye. Reverting back to my old ways. Them got to be in control days. Jump before I pray, Yo, I am heading out the doorway. But I want Your way, Yahweh.” Does this sound familiar? Have you ever found yourself stuck in a situation you didn’t want to be in? Have you ever found yourself wondering how you got there and promising that the next time you had a decision to make, you would pray about it first? And you did, at least for awhile, but then things were going good again. Everything seemed to be working out and you started spending less and less time in prayer? What if we consulted our heavenly Father before making any of our decisions? What if we took a few minutes at the beginning of our day and asked God what he wanted us to do that day? Reverting back to our old ways is something that we all do. I have heard a lot of my mentors say over the years that “it is not a knowing problem, it is a doing problem.” Usually when we revert back to our old ways it is not because we don’t know better. We usually know what is best for us and what produces the best results. However, we tend to slip back into doing what is easiest, or what comes most naturally instead of what is best. Letting God take the wheel and lead us is the best way to go through life. He knows what is best for us and can save us so much time and pain. Often times we think we know what we want in life and we are upset when we don’t get it. In times like these, as hard as it is, it will help to remember that God is the driver. His ways are greater than our ways. Isaiah 55:8-9 says, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” If a door that you wanted to open, didn’t open, its because your heavenly father has something much better in store for you. It is not always easy to see that and I know in the moment of disappointment it is hard to remember. Think about when you were little and you wanted to watch tv, or eat the candy, or do something else that would not have been great for you and

Jesus is bigger than the FactsLuke 8:50 “While Jesus was still speaking, someone came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. “Your daughter is dead,” he said. “Don’t bother the teacher anymore. Hearing this, Jesus said to Jairus, “Don’t be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed.”Pastor Steven Furtick gave an excellent sermon on this passage a few weeks ago. If you want to listen to it you can check it our on the Elevation with Steven Furtick Podcast. The title of the Episode is The Facts aren’t Final. Steven Furtick explores this passage in a lot more detail then I can do in this short amount of time as his podcast is close to an hour long. However, I really liked his messages surrounding this verse. There are usually several messages in his sermons. They are really good. The main message for this episode is revealed in the title, Facts are not Final. This verse is about a man who went to see Jesus because his daughter was dying. He found Jesus and he fell down on his knees and asked Jesus to come to his house and to save his daughter. Then in Luke 8:50 it says, “While Jesus was still speaking, someone came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. “Your daughter is dead,” he said. “Don’t bother the teacher anymore. Hearing this Jesus said to Jairus, “Don’t be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed.” Can you imagine being in this circumstance? Have you heard those words before, “Just believe and she, he, they will be healed?” This can be so hard. It can be so hard to believe on a good day, but when you are faced with facts that don’t give a lot of room for hope. This man just received news that his little girl died. Not that she was sick, but that she had died. Imagine how hard it was for this man to believe. It says that Jairus was a synagogue leader. They synagogue leaders at the time of Jesus did not know what to make of Jesus. Even in this passage they refer to him as the teacher, no the son of God, not the healer, not the resurrected Christ, the teacher. Jairus must have wondered if Jesus was a healer because he did go to Jesus and ask Him to save his daughter. I wonder if he believed that he could heal his daughter or if this was just what some may call a “Hail Mary” attempt. A “Hail Mary” in case you don’t know is when you try something that you are pretty sure will not work, but you don’t have any other chance so you give it one last shot anyway. Hail Mary is actually a great name for that type of circumstance because she is definitely someone that we can rely on when all else has failed. The facts of this case seemed bleak. Jairus wanted Jesus to save his daughter but according to the facts Jesus did not get there in time and his daughter died. Jesus was on his way to Jairus’ house when he got stopped by a large crowd of people. One of those people was the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years and no doctors could help her. She went up to Jesus in the crowd and touched his cloak and was immediately healed. Jesus stopped to acknowledge this and while He was still talking to this woman, who’s story is amazing and deserves a whole episode of her own, Jairus got new that his daughter had died. I don’t know about you, but I feel like I would be super angry at this point. I feel as the my grief would have over come me and I would have started to yell at Jesus. I would have told Him my daughters death was all His fault. If he hadn’t have stopped to talk to that lady, my daughter might still be alive. Can you picture the scene? It seems when we are angry and hurt we lash out. It makes us feel better, even if just for a moment, if we can blame someone else. This is a normal reaction, however, there is no mention of any such reaction from Jairus. Jesus hears the man from Jairus’ house tell Jairus that his daughter died and Jesus says, “Don’t be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed.” The question is, “How do we believe when we are faced with facts that dispute that faith?” How does this man believe that his daughter will be ok when he was just told that she was dead? Do you have a circumstance in your life where the facts don’t leave room for much hope? Do you have a situation where the facts tell you that there is no way out? For instance, maybe you have too many bills and not enough money. Maybe you have a diagnosis and the doctors are saying there is no cure for. Maybe your child is facing a situation and you don’t see a way out of it for them. Maybe your marriage is in trouble and your spouse has said there is no way to fix it. In all of these circumstances, the facts say that your situation is beyond hope. The facts say that you can’t change they things. If a doctor says you have a terminal illness, that is a fact. You can’t dispute that fact on merit, as you do in fact have an illness that there is no human cure for. If your spouse has made up their mind that divorce is the only way, then it will take divine intervention to save that marriage. So, how do we have fai

I Have Heard Your Prayers And Seen Your TearsIsaiah 38:5 “Go and tell Hezekiah, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will add fifteen years to your life.”I thought I would take a minute at the beginning of this episode to explain how I get the scripture verses that I use at the beginning of each episode. Every Thursday I attend a Catholic Charismatic prayer group. During our meetings we begin with a 5-10 minute teaching, then we go into praise and worship. Then we go into speaking in tongues and quiet time where we are silent and listen for anything the Lord wants to share with us, often times that will include scripture verses. I use the scripture verses from these meetings as I figure if God is sharing them with us, they are probably good ones to share with you. This morning, however, I am leading prayer group and I did not want to use a scripture verse that had just been used at the meetings. So, I prayed this morning that God would give me a verse. Now I have been part of this group for 3-4 years now. Every week God shows up and shares with us. And yet, I am constantly surprised when he does. Or maybe I’m not surprised He shows up, but how He shows up. This morning I was not sure how I would know what scripture to use. I thought I would maybe just open the Bible and pick one, or maybe one from my scripture writing would jump out at me. I was unclear and if I am honest, I am not sure I fully believed that God would show me what scripture to use. Then, right before I finished my prayer time the words Isaiah 38:5 flashed in my mind. It was as if it was written in the air. I could see it plain as day. This has never happened to me before. God has spoken to me, but not that plainly.I share this story with you because I want you to know that God is there for you. He hears your prayers. Just as it says in Isaiah 38:5 “‘This is what the Lord, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will add fifteen years to your life.” Sometimes we wonder if God is really listening. When I read this verse this morning my first thought was of a friend of mine. She is really struggling right now and I felt like God was talking to her when He said “I have heard your prayers and seen your tears.” Then I got to thinking and I actually have several friends that are struggling right now. Struggling with some really difficult issues. For all of you that are struggling right now, I want you to know that you are not alone. Life is difficult for so many people right now. On top of all that we went through over this past year, you have had added levels of difficulty. I am so sorry that life has been so hard. We have had many difficulties this past year as well. Remote learning was a challenge. The isolation from friends was really tough on our oldest son. It has been a crazy year. And yet, I can see God was with me through all of it. What if you can’t see that? What if you don’t know where God was in all of it? You can be someone who loves God, someone who has a close relationship with God, and also you can question where God is and what his plan is. King David was anointed, he had a very close relationship with God, and yet even He questioned God. In Psalm 13:1-3 “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?” Have you had these thoughts before? Have you, or are you going through something, and you are wondering how long you have to endure the suffering before God will save you, before He will answer your prayers?If this is you first, I want to let you know that this is okay. Sometimes we can make our pain worse because on top of the pain of the situation, we feel guilty because we are questioning the Lord, or we are mad at the Lord. Sometimes our minds say things like, “If I were a good christian I would just trust God,” or “I’ve had a relationship with the Lord a long time, I shouldn’t be worried, or questioning.” God can handle our questioning and our anger. He is strong enough for anything you have for Him. He wants you to turn to Him in times of need. You are not the only person angry with God and questioning how long you will have to suffer. Trust me, there are many people in the same boat. Please let the guilt go. Please do not judge yourself for questioning. David questioned often, just read the psalms and you will see just how often, and yet God chose David’s lineage to bring forth the savior of the world. Second, I want you to know that this scripture verse is for you. God wants to talk directly to you right now when he says “I have heard your prayers, and seen your tears.” He is there with you, even when you can’t see Him or feel Him. He is there every moment of your life. I know it is a struggle sometimes, many times, to understand why you had to go thr

Where The Spirit Of The Lord Is, There Is Freedom2 Corinthians 3:17 “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”I saw this verse on Facebook today and thought it was a great one. I have been helping to lead a Life in the Spirit Seminar and each week we learn a little bit more about the Holy Spirit and about the beginning of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. There is a video teaching about different subjects and then one of our prayer group members gives a witness about how they have seen God working in their lives. I have really been learning a lot. Not just from the talks, but also from other people’s experience of how they have seen God in their life. The first week’s topic was God’s Love. The witness was about a woman who was told she couldn’t have children and yet had two healthy children. She was a woman who married the love of her life and even though the marriage ended, God was there with her through it all. He provided miracles all throughout her life small ones and big ones, like giving birth to her children when she was told she couldn’t have kids. This woman experienced a baptism of the Holy Spirit and she talks about how her life was changed after that. She had this love and closeness with the Lord that she never had before. She was filled with this sense of peace that although things weren’t always easy, she would be ok. God would be there with her through it all. The verse above says that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. This woman definitely experienced freedom for her worries.The second week the topic was salvation. The witness was about a woman who lost her father at a young age. He was only about 60 years old when he was hit be a teenager and killed. There was some speculation that the teen had been drinking but could not be proven. This woman could not forgive the teen. She was so angry that he took her father from his children and his grandchildren. She harbored this anger for 20 years. Forgiveness wasn’t even something she could think about. She went to grief counseling, and they recommended she write the teen a letter, but not send it. She couldn’t even think of doing this. Many years later a former coworker of hers lost her husband to a teen driving accident. My friend attended this wake and asked her former coworker how she was doing. The former coworker said she thought she was ready to write the teenage a letter of forgiveness, as it had been four months. My friend burst into tears and asked how she could forgive so soon as it had only been four months. My friend’s dad died 20 years ago and she still harbored feelings of unforgiveness. Her former coworker told her she needed to forgive him, for herself as much as for the boy. How could she expect God to forgive her if she didn’t forgive others. The Holy Spirit works in mysterious ways. If my friend hadn’t have ran into her former co-worker at this wake, who knows if she would have forgiven that young man. My friend didn’t even notice how much her unforgiveness had blocked her relationship with the lord. It took her another year to write the letter. When she read it out loud to her husband she felt so free. It was as if a huge weight she didn’t know she had been carrying had been lifted. It enabled her to have a closer and intimate relationship with God. She was finally free of the unforgiveness.Last night’s topic was New Life. It talked about how we have a new life when we accept the Holy Spirit into our lives and give Him permission to work in our lives. When we surrender to God, amazing things happen. For some, it is so hard to surrender everything. For others, it is easy to surrender everything to God, and yet, when things get tough they take it back and try to do it on their own. The witness for last night was about a member who was doing her best to be a good Catholic. She attended mass and her kids went to Catholic school. She talked about how her priorities once she got married were her husband, her kids and God. However, about 14 years ago her husband had heart trouble and was give 3-5 years to live. She was told his heart would just stop and it would be sudden death. She didn’t know what to do with this. He was her best friend and her whole world. How could she think about a future without him?She was upset with God and questioned what she did to deserve this. She allowed fear and anxiety to take over life. She begged God to save them from this medical prognosis. She cried out why have you forsaken me. There were many more years of hospital stays and ER visits. She felt as though God was waiting on her, but she didn’t know what to do. She started to go to daily mass and spent hours in the adoration chapel. One day she saw an advertisement for a Catholic Healing Service. She begged her husband to take her and he did. At this service she was taught about the power of the Holy Spirit and what can block us from the healing power of God and from hearing His voice. They w

IntroductionToday’s witness is from my new friend Bruce. Bruce found my podcast randomly, and when he heard the call for people to share their stories, he reached out to me through email and shared his story with me. I asked him if I could share it, and he said yes. Bruce has made a career for the past thirty years as a head scenic artist, art director, and designer in the professional theatre business. For the past five years, he has also had a studio on James St. N., where he produced his own artwork. He is known and loved by many in the community for his work teaching the PMC art class for over a decade, as well as a more recent class for seniors at the YWCA. This is his story of losing sight but finding a new depth of faith.BackstoryI’ve been a believing Christian since the age of ten, but at some point in the past few years, I began to notice a growing sense of spiritual restlessness. I felt like I never had the kind of spiritual life that you read and hear about. I always felt there could be a better experience. I wanted that closeness to God and that shower of blessings that the scriptures describe, but I always figured I was not worthy of it—or else I would have known it by now. A few years ago, pastor lane spoke about being “haunted by God.” This began happening to me. I would wake up in the middle of the night thinking someone was there. I was never afraid, even though it felt surreal or supernatural. It was as if someone was trying to tell me something, but no words were heard. Someone was there. It was the Holy Ghost haunting me. This was a good haunting. I was quite moved by this and began to pray for something to happen that would make me a better person and Christian. I asked myself what I would want from God as a spiritual blessing or gift if I had the chance. I decided that my greatest spiritual weakness was a lack of courage, so that is what I prayed for. I honestly believe that my answer came in the form of the trial I would soon go through. I learned that when you ask God to do something, you had better stand firm and be prepared. Spring 2016In the spring of 2016, I started to notice my eyesight slipping. It was harder to focus. I got new glasses prescribed, and by the time I picked them up, they failed to work for me. The doctor determined that I had low eye pressure. The doctor tried some treatments, but every treatment failed. Sometimes, my vision would return, only to fail again shortly afterward. I was coasting up and down with hopes and disappointment. Summer 2016In the summer of 2016, Pastor Lane was teaching a series of sermons from the Book of Job. This was never a favorite story of mine because I always looked at Job as someone with special favor from God. Each Sunday, I would take my seat on the balcony and listen to the woes of Job while at the same time in noticing that my sight was diminishing a little more each week. I’ve never been known to have a quick temper, but one night, lying in my bed, I felt a real anger at what was happening to me. I was never a person who got angry at God, but now I was asking God, “How could you let this happen to an artist?” I had just turned sixty-five. I was looking forward to launching into more painting, more teaching, and a rewarding time ahead. Instead, my retirement gift was blindness—received with some bitterness toward God. August 16, 2016Taking what I thought was the mature approach to my anger, I decided that anger was not the right path and that it would only lead to my own misery. As Christians, we are always taught to look for the good purpose in all things, including our troubles and trials. I struggled to see where there was any good in an artist losing his vision. I was at a dead end and could not imagine my life without sight or the ability to do my artwork. I was forced to challenge God. I prayed, “Lord, I know I can’t be angry at you about this. I don’t believe you would allow this to be cruel or to punish me. I do believe you must have some purpose in these awful circumstances you have placed me in. I am helpless and unable to understand any purpose for goodness here. Show me what you want me to know." August 17, 2016The next morning, as I was checking my email, I saw a message from a man I had worked with in previous years in the theatre business. I was a little surprised because I didn’t remember getting any messages from him before, so I was curious what he had to say. There was no text in the email, just an image of a stone tablet with the words “Psalm 73” carved into it. I had never known this man to talk about God or scripture, so this was a surprising message. At this time, my vision was poor but still good enough that I could read using a magnifying glass. I had a Bible in my studio, which Pastor Mike Mileski had given me. It was a special edition with beautiful abstract artwork and a very easy-to-read text. I read from it every day before I set to work on my painting. On this day, I decided to read Psalm 73, hopin

Honestly, I Think We Just Need Jesus!Acts 2:40 “And he testified with many other words and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.”I chose this scripture verse today because where it says, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” There is a song that I have heard on the radio more and more recently, and these last few days, it is running repeat in my mind. I can’t seem to get it out of my head. I am not sure I want to get it out of my head as the words that are running through my head are Honestly, I think we need Jesus by Terrian. Since I can’t seem to shake this song, and then I read the verse above this morning, I think the Lord wants me to share it with you. I will place a link for the song in the show notes, as she does a much better job singing it than I do. I also love that she is young and yet can still see that we need more Jesus. I will go over the lyrics of the song with you today.The song starts with:I got a front-row seat to the madnessI pick up my phone every mornin' out of habitI've been fiendin' for the drama, yeah, I said itI'm addicted to the rush, need a medicHow many of us pick up our phones or turn on the news first thing when we wake up? How many of us want to know what is going on in the world before we even stop and spend our time with God? I use my phone for an alarm, so I would turn off my alarm, and then I would check my messages, emails, and Facebook before I would sit down with the Lord and spend time with Him. I have gotten better; now, I just check my messages, mostly to make sure my kids got home safely. Sometimes I still check my emails, but I am getting better and usually save that for later. I love how the songwriter points out that we usually pick up our phones out of habit. This isn’t just first thing in the morning. We do this all throughout the day. I bet we all spend more time than we would like on our phones. I also like how they bring our attention to the fact that we are “Fiendin’ for the drama” and “addicted to the rush.” It seems we are drawn to the conflict and the drama more than the good things that are happening. I don’t know if that is because we crave drama or because that is all the news tends to show us. Either way, there is good and bad going on in the world, and it is up to us to choose which we seek out and focus on.The song goes on to say:When I take a step back, I can see itAll the pain, all the fear we've been feelin'Losin' sight of the thing that we're needin'That we're needin’ This is a great reminder that sometimes we need to take a step back. When we do we see that we are focusing on all of our pain and fear that we are feeling instead of focusing on the one who can take all that pain and fear away. When we watch the news or listen to all that is going on in the world, we tend to get overwhelmed. We can also start to feel a sense of hopelessness. We can feel a sense that the world is going crazy, and there is nothing we can do about it. However, we are never hopeless because we are children of God, and we can always turn to Him, and He can save us. There is nothing too hard for God to handle. Next, the song says:Honestly, I think we just need JesusHonestly, I think we just need JesusHave we all gone mad? Have we lost our minds?What used to be wrong, we say that it's rightHonestly, I think we just need JesusThis is the part that gets stuck in my head. I can’t think of a truer statement. I can see how our country is falling apart because we keep removing God from more and more things. This country was founded with God. He was a part of the government; yes, Church and State were separate, and yet God and State weren’t. God was invited into the Constitution; he was invited into the Pledge of Allegiance. He was invited into our courtrooms. God was welcome everywhere. Now, it seems He is welcome nowhere. I also love how the song says, “Have we all gone mad? Have we lost our minds? What used to be wrong, we say that it’s right.” We have all thought this for a long time now and it is nice to hear it in a song so we know we aren’t the only ones who think it. This world does seem to have gone mad and it does seem like we are all losing our minds. Some of the things that seem to be ok in the world today still shock me. I think this song points out very real and honest questions. Have we all gone mad? Have we all lost our minds? Take a good long look in the mirrorSearch my heart and soul, make it clearerHelp me take your love, trade the bitterLeave it in the dust, help me leave it in the dust, Lord.I think it would be a great idea if we all stopped and took a good look in the mirror. What are we doing? Not what is the world doing, what are we doing? Are we staying true to God in this crazy world? Are we staying above all the drama and walking in the light of Christ? Are we being love and hope to everyone we meet? We are all called to be “little Christs” to all we meet. Are we doing so? Are we loving everyone, even those

Psalm 104 The Lord’s Majesty (Part 5)Psalm 104:19-23 “You have made the moon to mark the seasons; the sun knows its time for setting. You make darkness, and it is night when all the animals of the forest come creeping out. The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God. When the sun rises, they withdraw and lie down in their dens. People go out to their work and to their labor until the evening.”It just amazes me how perfectly everything in nature flows. Everything in the world doesn’t flow nicely because we have created many things that mess everything up. However, if we look at nature, we can’t help but be in awe of God’s majesty. Today’s verses start our talking about the moon and how we have seasons. What is even more incredible is that the seasons aren’t the same worldwide. There is a season for everyone. There are places you can go and leave the cold winters if you don’t like the cold. There are also places you can go to leave the heat if you are not a fan. Whatever type of weather you are looking for, there is somewhere on this planet called Earth that you can move to.Consider the sun, faithfully following its natural course. Each morning, it rises, and each evening, it sets as if it knows the perfect time. This, too, is a wonder. Each day brings a subtle change, a slight variation in the sun's stay. It's a testament to the ever-changing yet perfectly orchestrated nature of our world.Next, it says, “You make darkness, and it is night when all the animals for the forest come creeping out. The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God.” How great it is that the animals can hunt under the cover of night. They can come out while most humans are sleeping and get the whole night to themselves. Then, when humans are awake, they get to sleep and rest up. I like how the verse says, “The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God.” It reminds us that God provides for all of us. God created this universe with everything we would need to survive. There is enough food for everyone.Right after I said that, I thought about all the people that are starving to death every day. I looked it up, and one website said 25,000 people die every day due to hunger and related causes. This is a scary number. My first thought is, why isn’t God providing for these people? Why isn’t he giving them what they need to survive? Then He reminds me that we live in a broken world. There are many man-made reasons why they don’t have food. Here is what the actionagainsthunger.org website says, "The planet produces enough food to feed everyone on Earth. Yet more than 3 billion people can’t afford to eat a healthy diet. Why? Interconnected issues of poverty, inequity, conflict, climate change, gender discrimination, and weak government and health systems all play a role in keeping nutritious food out of reach for millions of families around the world.”God has created enough food and resources for the world and all of the people he created to be in it, yet so many are still starving. This isn’t because God doesn’t care or is not generous. This is because we live in a broken world. We have people who take a lot more than they need and who use their power to prevent others from getting what they need. We have people who are selfish and keep the resources to themselves. All they care about is getting more and more power and wealth for themselves, and they don’t even care about what that means for others.This is not how God created us to be nor how He created the world to be. However, once sin entered the world, so did this corruption. That doesn’t mean all is lost. God has placed good people in the way of the corrupt people. Yes, there are a lot of people in the world who do despicable things. There are also a lot of good people who are fighting against those people. I know it can sometimes feel overwhelming, and we can start to wonder if the whole world will fall apart. What we must do is to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. If we keep our eyes on the Lord, we will see that He is bigger than anyone and anything that we run into in this world. God is sending people all the time to help those in need. Yes, I am sure it breaks his heart any time one of his children dies for any reason. I am sure it is particularly sad if it is for a lack of resources when He has ensured plenty of resources for His children.This is why God sends missionaries and organizations who fight for the rights of people who are starving, who are being sold into slavery, who don’t have drinking water and anyone else who is in trouble. God sees all of His children. He sees their plight and He is sending people to help fix it. He didn’t create this mess, but you can bet He is not ignoring it. He sees it, and He is helping with it.Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for how amazing you are. We thank you for providing all you have given us. Lord, we are sorry that some people are hogging all the wealth and resources you have given

Psalm 104 The Lord’s Majesty (Part 4)Psalm 104:14-18 “You cause the grass to grow for the cattle, and plants for people to use, to bring forth food from the earth, and wine to gladden the human heart, oil to make the face shine, and bread to strengthen the human heart. The trees of the Lord are watered abundantly, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. In them the birds build their nests; the stork has its home in the fir trees. The high mountains are for the wild goats; the rocks are a refuge for the coneys.”Today, we are given a window into the flawless design of everything. This, I believe, is what we have been exploring in the previous three parts as well. God's goodness is truly astounding. It is wondrous how He has considered every aspect. Today’s verses not only demonstrate that God's interest is not limited to our necessities, But also that He takes into account our happiness and comfort. This is a powerful reminder of the role of religious texts in inspiring and comforting us, a source of reassurance and upliftment.The verse begins by talking about how the grass grows for the cattle and other plants grow for people to use to bring forth food from the earth. This is not a one-sided provision, but a comprehensive one. We need the plants to have food to eat, but we also need the cows. The cows provide milk, cheese, and meat for us to eat, and God is making sure we are both fed.Next, it says He gave us wine to gladden the human heart. I know many people who are happy that we have wine to gladden our hearts. I do think we need to be careful that we don’t turn to this wine to gladden our hearts more than we turn to the Lord. What can start out as a small glass of wine at night to wind down can turn into a few glasses every night just to deal with the stresses of our day-to-day lives. This is when it can become a problem. Do you need to have a glass of wine every night? What if you took a break and fasted from it for a week or even a month? Would you be able to do that? I know someone who gives us wine and all alcohol every Lent. This is a great chance for her to remind herself that although she really likes a glass of wine here and there, she doesn’t need it. She is ok without it.One reason it is good to take a look at your wine or alcohol consumption is that if you are regularly drinking more than a glass at night, then you might not be feeling your best in the mornings. I follow Rachel Hollis online, and I have read her books. She talked about how she used to have a glass of wine when she got home from work to help her unwind. However, the stresses of life increased, and one glass went to two glasses, and every now and then went to every single night. She said she noticed that every morning, she was waking up and starting her day out at a disadvantage because she wouldn’t feel great. She would feel crappy from the wine she had the night before. I don’t know about you, but if I start each day out feeling crappy, it doesn’t usually get better.Have you noticed that you feel crappy when you wake up in the mornings? Do you have a headache or a stomachache? Do you just feel drained and worn out? You don’t have to feel this way. God does not want us to feel crappy. Instead of turning to alcohol to help you unwind, maybe put on some praise and worship music and dance it out. Maybe sit and read scripture and talk to the Lord. He is there for you, and He will listen to you for as long as you want to talk. He can even help you in your situation and He can show you a way forward. Alcohol can’t do that. It may feel like it is helping you in the moment but it is not helping in the long run and could even be hurting you.I am not sure who needed to hear that this morning; that certainly wasn’t what I thought I would be talking about, but the Holy Spirit knew someone listening really needed to hear that. If you are listening to this episode and the Spirit makes you reconsider how much you are drinking, I encourage you to listen to a few episodes of my friend Catherine Cody’s podcast, “Meet Me At The Well.” Catherine is a recovering alcoholic and is real and honest about her struggle in her podcast. She gave her testimony on one of my first few Witness Wednesdays. If you want to hear her incredible story it is episode #236. She is so real and loving and she has a heart for anyone struggling with any addiction. If you need someone to talk to about where you are at please reach out to me, and I can put you in touch with Catherine. Or you can check out her podcast, and she probably has contact info there. If you question whether you drink too much, just listen to her podcast, Meet Me At The Well. What have you got to lose?Next, the verse says, “Oil to make the face shine, and bread to strengthen the human heart.” Can you believe that God even cares about our faces shining? He also gave us bread to strengthen the human heart. I don’t know about you, but I am more excited about the bread than I am about the wine. I love brea

Psalm 104 The Lord's Majesty (Part 3)Psalm 104:10-13 “You make springs gush forth in the valleys; they flow between the hills, giving drink to every wild animal; the wild asses quench their thirst. By the streams, the birds of the air have their habitation; they sing among the branches. From your lofty abode, you water the mountains; the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.”Today, we are back with Psalm 104. If you missed Monday’s episode, I Have decided to stick with Psalm 104 and break it down into smaller sections. The reason I decided on Psalm 104 is because it shows us so many things we can be grateful for, and it shows us the many ways God provides and looks out for us. Psalm 104 also shows us His power and His majesty, and I think it is a good idea to stop and think about that often. Otherwise, it can be easy to take the Lord for granted because He is always there for us, and much of what He does for us goes unnoticed because we don’t really think about how much He is doing. We think it just happens.For instance, we take for granted the sun coming up and going down because it just happens each and every day. However, it wouldn’t happen if God didn’t make it happen. If He wouldn’t have created the earth to spin the way that it does. Today’s verse starts out talking about how God makes the springs gush for the in the valleys and how they flow between the hills, giving drink to every wild animal. Did you ever think about how great it is that there is water spread worldwide? There is water in the mountains, there are oceans of water, but then there are also streams and rivers. Then there is water under the ground that you can tap into with a well if necessary.It’s also interesting that where water is more scarce, the Lord created the things that live there to suit their environment. In a desert, plants like the cactus have water-storing characteristics. You also have camels in a desert, and they are extremely efficient with the amount of water they use daily. They can go for about a week without having to drink water. They can also drink a lot of water in a short amount of time. A typical camel can drink 53 gallons of water in three minutes. Isn’t it amazing how God thought of everything all the earth's creatures would need and then created us to meet those needs?Next, it says, “By the streams, the birds of the air have their habitation; they sing among the branches.” Water is important to birds, just like it is to all animals. Birds build their habitation in many different places depending on what the bird needs. Some build them on the ground, and yet they know this makes the nest more vulnerable, so they camouflage them well. Many others build them high off the ground so they won’t be so vulnerable. They make the nests out of various different materials. It depends on what they can find and what their needs are. Isn’t it amazing that God always provides for them exactly what they need?The verse ends with, “From your lofty abode, you water the mountains; the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.” This part reminds us of how easy it is for God to provide for us. He doesn’t have to lift a finger. He just spoke the world into existence, and it was so perfectly made. He can sit up in heaven and command things to happen down here. I like how the verse says, “The earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.” The earth is satisfied with His work because He thought of everything when He created the world and all its creatures.When I think about how easily God created the world and how He thought of everything, even the smallest detail, and then made sure to provide for that detail, I feel better about the things I ask the Lord for. When I take the time to think about His marvelous creations and how he just spoke the words and the whole universe was created then it reminds me that when I ask the Lord for things, I am not asking for too much. This is something we often think. We don’t bring our little cares and worries to the Lord because we don’t want to bother Him. We don’t ask Him for healing for every ache and pain because we know how busy He is.The thing is, He is never too busy for anything you want to bring to Him. He is not busy because what would be impossible for us to do is easy for Him to do. He is not bound by the same worldly constraints as we are. God isn’t even bound by time. All things are happening at the same time for the Lord. That means it is ok if you did not say the prayer you wanted to say for someone before they left for travel. You can still say the prayer now and it will help them because God is seeing you say that pray at the same time they are going away. I know that is a lot to wrap your head around and we don't have to understand it perfectly. I don’t actually think it is possible to fully grasp or comprehend the majesty of God completely on this side of heaven. There is a lot that will remain a mystery and we may have many questions we want to ask God once w

Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose 2 testimonies from the Healing Category. I love healing testimonies because I don’t think we all believe God is still healing people today. We read about how God healed people through Jesus and the apostles, and we love it. Yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we don’t believe God is still healing people through others in this day and age. I want you to know He is. I have seen it so many times at our Encounter healing services or even just when I am praying over people. God is good. He doesn’t want to see His people suffering. I pray when you hear this testimony, you can see not only how God has helped these two women in their lives but how He could help you in yours and in your loved ones’ lives, too. I pray you see the miracles in their lives and know miracles are possible in your situation, too!! There is always hope when you have the Lord.Cathy: I was raised in a house with a mother who was and is mentally ill. She was very abusive to me, physically and emotionally. At a young age, before I started school, my great uncle moved in with us and he molested me for as long as he stayed. I think it was only a few months. I received Christ into my life when I was 6. Because of the abuse and what my mother constantly told me about how worthless I was, how I caused her illness, the problems in my parents’ marriage, and her unhappiness with life in general I became convinced there was something terribly wrong with me deep inside that kept anyone, including God, from really loving me. I carried this conviction throughout my life and I let it ruin and end my marriage, also affecting my children. I never abused my children in any way, but I was often absent emotionally because I lived in deep depression from my preteen years.I’m 72 years old now and I’ve been divorced for 27 years. I thought my life was over and I was waiting to die. I was estranged from my sister, my mother is in a nursing home with dementia, I’m divorced, my daughter lives 400 miles away with my 2 grandsons and doesn’t need me for anything, and I lost my son to cancer under extremely difficult circumstances. I have PTSD from the childhood abuse and before my son died, that all came back and hit me so hard I was having panic attacks again from dealing with my daughter-in-law. That was when my son became ill and was placed in hospice care.A friend invited me to move to a small town where she lives and I moved as soon as my son passed. God brought me completely to the end of myself there. I had no more defenses, all the walls I had built emotionally to protect myself through the years failed and I was teetering on a mental breakdown. I hunted for 5 years in the small town where I lived for a church and couldn’t find what I felt like I needed. One day, as I was walking through my living room I was so frustrated that I threw my hands up in the air, looked to heaven and prayed, “God, there has to be a place in Wellington I can go to church to be a part of Your family, to serve You and to learn about You. Please show me where it is!! Later in the week I was talking to my cousin, who is a minister, about not being able to find a church and she told me about a couple she knew well who had just started pastoring a church where I lived and that I needed to go. I told her I had been twice and didn’t like it. She told me to go one more time, so I went the following Sunday.I walked in the door to the same very small crowd of about 10 or 12 people. I told God I didn’t like this. We sang old hymns, sitting down slowly and I reminded God I didn’t like this either. Then a woman got up to preach. Her sermon that morning was on holiness. Not 5 words into her message I began to have the most incredible experience of my life to that point. It felt like someone was above me pouring a pitcher of warmth, comfort, joy, peace and healing that started at the top of my head and slowly went down my whole body until it reached the tips of my toes! I don’t know how much time passed. I just know that was the most comforting feeling I had ever experienced. When the feeling reached my toes, I heard His voice over my right shoulder! I knew no one else had heard Him but I knew it was God speaking out loud to me. He said 5 words. “Here, Cathy. This is it.” I had cried out “show me where to go “ just a few days before and He answered my question directly, with 5 words!!! The creator of the entire universe, the One who placed the galaxies in the sky, hanging them in nothing, called me by name!!! “Here, Cathy. This is it.” My life changed in that moment.I’ve spent the next 12 or 15 months on an incredible journey of healing and restoration and it’

Psalm 104 The Lord's Majesty (Part 2)Psalm 104:5-9 “You fixed the earth on its foundation, so it can never be shaken. The deeps covered it like a garment; Above the mountains stood the waters. At your rebuke, they took flight; at the sound of your thunder, they fled. They rushed up the mountains, down the valleys to the place you had fixed for them. You set a limit they cannot pass; never again will they cover the earth.”Today we pick up where we left off with Psalm 104. The verse starts by reminding us that the Lord fixed the Earth. He created all things, and He created the Earth on its foundation so it can never be shaken. That can be pretty reassuring if we let it. If we really let that sink in, The Lord has fixed the earth on its foundation so it can never be shaken. Some days, the earth seems like it is falling apart. It is good to be reassured that God is in control and that He won’t allow the world to be shaken.Next, it says, “The deep covered it like a garment; Above the mountains stood the water. This sounds like it is talking about the flood. When Noah was living, the people of God had turned away from Him. Genesis 6:5-8 says, “Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. The Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.Next, it says, “At your rebuke, they took flight; at the sound of your thunder, they fled. They rushed up the mountains, down the valleys to the place you had fixed for them. This narrative of the Lord's control over the water can invoke a sense of awe in us, reminding us of His power and sovereignty. The Lord created the whole universe with his words. When we stop to think about that, it is amazing. The waters fled at the Lord’s rebuke. How many of us can say that we speak to nature, and it listens to us?Today’s verse ends with, “You set a limit they cannot pass; never again will they cover the earth.” Today’s verse shows us how powerful God is and that He controls all nature. God decides where the water will go and where it will not go. It is amazing how He made the oceans, rivers, and lakes. He contained the water in the places He wanted it. At one point, there was water everywhere. In Genesis 1:9-10 God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.”The last line of this verse also reminds us of God’s promise to us: “Never again will they cover the earth.” God made this covenant with us after He flooded the Earth. He promised He would not do that again, and He gave us a rainbow as a sign of that covenant. Rainbows are still a sign of that covenant. Sometimes, God will give us a rainbow when we are struggling to believe something will really happen. I remember I was in a car with some of my girlfriends once and we were talking about how one of my girlfriends really wanted to get married and have children and it had not happened yet. We talked about how it is hard to keep hoping for something when you have waited too long for it and still don’t see any signs of it on the horizon. All of a sudden, there was a beautifully full rainbow right ahead of us in the sky. We know that was God reassuring her that He knows her hopes and dreams and He will fulfill them. My friend is getting married in four days! God is so good!God can do the same for your hopes and dreams. I know hope is hard, especially if you have been waiting for something for a long time. I know it can feel like it is never going to happen. I can feel like He has forgotten about you. You can be tempted to give up, hoping for what you want, and figure it just wasn’t God’s plan for you. I want to encourage you not to give up. I want to encourage you to keep hoping, even when it is hard and even when you feel like there is no point.God rewards persistence. He tells us this through several stories in the Bible. God wants us to keep asking. I am not sure why some things take a long time, and others happen right away. I am not sure why it seems like God is ignoring us at times. I do know that is not true. God is never ignoring us. He is always right there by our side. His attention is always aimed directly at us. The problem is that His timing is not our timing, and that sucks! We feel we know what we want, and we even are pretty sure our timing is great. However, the Lord can see things we can’t see, and if we get what we want before we are ready, it won’t be as good.My friend waited on God’s timing and has now found the man of her dreams. God brought her a guy who gets her. T

Psalm 104 The Lord’s Majesty (Part 1)Psalm 104:1-4 "Everything I am will praise and bless the Lord! O Lord, my God, your greatness takes my breath away overwhelming me by your majesty, beauty, and splendor! You wrap yourself with a shimmering, glistening light. You wear sunshine like a garment of glory. You stretch out the starry skies like a tapestry. You build your balconies with light beams and ride as King in a chariot you made from clouds. You fly upon the wings of the wind. You make your messengers into winds of the Spirit, and all your ministers become flames of fire.”For the next few days, we are going to look at Psalm 104. Someone mentioned it at prayer group last week, and it is a beautiful Psalm that shows us how majestic the Lord is and all the amazing things He does in the world. Nature can be such a powerful place to see God’s work. Sometimes, He shows off in incredible ways, and this week, we are going to take a look at some of those ways. I pray that by examining this Psalm and the ways the Lord shows off for us in Nature, we will begin to notice the Lord more in all the amazing things we see around us.Today’s verse starts off by saying, “Everything I am will praise and bless the Lord! Is this how we are praising the Lord? With everything that we have? For me, I would say yes and no. There are definitely some songs that I sing, and when I am singing those songs, I sing with everything I am. I pour my heart and soul into singing that song. The reason for this is because I resonate with the words of the song. Whatever it is about certain songs, I sing them with my whole being. I love music, and I love songs like that.How about you? Is it music for you, too, or is it something else that helps you praise the Lord with your whole being? Maybe it is nature. When you see an amazing sunset or you watch the wildlife, you become overcome with praise for the Lord. Or, maybe it is your family. Whenever you spend time with them, you are overcome with gratitude for the Lord. It seems David often became overcome with Gratitude for the Lord. It seems like King David understood how amazing the Lord is and praised Him with His whole being.Next, it says, “O Lord, my God, your greatness takes my breath away, overwhelming me with your majesty, beauty, and splendor! Has this ever happened to you? The Lord has done something in your life, taking your breath away. It has definitely happened to me. There have been many moments in my life when my breath was taken away. When I got married and when I had my children, there were definitely times when the Lord took my breath away. I couldn’t imagine how lucky I was for the Lord to have blessed me with a husband who loved me so much and three handsome, healthy boys.Looking at God’s majesty, beauty, and splendor over my lifetime has been amazing, too! I am lucky enough to have seen not only many parts of the United States but many other countries as well. There have been so many wonderful things that we have gotten to see. One time, when we visited Scotland, we got to take a boat trip out and see The Corryvreckan Whirlpool, which is situated off the west coast of Scotland between the islands of Jura and Scarba. It is one of the largest permanent whirlpools on earth and one of the most dangerous stretches of water around the British Isles.I also lived in Turkey and visited many beautiful places there, especially Cappadocia. Cappadocia is known for its surreal landscape, sculpted over millennia by volcanic eruptions and erosion, and is a spectacle unlike any other. Towering rock formations, whimsically dubbed “fairy chimneys," dominate the horizon, creating an otherworldly atmosphere that captivates visitors. Other notable sites include Bronze Age homes carved into valley walls by troglodytes (cave dwellers) and later used as refuges by early Christians. The 100m-deep Ihlara Canyon houses and numerous rock-face churches. It was breathtaking.Next, the verse says, “You wrap yourself with a shimmering, glistening light. You wear sunshine like a garment of glory. You stretch out the starry skies like a tapestry.” I like this part of the verse because it reminds us that God is light. No matter what type of darkness you are going through, God’s light can shine through it. The verse says that God wraps himself in shimmering, glistening light and that He wears sunshine like a garment of Glory. Sunshine is pretty bright, wouldn’t you agree? When the sun comes up, it chases away all the dark of the night. God does the same in our lives. When we let the sunlight in, when we agree to have God work in our lives, His light comes in and chases away the darkness.I love how this verse also says, You stretch out the starry skies like a tapestry. To me, this reminds us that even when we are in the dark of night, there is still some light. God gave us the stars in the sky. This means even when we are going through a dark time, there are still some places of bright light in all that darkness. Ju

Today's Episode is about God's Love. In this episode my friend and prayer group leaders shares an excellent teaching on God's love and even has a call to action at the end. I know you will enjoy this as much as I did. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com CLICK HERE TO DONATE CLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emails CLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio training about inviting Jesus into your daily life CLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace

Today's episode is a bit different. My audiobook is going to be coming out on audible soon and so I today I will be reading the introduction to my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace so you can all hear what it is about. If you would like to purchase the book in paperback you can get it on Amazon.com or you can go to my website and order an autographed copy. I will let you know as soon as my audiobook is released. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com CLICK HERE TO DONATE CLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emails CLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio training about inviting Jesus into your daily life CLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace

Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose a testimony from the Salvation Category. This witness is from a teenager who felt life was not worth living anymore. Unfortunately, too many of our teens feel this way. The number of teen suicides is on the rise. If you know a teenager that has been struggling, maybe you can share this with them. Brooklyn was saved, and they can be, too. I pray when you hear this testimony, you can see not only how God has helped her in her life but how He could help you in yours and in your loved ones’ lives, too. I pray you see the miracles in her life and know miracles are possible in your situation, too!! There is always hope when you have the Lord.Brooklyn: This is kind of a long one, but it’s a God story and it’s worth hearing.My name is Brooklyn and I am 18 years old. This story took place over the course of my whole life (and is still in the process of being written).This testimony of how God saved me from death and took me to Heaven happened when I was 13 years old. I know this will help and encourage you! I love you, and so does God!!! Biggest lesson: If God saved me, what makes you think He can’t save anyone else? God is so good. I just wanted to remind you of that!! He saved me from death literally.When I was 13, I tried to kill myself with pills and medications. I woke up at midnight that night and just couldn’t stop praying to God, exclaiming, “I don’t want to die. I regret this. Please help me.” And that was the first time I prayed in years. I then saw myself out of my body. I was floating around in the room and saw my body lying lifeless and still on the bed. My dogs came over to lick me and check on me and all I could do was see this happening. I then saw a huge bright light and I was being pulled into it by an invisible force (which I know are angels). I couldn’t see anyone but I could hear people and their spirits and I was being brought up in like a wagon wheel. Suddenly, I was in front of these TALL golden gates (over 1,000,000 feet tall) and nothing like you’ve ever seen before. SO golden and radiant. On top of the golden gates were tens of thousands of people. All different ethnicities and looks but everyone being 30 years old (which is very significant for the fact that Jesus was in His 30’s when He was taken up to Heaven from the cross).I remember seeing this one lady specifically. She had Afro hair and was African American. Next to her was a man who was of Spanish descent. I remember them specifically. I hope I’m going to meet them one day when I get there. And all of the tens of thousands of people up there kept cheering me on as I kept getting closer and closer to the gates like I had just won the biggest soccer game in the whole universe. It was so cheerful and awesome! Then suddenly as I got closer, I felt a sense of consciousness that said, “this isn’t my time yet. I don’t want to be here.” And out of nowhere, this LOUD, booming deep voice spoke from above me and all around me and it said, “You will be ok.” I even saw those words in my spirit in black bold letters. Then suddenly I was back in my own bed with my dogs laid up next to me. My one dog, Angel, had tears in her eyes as she kept one eye on me and the rest of her face buried in herself. She did a double take when I woke up and started talking to her. And my other dog, Maverick, was jumping up and down excited that I was alive and next to him. I believe they knew I had died for a split second. Dogs sense everything and these dogs… are NOT cuddle dogs, yet somehow they were right then. I told my mother about what I had tried to do the night before and I was in the hospital for 12 days. The actual hospital for 5 and the mental hospital for the rest. I was supposed to be in the mental hospital for longer but I hated being in there so much that I manipulated my way out of it, which either way was God’s plan because if He wanted me in there longer, I would’ve been in there for longer. I got home and thought everything would be cured. But from May 2017-November 2017, it was still hell and I hated it, but I knew very well then to not try and kill myself again because I was scared. I went through some tough things during that time and one night after a blowout with one of my teachers, I cried and thought, “I’m done living like this.”I picked up the Bible I had since I was a 7 year old, and ever since then, I haven’t put it down. My walk with the Lord has not been perfect and hasn’t been the best every single waking second which is completely normal and fine because everyone’s walk is this way at one season or another. But ever since that moment when I gave up living my life on my own and started devoting

Be The Light They NeedMatthew 4:16 “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.”Recently I decided to start at the beginning of the New Testament and read a little bit each day of the New Testament. My Encounter Ministries class was big on evangelization and spreading the good news of the Gospel. They taught us various ways to do this. However, it is hard to spread the good news of the Gospel if you don’t know the Gospel. I do know the Gospel. I have been through the whole Bible several times through different Bible studies and Bible reading plans.However, if we immerse ourselves in God's word, it will not only become a part of us, but it will transform us. The words, the stories, and the feelings will become ingrained in our very being, and we won’t be able to forget them. The central message of the Gospel is love. This love is not just a feeling, but a powerful force that can change lives and draw people closer to God. God's love for us, and our love for Him, is a concept that was revolutionary in its time. The Jewish people knew that God loved them because He had saved them time and time again and also because His Spirit was with them when they escaped Egypt.Many people who lived at the time of Jesus didn’t believe in our God. They believed in multiple Gods who did not love them. The gods they prayed to also required a lot from them. They had to perform human sacrifices in some cases. They thought their gods received their power from the worship and sacrifices. The more people who worshiped them, the more powerful they were. Their God’s expected love and allegiance from them.Then they discovered this God who loved them just as they were, and they didn’t need to do anything to earn that love, which was a game changer. This love is not a passive feeling but an active, unconditional, and sacrificial love. I believe this would be a game-changer for many of us if we truly believed it. If we truly understood that God loves us as His own adopted sons and daughters, we would live life differently. If we could truly grasp this concept that God loves us just as we are, then we could stop trying to earn that love; we could stop trying to live up to these impossible standards that we put on ourselves.God loves you just as you are. He doesn’t need you to live up to any standards. He doesn’t need you to do anything to earn that love. His love is there for you when you are at your best and when you are at your worst. God is always there for you. That is the first part of the message found in the Bible, and it is one we must not only believe but also trust in and live our lives accordingly by showing the same love to others, forgiving as we have been forgiven, and serving as we have been served.This brings us to one major message of the Gospel that we tend to overlook or ignore. That is, we are all called to love each other. This can be a challenging call a lot of the time. There are a lot of people in the world who are not very nice. Or at least they act in ways that are not loving. But we are still called to love them, just as God loves us. God is not calling us just to love our family or friends or those who are easy to love. He is calling us to love all those around us, even our enemies.The verse above says, “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death, light has dawned.” Jesus was a light to all who lived in the darkness. He brought this love that they had never seen before. God’s love is unconditional and unending, and Jesus shared this love with one and all. This love that Jesus shared was such a bright light in their darkness. Some of the people Jesus interacted with were people who were cast aside by society. They were outcasts, and they felt unloved.Imagine how it was to be a leper in that day and age. They had to live apart from their whole community, and if anyone did walk near them, they needed to shout “unclean, unclean” So that people wouldn’t get too close to them. Can you imagine Jesus coming up to you and giving you a hug after you haven’t had any human contact in years for fear of infecting them or because of the laws? Imagine that light that Jesus brought into that situation when He healed them or even when he wasn’t afraid to touch them. He gave them their dignity back when he was around them. That is a bright light.We can all agree that Jesus was a great light in the darkness. Do you know who is called to be that light now that Jesus is no longer walking around on this planet? You are, I am! We are all called to be “little Christs.” We are called to be a reflection of Christ to all those we meet. In John 13:35, says, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.” Do you want to be a disciple of Christ? If so, we need to love one another. We need to be that light in the darkness. This doesn’t tell us exactly how we

We Were So Utterly, Unbearably Crushed2 Corinthians 1:8-10 "We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of the affliction we experienced in Asia; for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him, we have set our hope that he will rescue us again.”I like this verse because it shows us that even when we feel we are crushed more than we can take, we can still have hope that God will rescue us. This is a letter written from Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy, our brother, To the church of God that is in Corinth, including all the saints throughout Achaia.The verse starts out letting them know that they didn’t want them to be unaware of how they were treated in Asia. It states that they were so utterly, unbearably crushed that they were despaired of life itself. It is great that Paul and Timothy shared their afflictions with their fellow brothers in the church in Corinth. Too many times, we keep our afflictions or ourselves. We pretend that all is ok and that we are fine. We act like we have no troubles, and then people believe us. The problem is that they start to hide their afflictions, too, because they think they are the only ones having any afflictions.Can you see the damaging spiral this can cause? We all act like we are fine and that nothing is bothering us. We act like life is easy, or our jobs are easy. We act like the world is a wonderful place where nothing bad ever happens. This may make us feel better, but it doesn’t help those around us. We are not teaching those who look up to us for the answers how to deal with heartbreak, disappointment, or any other feelings associated with the afflictions we are hiding.I actually don’t think it even makes us feel better. We might not feel humiliated that others know the pain we are going through, yet we feel all alone and figure no one else is going through the same thing we are going through. When we don’t share our troubles, we rob our friends and family of the graces that come from comforting us in our time and need.The next part of the verse says, “ Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.” This part has two interesting parts. The first one is that they felt they received this death sentence to teach them a lesson. This is something we all think more often than we would like to admit. When something bad happens to us, we wonder what we did to deserve it. We start to wonder why God is doing this to us. We question what lesson he wants us to get out of it.God is not the cause of the bad things that happen to us. Yes, it is true that nothing happens to us that has not passed through the hands of God. That means that although he is not the cause, he has allowed it to happen. This does not mean that everything that happens to you is because God is trying to teach you a lesson. It doesn’t mean everything that happens to you is your fault or that it is punishment for something you have done. Sometimes, some things just happen. If we trip and fall down a few stairs, it probably doesn’t have a deep spiritual meaning. If our child or loved one gets sick, it doesn’t mean we are being punished for something.This verse can comfort us by reminding us that we are not the only ones who feel this way. If the apostles Paul and Timothy felt their affliction was to teach them a lesson, then it is normal for us to think that, too. I also think sometimes this can be the case. However, not everything we go through is to teach us a lesson. However, God can use all things for our good, and sometimes, that comes as a lesson or wisdom gained when we make it through a really hard time.The second interesting thing about this part of the verse is when it reminds us that God is the one who raises the dead. I love this part because it reminds us that no matter how far down we are, God can always save us. There is no pit deep enough for us to be out of God’s reach. Jesus went all the way down to hell to lead the righteous home. If He can travel to Hell, he most certainly can travel to whatever pit we find ourselves in and lead us to home, too!Our affliction is hopefully not unbearable, crushing us. However, I do know several people who have loved ones who have cancer, and that may feel unbearable. I know some young adults who are suffering from anxiety, stress, and depression, and they feel that the weight of the world is crushing them. I know some young adults caught up in addiction, and the weight of that is crushing them as well. Whether your affliction is unbearable, crushing, an inconvenience, or somewhere in between, I want to pass this verse along to you to show you that God can still help you. No matter the level of affl

No Weapon Formed Against You Will Prosper1 Samuel 2:4 “The weapons of the strong are smashed to pieces, while the weak are infused with fresh strength.”I decided to read the story of Hannah this morning. This month in mentoring the theme is Surrender. One of the videos I watched talked about Hannah and how amazing it was that she prayed to the Lord and then surrendered the outcome to the Lord. She also surrendered the fruit of those prayers to the Lord. I kinda knew the story of Hannah. I knew she wanted a baby and yet didn’t have any children. I don’t know if I knew that her husband’s other wife taunted her often, but she did. One day, Hannah went to the temple and cried inconsolably. She cried out to the Lord, and she made a vow to Him that if He stopped neglecting her and gave her a son, she would give the son back to God unreservedly and completely.Hannah did conceive, and she had a baby boy. She named him Samuel, and when he was three, she brought him to the temple and gave her son to Eli to be dedicated to the Lord and to serve the Lord with Eli. After she gave her son over to the Lord, she prayed a beautiful prayer. Hannah was rejoicing in the Lord and celebrating his goodness. When I think about this, I wonder how she was able to be so happy.I understand being grateful to the Lord for conceiving a son, and yet she wasn’t going to get to raise that son. That seems so sad to me. In the past, whenever I would think about this, I would wonder why it was so important for her to have a baby if she was never really going to get to see the baby. This morning God just revealed to me something that I didn’t really think of before.In the age we are living in today, we know that there are many reasons why a woman might not be able to conceive. Back when Hannah lived, there was just one reason, and it was that God had kept you from conceiving. It doesn’t say in the Bible why Hannah wanted to have a baby. It does say that the Lord kept her from conceiving. In 1 Samuel 1:4-7a, it says, “On the day when Elkanah sacrificed, he would give portions to his wife Peninnah and to all her sons and daughters; but to Hannah, he gave a double portion, because he loved her, though the Lord had closed her womb. Her rival used to provoke her severely, to irritate her, because the Lord had closed her womb. So it went on year by year; as often as she went up to the house of the Lord, she used to provoke her.”It was customary for all to believe that if you couldn’t conceive, it was because God didn’t favor you or He had forgotten you. This could have been why it was so important for Hannah to have a child. She wanted to show everyone that God did not forsake her. She might have wanted to prove to everyone that she was favored by the Lord as well. It might have been less about being a mom and more about proving to everyone she was not forgotten by the Lord. It also could have been that she was tired of getting tormented each year by her husband’s other wife.When we don’t understand something in our lives, we can surrender it to the Lord and ask for His help. Hannah was being tormented by someone for something she had no control over. She cried out to the Lord, and He helped her. He heard her cry and answered her prayers. He can do the same for you.The verse above says, “The weapons of the strong are smashed to pieces, while the weak are infused with fresh strength.” This is from the message translation. It is from the prayer that Hannah prayed to the Lord after she dedicated her son to the Lord. She is stating that the weapons of the strong can’t stand against the Lord. Her rival tormented her about being unable to conceive, and her words hurt Hannah very much. However, Hannah is a daughter of God, and so the weapons formed against her will not prosper. Instead, God gave Hannah the strength to keep going on day after day. He gave her the strength to go to the temple and pray that God take this burden from her.God can smash to pieces the weapons of your enemies, too. He can infuse you with a strength you didn’t even know you had. We need to go to Him and ask Him, though. We can’t just sit around in our misery and expect God to work. We need to ask Him, invite Him in and He will come in and help us. If you are struggling with something right now, if you need help right now, if you have prayers you really need answered, bring it to the Lord. You don’t have to make a vow like Hannah did. Just cry out to the Lord and tell Him all that is on your heart. Don’t hide anything from Him, as He already knows everything in your heart.When you cry out to Him, He hears your cries, and He will intervene. We are not alone in our battles. We are never alone in our battles. God is right there with us, fighting alongside us. Yet sometimes, we don’t ask Him into the battle with us. He is a gentleman, and He wants to be invited in. If you want to fight your battle alone, He will be right there next to you, but He will let you fight it alone. If you want

Can We Worship Through The Struggle?Job 1:20-21 “Then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell on the ground and worshiped. He said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”I thought this was an interesting verse in Job. This verse came right after Satan’s first attack on Job. Job has just learned that all of his oxen and donkeys were taken away from him, and the people who took them struck down the servants with swords. Then he learned that his sheep and the servants who took care of them were burned to death. As if that wasn’t enough another servant came in and told them all his camels had been captured and his servants had been killed with a sword. And then, to top it all off, a servant came and told him that his sons and daughters were eating and drinking over the older brother’s house when a powerful wind swept in and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on the young people, so they died.This is one of the amazing things about Job. He is so faithful. I am not sure about you but if I learned that I had lost everything, my first instinct would not be to worship. I do love to worship but I don’t feel like I would be able to worship immediately. He had just found out that not only did he lose all physical things, but he lost all of his children as well. I feel like I would need to go through a period of being angry at God. I would also be angry in general. I would be sad, which I am sure Job was sad.I don’t think my first thing to do would be to worship the Lord and say, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Can you believe Job was blessing the Lord just minutes after finding out that his children had died? I knew he never blamed God; that is why he got into this predicament in the first place. He was such a good servant and the enemy tried to tell God it was because God blessed him so much.I wonder if we would be this faithful. I wonder if we worship the Lord for all the blessings he gave us. Are we what some would call fair-weather friends with the Lord? We are there for Him when all is going well, and yet we blame Him at the first sign of trouble. Do we get angry and scream at Him when we lose our job or our car? What do we do when we lose our children?Job didn’t just lose one of his children to a deadly disease. He didn’t just lose one of his children to suicide or murder. He lost all his children at the same time. Job went from being the father of seven sons and three daughters to being childless. I can’t imagine the pain he must have been feeling, and yet the first thing he did was worship the Lord. Not only did he worship the Lord, but he also said, “What the Lord gave, the Lord can take away.” He is acknowledging that God is the almighty one and that everything Job had came from Him. He is acknowledging that all we have comes from the Lord.I just can’t get over Job’s faith. Satan did not stop here with this first attack. Satan came back and infected Job with terrible boils from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Job was still worshiping the Lord. His wife told him he was a fool. She said to him, “Are you still holding onto your integrity? Curse God and die!” Job replied, “You speak as a foolish woman speaks. Should we accept only good from God and not adversity?” Throughout all that Job went through He did not sin once with what he said.This is remarkable. I can totally understand what Job is saying when he says that God gave us everything we have, and so He has a right to take it away. I also agree that if we accept the good from God, we must accept the bad, too. However, I agree with Him in the place I am at right now. I haven’t lost any children. I haven’t lost my home or all my belongings. I don’t know what I would do if I had to go through what Job had to go through.Job truly loved the Lord. He trusted the Lord fully. I love that the first thing he did was to worship the Lord. I have talked with you many times about how important praise is and I think this is such a good example of how praise and worship can help get us through anything. I don’t think that Job understood what was going on. I don’t think He knew God’s plan, and I don’t think He knew how blessed he would be afterward. It would have been easier for Job to go through all he went through if he knew there was an end in sight and that he would be so blessed afterward.However, God doesn’t always reveal His plan to us. He leaves us guessing and wondering, and this is where we can lose hope. We can lose hope, or we can praise Him and worship HIm and trust that even though we don’t know what His plan is, we trust He has one and that it is for our good. Jeremiah 29:11 says, “For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope

Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today I chose two testimonies from the God Stories Category. The first story is of a woman who is in chronic pain and yet tends to say she is fine because that is just what we all seem to do. Her testimony is about how Matthew’s song “Truth Be Told” really spoke to her. The second one is about a woman who learned of a website that tries to help kids who live overseas and have severe medical problems get adopted. I pray when you hear these testimonies, you can see not only how God has helped them in their life but how He could help you in yours and in your loved ones’ lives, too. I pray you see the miracles in their lives and know miracles are possible in your situation too!!Diane: I wanted to share this story with Matthew that I wrote during a particularly difficult time with my health. It’s about how his song “Truth Be Told” spoke to me.“Lie number one you’re supposed to have it all together. And when they ask how you’re doing Just smile and tell them, “Never better.” Lie number two everybody’s life is perfect except yours. So keep your messes and your wounds and your secrets safe with you behind closed doors.” – From the song “Truth Be Told”I was zooming with a college friend yesterday and when she asked how I was doing, I almost fell into my cookie cutter response, “Oh, I’m fine.” Usually when I say I am fine, I’m actually not. Yesterday, the truth came tumbling out. I had a very serious nerve pain issue on Friday and couldn’t stand without my husband lifting me out of bed under ten level pain. I would have gone to the emergency room if I physically could have. My lovely, caring, listening friend heard it all. Her sincere responses made me know she was truly interested in my situation and that I didn’t need to put on my happy face with her. I do tend to pretend all is well, especially if someone asks. Who wants to hear all my woes? Generally speaking, I think it’s a healthy practice not to tell everyone how you really are.Those of us who suffer with chronic pain are never fine. And there’s not a lot of positive things that can come from dwelling on it. But there’s a fine line between being positive and stuffing your “I am not fine” feelings. I know “stuffing” to be lethal. The lightbulb moment came when she said, “You know saying we’re okay all the time is really a bunch of garbage.” I felt an immense sense of freedom hearing that. Like it was okay to shout, “I am really not okay right now!” When did I get to the place where I accepted the lie in Matthew West’s song that “I’m supposed to have it all together?” Or how about the rest of the telling lyrics……“I say I’m fine, yeah I’m fine oh I’m fine, hey I’m fine but I’m not I’m broken. And when it’s out of control I say it’s under control but it’s not, and you know it. I don’t know why it’s so hard to admit it When being honest is the only way to fix it.”Today, I’m getting honest. I am not fine. It’s all out of control. Sometimes things are just awfully bad. I for one am tired of holding it all together. And who says we have to? Sometimes, good things happen when we get real. Other people hear our struggles and don’t feel like they are alone in their pain. I’ve often given thanks for the courageous authors who have written books and songs about their pain and sufferings that have helped me feel less like I’m on an island of one.I’ve considered it might be a bit prideful for me to suffer in silence, thinking I couldn’t possibly help someone else by opening up. I remember the day I first heard Matthew’s song. I was driving home from physical therapy and heard it on the Christian radio channel, The Message on Sirius radio. When a song truly speaks to you, it moves you to tears. That’s what happened to me. Did you ever feel like someone wrote the exact words that were in your heart? It’s a “stand still, block everything out” kind of moment. What if he never sang it? What if I never heard it? It would have been a loss I would have never known I’d missed. I’ve loved the song for a long time. Last night, when I was getting ready for bed, the refrain played in my head, strolling around my mind like an old companion paying a visit. I’m just so happy my friend’s words helped remind me of it when I needed it most.“Truth be told, the truth is rarely told.” This may be my favorite line in the song. There can be great healing in the sharing of our truths if we are brave enough and strong enough to peel back the curtain and do it. I hope I’m one of the brave ones.When my son, Ari, was 4, I came across this blog while staying up late at night searching for anything to help him, who was severely developmentally delayed. It was a family asking for p

Our Actions MatterMatthew 3:7-10 “But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sad′ducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit that befits repentance, and do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now, the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree, therefore, that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”I was reading Matthew chapter 3 this morning, and this verse stood out to me. What stuck in my head is the part where John the Baptist says to the Pharisees and Sadducees, “And do not presume to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our father; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now, the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree, therefore, that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” What came to me when I read this was that we can’t just rest on the fact that we are children of God.The Pharisees and Sadducees were secure in their positions in life. They knew they were children of God, and so they thought everything they did was right. They held on so tightly to the laws that they forgot about the spirit of the laws and forgot to take care of God’s people. For many of them, it became more about being in control and having status than it was about helping everyone get into heaven.Being a child of God brings a certain level of comfort. We know that He will always love us and that He will never forsake us. I just looked up the word forsake because I know what it means, but I couldn’t tell someone else what it means, so I wanted to know what the dictionary says. Forsake means to abandon. God will never abandon us, and He will never stop loving us, and we find courage in those facts. However, what I felt God wanted us to hear today is not to just rest in those facts and forget about everything else.Yes, indeed, God is always with us, and nothing we can do will make Him love us any more or any less than he already does. However, that doesn’t mean we can just go through life doing whatever we want to do. God has a certain way that he wants us to live our lives, and He definitely cares how we treat people. Let me remind you what it says in Luke 13:22-30.“He went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem. And someone said to him, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And he said to them, “Strive to enter by the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the householder has risen up and shut the door, you will begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us.’ He will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’ Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from; depart from me, all you workers of iniquity!’ There, you will weep and gnash your teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out. And men will come from east and west, and north and south, and sit at table in the kingdom of God. And behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.”This verse goes well with the verse above to remind us that we are not automatically going to heaven because we are a child of God. I know this is a controversial belief because it also says in the Bible that Jesus is the way to heaven, and if we believe in Jesus, we will go to heaven. I don’t think these two verses contradict each other. I think they help explain each other. Yes, we need to believe in Jesus and have to acknowledge that He is our savior. However, I think the verse for today and these other verses from Luke show us that our behavior also matters. We don’t have to earn our way into heaven, and yet we can lose heaven by the way we act here on earth.The people in this parable thought they were headed to heaven. They thought they were sitting at the table with Jesus, and yet He said, “I do not know where you come from; depart from me, all you workers of iniquity!” If we couldn’t do something to lose heaven, why would Jesus put this in the Bible? Why would He share this parable?Romans 10:9-10 “ because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved.” I don’t think the verses above contradict this verse. I know that this verse is often used to confront Catholics. We are asked why we don’t know we are saved because Jesus says so in this verse. We are asked why we think we need to earn heaven. We don’t think we need to earn heaven. We do however believe that God gave us free will

Self-Control Is Important To Living A Virtuous Life2 Peter 1:5-7 “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with devotion, devotion with mutual affection, mutual affection with love.”Today’s verse came from the Ascension press app. They have a daily devotional, which I never listen to. However, today, the subject is about living with virtue. We don’t really hear much about this in this day and age, so it got my attention. The person who did the devotional was Hudson Byblow. He is a Catholic Speaker from Canada. He talked about how our faith proposes that we strive to live a life of virtue.Hudson drew our attention to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) paragraph 1803, which says, ”Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” A virtue is a habitual and firm disposition to do good. It allows the person not only to perform good acts but to give the best of himself. The virtuous person tends toward the good with all his sensory and spiritual powers; he pursues the good and chooses it in concrete actions. The goal of a virtuous life is to become like God.I like how this paragraph tells us to focus our thoughts on the things that are honorable, just, pure, lovely, or gracious—anything of excellence or worthy of praise. I also like that the description defines virtue in a way that we can all understand. It says a virtue is a habitual and firm disposition to do good. Do we have a firm disposition to do good? Do we focus our thoughts on those things that are good, or do we focus our thoughts on the fears and worries of the world? Do we focus our thoughts on those we don’t like and what they are doing wrong instead of focusing on ourselves and everything we could be doing right?The CCC says that when we have virtue, it allows us not only to perform good acts but to give the best of ourselves.The other part about what it says in the CCC is that The virtuous person tends toward the good with all his sensory or spiritual powers; he pursues the good and chooses it in concrete actions. This part of what the CCC says ties back into the rest of the verse above.Remember the verse above says, “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with devotion, devotion with mutual affection, mutual affection with love.” It starts with how we should supplement our faith with virtue, which we just defined. Then is says virtue with knowledge. How can we focus our thoughts on what is good if we don’t know what is good? We need to spend time in God’s Word and learn what is good and what is honorable because the world is telling us to live the opposite of how the Lord wants us to live. We need to seek knowledge if we want to live a virtuous life.Next, it goes on to say, “Knowledge with self-control.” Self-control is a big one. I don’t think we realize how big of an impact self-control has on our lives and our ability to live virtuously. l struggle with self-control. This is interesting to me because a few years ago, I did much better. I think it is always a struggle for us, but at some points in our lives, we do better than at other points in our lives. When I was doing great with self-control, I was listening to a lot of personal development podcasts I was listening to a lot of religious podcasts, and Bible studies. This truly helped me have more self-control. I was listening to people telling me every day that I didn’t need to give into my every whim. They were telling me I could do hard things. They were filling my mind with the truth and the light of God.Lately, I have been filling my time with other things, and I have not been listening to those same podcasts. I have not been in scripture as much as I was, and so it is no wonder I am struggling with self-control. I can really see what this verse is saying about how we need to supplement our knowledge with self-control and our self-control with endurance. I believe the enemy is tricking us all into believing that self-control is not important.I know he whispers in my ear that God doesn’t mind if I eat those cookies or if I drink that soda. He tells me God wants me to be happy. This is true; God does want us to be happy. This is why the enemy’s lies work so well. He tells us things that are half-truths or things that are true but not relevant to the situation. For instance, yes, God wants us to be happy. However, He doesn’t just want us to be happy. He is more concerned with the state of our soul than He is with our happiness. Also, God knows that eating a whole package of cookies and drinking soda all day won’t make us happy. We are searching for something to make us

2 Timothy 1:5-6 “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well. For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.”I was listening to some praise and worship songs this morning and I was looking for one song in particular because I just love it. I couldn’t remember the name but I remembered which playlist it was on, so I searched through and found it. It is called Start a Fire and it is by Unspoken. I love this song so much because I feel like it speaks to my soul. I feel it expresses how I feel so deeply. I love many praise and worship songs for this reason. I find the artists ability to capture how I feel about God and put it into words is remarkable. This is why I love listening to Christian music so much. I will hear a song and find myself nodding my head and saying, yes, that is exactly it. Sometimes I didn’t even know that was how I felt, I just couldn’t put words to it but as soon as I heard them I knew it was true. I want to share the words of this song with you:This world can be cold and bitterFeels like we're in the dead of winterWaiting on something betterBut am I really gonna hide forever?Over and over againI hear Your voice in my headLet Your light shine, let Your light shine for all to seeStart a fire in my soulFan the flame and make it growSo there's no doubt or denyingLet it burn so brightlyThat everyone around can seeThat it's You, that it's You that we needStart a fire in meYou only need a spark to start a whole blazeIt only takes a little faithLet it start right here in this citySo these old walls will never be the sameOver and over againI hear Your voice in my headThey need to knowI need to goSpirit won't You fall on my heart nowYou are the fire, You are the flameYou are the light on the darkest dayWe have the hope, we bear Your nameWe carry the news that You have come to saveOnly You can save There are so many things I love about this song. I love the part where it says over and over again I hear your voice in my head, let you light shine, let your light shine for all to see. I feel God is telling all of this. He wants us to let our light shine. It even says in the Bible, don’t hide your light under a bushel, put it on the table for all to see. I love the part where it says, am I really going to hide forever? As if we can hide from God. He sees us, He sees all of us and guess what, He loves us, just as we are. I love the part where it says, “Start a fire in my soul. Fan the flames and make it grow so there’s not doubt or denying. Let it burn so brightly that everyone around you can see that it’s you, that its you that we need.” This is what God wants from us. He wants His light to shine so brightly in us that everyone can see it. He wants us to be a reflection of Him and to pass His light on to others. This is my prayer for each one of you listening. I pray God starts a fire in your soul. Actually I pray He fans the flames on the fire He has already started. You would not be listening to this podcast if there wasn’t already a fire in your soul. I also love the part that says, “You are the fire, You are the flame, You are the light on the darkest day.” This is so true. I hope you know that. I hope you know that God is that fire you feel inside, He is the flame. God is the light on the darkest day. Your darkest day, that one where you felt alone, that one where you feel sad, mad, angry, or depressed. God is there and He is your light. He will light a way where you didn’t think there was one. The verse above starts by saying, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well.” I met with some of the ladies in my prayer group yesterday to review what we had learned at a recently attended conference. During the conversation we started talking about the faith that was passed down to us from our parents, who received it from their parents. Your faith came from some where and I think we underestimate how important it is that our parents passed our faith down to us. Maybe some of you listening didn’t have that. Maybe you found your faith on your own. Well, maybe God led you to your faith in another way. That is great if you were able to find your faith despite the lack of faith in your childhood. For those of you that grew up going to church, I would like you to take a minute to appreciate how great that is. Maybe you didn’t appreciate it at the time because, let’s be honest, most kids don’t enjoy the fact that their parents made them go to church. However, if you look back now, can you see what a gift that was? Can you see how your parents were giving you a firm foundation on which you can rely for the rest of your lives. I really don’t know if I would have made it through I made it through if I didn’t have my faith, if I didn

Jesus leaves the 99 (replay)Matthew 4:1-11 “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:“‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.Have you ever had a time like this? A time where you felt like the Devil was right there by your side attacking you? Did you know what to say? Did you know what to do? I remember reading this and wishing that I knew scripture as well as Jesus did. I wished I knew the right thing to say when the devil comes to tell me the lies. That is what he is known for after all. Satan is the father of lies. Usually they are not bold face lies. Usually they have some sliver of truth that is twisted to make you question something. But in this passage Jesus was not deterred from his faith. He did not get drawn into a debate, defending himself, or His God. He simply quoted scripture to the enemy. This is one reason why it is helpful to read the Word of God everyday. The more we read God’s word the more we will know what to say to defend ourselves from the enemy. There are many reasons to read the word of God. Another one would be so that we know how God wants us to live. The Bible is full of stories, parables and laws that can help us govern how to live. Knowledge is power and if we know how God wants us to live, we can try to live in an upright manner. We can do our best to please Him. God does so much for us. The least we can do is try to obey his rules. We can try to live in a manner that honors Him and makes Him proud.Do you struggle with this, with living in a way that honors God and makes Him proud? I know I do. I often think of the passage from St. Paul in Romans 7:15 “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” If St. Paul, who did amazing things for Christ struggled to live a holy life, then I think it is understandable that we may struggle at times as well. However, remembering this passages and turning over our struggle to God can help us struggle a little less. When we are struggling we need only repent and turn back to God. God does not need us to be perfect, nor does he expect it. God knows every step you are going to take before you take it. Nothing you do is a surprise to Him. He is our creator, He is the creator of all things. He knows how your story ends before it even starts. He can see all the roads you will go down. He knows the windy road that is your life. And you know what? He loves you anyway. He loves you even though you are not perfect. He loves you even though you will turn away from Him from time to time. Maybe you have turned away from him a long time ago and have not come back yet. Guess what? He loves you anyway! And He is ready for you to turn back to him. When you do, he will rejoice and celebrate. He won’t be thinking of all the things you did in the past. He won’t be holding your past sins against you. Once you repent and turn back to the Lord, He will rejoice that His son or daughter has returned home and He will welcome you with open arms. That is just one of the many amazing things about your Lord. He is filled with so much mercy and so much grace. He knows all of our flaws, all of our mistakes and yet He still loves us, flaws and all. There is nothing that you can do that is unredeemable in the Lord’s eyes. I know people who don’t understand how valuable they are in the Lord’s eyes. They feel that because of their sins they are worth less than others. Or, maybe they feel they are worthless. If you are one of these people that is struggling with your self worth in God’s eyes, I ask you to picture that you have 2 pennies in your hand, one of them is shiny and new and the other one is old, dirty, and looks like it has been found in the gutter. What is the value of each penny? Is the penny that looks shiny and new worth more than the penny that is old and dirty? No, they are both worth the same. This is the same with God’s love. You are not worth less because you have made mistakes, made bad choices,

Damian Stayne's Website with Testimony videos Click Herehttp://www.coretlumenchristi.org/videos.php#We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at [email protected] or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day! www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE TO DONATECLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emailsCLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio training about inviting Jesus into your daily lifeCLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace

Great Is The Lord, and Greatly to Be PraisedPsalm 145:1-3 “I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless you, and praise your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; his greatness is unsearchable.”This is a great verse. I think if you know me at all by now, you know that I love to praise the Lord. I think He is truly amazing and I think it is so important to tell Him that. Our Lord does so much for us every day. He gives us so much mercy and so much grace. He forgives us again and again, even though we don’t really deserve it. His love is unconditional and unending. How many people can you say that about? He performs miracles for us, just to make us happy. He doesn’t need anything from us in return. Again, how many people can you say that about? How many people do you know that will do things for you without expecting anything in return? I hope you do know at least one, because there are people out there like that, but they are certainly not the majority. This is why I love praising the Lord so much. There is little that we can give God to repay Him. There is nothing He needs from us. He is complete and totally perfect just as He is. Even though He doesn’t need anything from us, He does like when we praise Him. Praising the Lord is something that costs us nothing but our time and is easy to do. Once you start to incorporate praising the Lord into your daily routine, you will wonder why you weren’t always doing it. It feels so good to say thank you to God for all that He does for us. The more you praise Him the more you realize how amazing He truly is. When I attended a Life in the Spirit seminar, they gave us praise sheets so that we could participate in the praise part of the meetings. You do not need a praise sheet to praise the Lord. There is no right or wrong way to do it. However, if you are new to praising the Lord, it may feel intimidating, especially if you are in a room full of people that have been doing it for a long time. If this is your first time intentionally praising the Lord it may feel strange. That’s normal, just keep doing it. If you are like me and most people who have never really spent time praising the Lord before, you are not really sure what to say. I understand this. I had no idea what to say at first and even though I have been doing it at least every Thursday for the last 3 years or so, I still use the praise sheet. I like the things that are written on the sheet. I do praise on my own, with my own words at home sometimes, but I really like using the sheet. Here are some of the things that are on the praise sheet I was given.Praise you our Lord and our God, Praise your holy name, we rejoice in your presence oh Lord, Jesus you are my strength, Jesus you are my rock, Jesus you are my fortress, Jesus you are my deliver, Jesus you are my refuge, Jesus you are my shield, Jesus you are my strong hold, Jesus you are my salvation, Jesus you are my healer, Jesus you are my teacher, Jesus you are my savior, Jesus you are my advocate, Jesus you are the great amen, Jesus you are the author of life, Jesus you are the beginning in the end, Jesus you are the blessed and only ruler, Jesus you are the breath of life, Jesus you are the captain of salvation, Jesus you are the good shepherd, Jesus you are the healer, Jesus you are hope and glory.You are the Messiah, you are the fountain of life, you are the vine keep us attached to you Lord, you are the holy one of Israel, you are the Christ, the power and wisdom of God, you are the Lamb who was slain you are the word made flesh, you are the holy one who sits up on the throne, you are the living word, you are emmanuel, you are the son of God, you set my feet are dancing, you are truth, you are loved, you are power, you are wisdom, you are the faithful one, you are our redeemer, you are the great “I AM” The list goes on, but those are several examples of the kinds of things you would find on a praise sheet. There is a great little book called “Opening The Gates of Praise” by Father John M. Capuci. The reason I say little book is because it is just 38 pages long. However, in this book Father talks about five things. First, why we praise. Second, what are our obstacles to praise. Third, ways to praise. Fourth, how to develop a spirit of praise. Fifth, He takes you through the steps so you can write out your own string of praise. This was a great book for explaining praise. In this book Father has 10 great reasons why we should praise God. I am not going to read them all to you as it is not my book, it is his. I will list a few that you may find surprising. One that I didn’t know is that praise breaks down the walls that are barriers to God’s grace. Father Capuci says, “When we praise, the walls of arrogance, self-hatred and low self-esteem begin to be broken down. God begins the healing process in us as we go before Him, praising His most awesome power!” Another reason we s

“I Have Loved You With An Everlasting Love”Jeremiah 31:3 “ the Lord appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.”God loves us with an everlasting love. Did you know that? Did you know that there is nothing you can do to lose God’s love? Sometimes I know that we feel unlovable. Sometimes that’s after we have done something that we feel is wrong and sometimes that’s after someone else has done or said something to us. However, God never stops loving us. He loved us before we were even born and His love is everlasting, it never goes away. I remember hearing a story once, I think it might have been Jeff Cavins, in the Great Adventure Bible Story, but I am not sure. Anyway, whoever was telling the story was talking about how God does not need anything from us. This was vastly different from the other Gods at the time. The other Gods got more power the more people worshipped them. They were almost fighting for people to worship them. Some of them even required human child sacrifices. However, our God was completely self sufficient and did not need anything from us. I remember the person saying that this is the reason that some people turned from those other God’s to our God, the one true God. They turned to God because of His everlasting love. They turned to God because He loved them just for who they were. They did not need to do anything to earn that love. That love was just there. This was something they had not experienced before. The next line in the verse is also an important line. “Therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.” This is important because God is always faithful to His word. This is something we talked a lot about last week but I think it is important to touch on it again as it is amazing. I think sometimes we may think that God stops loving us when we sin in some way. Or that he stops answering our prayers when we have sinned against Him. However, this verse dispels that belief. God continues His faithfulness to us, even when we mess up. Look how many times He was faithful to the Israelites after they messed up. In Matthew 18:21-22 it says, “Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” If Jesus is telling us to forgive seventy-seven time, then how much more will our father in heaven forgive us?There is a song called “Reckless Love” by Cory Asbury. It is a great song about how amazing God’s love is. The song first talks about how good God has been to him. The chorus says, Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God. Oh, it chases me down, fights 'til I'm found, leaves the 99. And I couldn't earn it, I don't deserve it, still You give yourself away” When he mentions leaves the 99 is talking about Matthew 18:12-14 when Jesus tells the parable, “What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.” God does not want to lose any of his sheep. He will not stop looking for us when we are lost. He will not stop loving us and hoping that we turn back to Him. Then the song goes on to say, “When I was Your foe, still Your love fought for me. You have been so, so good to me. When I felt no worth, You paid it all for me. You have been so, so kind to me” This is so true, when we have sinned and pulled away from God, or fractured our relationship with Him, He is still fighting for us and still loving us. When we don’t feel worthy, God is still there doing all He can for us. This last part of the song is my favorite and it is a part I think we all need to hear because it the truth. “There's no shadow You won't light up, mountain You won't climb up, coming after me. There’s no wall You won't kick down, lie You won't tear down, coming after me.” There is nothing that God won’t do to chase after His children to try and save them. He gave His only son on the cross for us. There is nothing hidden in the darkness that will prevent him from finding you. There’s no wall He won’t kick down and lie He won’t tear down. I think I like that part the best because when I think of it I think of a father searching everywhere for his child. Have you even seen the movie “Taken” with Liam Neeson? In the movie Liam Neeson is a father who’s daughter goes to Europe on vacation with a friend. However, in the movie his daughter is taken by sex traffickers. She calls her dad when she sees someone breaking into the house. Liam is some type of government spy in the movie and he stops at nothing to get his daughter back. He does whatever i

We All Stand On The Same Ground Before GodEphesians 3:4-6 “As you read over what I have written to you, you’ll be able to see for yourselves into the mystery of Christ. None of our ancestors understood this. Only in our time has it been made clear by God’s Spirit through his holy apostles and prophets of this new order. The mystery is that people who have never heard of God and those who have heard of him all their lives (what I’ve been calling outsiders and insiders) stand on the same ground before God. They get the same offer, same help, same promises in Christ Jesus. The Message is accessible and welcoming to everyone across the board.”I really liked this verse when I read it in the Passion Translation, and then I read it in this Message Translation, and I felt like it expressed it in a way we could all understand. Let me read you the passion translations. “So that whenever you read it, you will be able to understand my revelation and insight into my secret mystery of the Messiah. There has never been a generation that has been given a detailed understanding of this glorious and divine mystery until now. He kept it a secret until this generation. God is revealing it only now to his sacred apostles and prophets by the Holy Spirit. Here’s the secret: The gospel of grace has made you, non-Jewish believers, into coheirs of his promise through your union with him. And you have now become members of his body—one with the anointed!When I first read it I was wondering what the secret was. I was wondering if I knew the secret. They when I read that the secret is that we are all coheirs to the promises through union with Jesus it got me thinking. I don’t think we do all know that. This is why I like the message translation. It says, “The mystery is that people who have never heard of God and those who have heard of him all their lives (what I’ve been calling outsiders and insiders) stand on the same ground before God. They get the same offer, same help, same promises in Christ Jesus. The Message is accessible and welcoming to everyone across the board.”What great news that is, especially for those of us who have loved ones that don’t know Jesus. Doesn’t it give you a bit more hope to know that even those who have never heard of God and those of us who have all stand on the same ground? Before the apostles it was believed that the Jewish people were God’s people and the rest were not. Then Jesus came to reveal that God’s wants all His children saved, not just one group of them. What I love about God is that He truly loves us all equally. He loves the sinner just as much as He loves the Saint. He loves those who don’t know Him just as much as He loves those who visit Him in church each and every day.This is hard for us to wrap our heads around. We like to think that we are special because we go to church, we pray daily, and we do all the things we think God is calling us to do. We believe that this makes God love us more. One of the most freeing things I have learned is that there isn’t anything I can do to make God love me any more or any less than He already does. God doesn’t love me more because I go to church or because I spend time with Him each day. He doesn’t love me less because I eat too many cookies and sometimes choose to watch TV instead of spending time with Him. God loves our children who don’t go to church just as much as He loves us. This can be very freeing if we let it. This means we don’t have to strive to earn God’s love. We can rest in the fact that no matter what we do, God will still love us just as much as He did before we were born.Another thing we tend to think is that God favors some people more than others. For instance, if we need prayers for something important, we all have that one or two people we will ask because we feel their prayers go straight to heaven. We feel their prayers are more powerful. Yet, we all have the same Holy Spirit living inside of us, and so we all have the same power living inside of us. The people we go to for prayer do not have more power to pray than you do. What they have is the confidence to go to God and ask for what they need. They have faith that God answers their prayers, and they have this because of the fact that they keep going to God and asking Him. We tend to think their prayers are answered because of how holy they are. I have heard testimonies of people who are brand new to the faith and yet obediently prayed over someone when asked and they were healed.One instance was when a woman had breast cancer. She was at an Easter Vigil mass where the RCIA candidates were being confirmed. She felt like the Lord told her to get prayed over by one of the people who were just confirmed. She waited until after mass and then went up to a young woman, newly baptized into the faith, and asked her to pray for her healing of the breast cancer. She was cured right then and there. Another one was at an Encounter Ministries conference. This woman had stage four cance

Today’s witness is a friend, Bruce & his wife, Alice, whom I met through email back in November of 2023. The Holy Spirit led Bruce to my podcast, and as he listened, he heard the call for people to share their stories, and he decided to do a Witness Wednesday. His first witness is episode #619. If you haven’t heard it, I invite you to listen to it today. It is really good. Bruce has made a career for the past thirty years as a head scenic artist, art director, and designer in the professional theatre business. For the past five years, he has also had a studio on James St. N., where he produced his own artwork. He is known and loved by many in the community for his work teaching the PMC art class for over a decade, as well as a more recent class for seniors at the YWCA. In the first witness, Bruce talks about how he lost his sight sort of gradually, and then he went to a healing service and was healed. However, in the morning, he could no longer see again. After hearing his witness, I asked Bruce if I could pray over him. He said yes, and I called him and his wife and prayed with them. His sight was not restored, but he felt encouraged by the Lord. I continued to pray for Bruce, and we kept in touch.Several months later, while talking to the Lord, I felt like the Lord told me it was time to pray for Bruce again. I had prayed that the Lord be with Bruce as he was frustrated and confused. I heard the Lord tell me that He would heal him, both his eyesight and his Spirit. He said that Bruce would have a personal encounter with Jesus, and then He would heal him, and He would go on to use his painting to bring God’s love to others. I asked the Lord if He could give me a word of knowledge, anything I could share with Bruce and Alice to build their faith. I heard that Bruce would wear blue pants and a red shirt.The Lord went on to tell me about what Bruce could do if he gained his sight back and then lost it like the last time. The Lord told me several things to tell Bruce to help put his mind at ease that this wouldn't happen again, yet if it did, what Bruce could do to get it back. I shared all of that with Bruce, and he was very encouraged. Below is His testimony as to what happened the night that I prayed over him for healing. In March, Alice and I were on an evening phone call with Catherine. Previous to this call, a week or so earlier, I asked the Lord if there was any information or help he could reveal to me as I was feeling somewhat stuck spiritually. I asked for something from scripture, a word of help, or knowledge from someone. I would then be open to receiving something in the near future. Within a few days, I received an email from Catherine in which she said she had received some knowledge to pass along to me. God had told her that I would have an encounter with Him regarding my healing. He also told her what color I would be wearing as a means of verifying the truth of this knowledge. We agreed to have a follow-up phone call. My immediate thought was to wear a red tartan shirt during the phone call, but I changed my mind because I second-guessed that God would not choose such a shirt. I went with a green shirt instead. On the phone Catherine said " red" and I explained my change of mind to her. I should have trusted my first choice. We then prayed. Catherine called on the presence of Jesus. Alice and I were sitting in our living room. I felt a change in the atmosphere in the room. I knew Jesus was there in spirit, and I had a sense that He was in front of me. Catherine's praying faded away as I entered a meditated state. I sensed someone sitting beside me. I leaned my head and shoulder into this presence beside me. It felt like a cloak around me. I was overwhelmed by a feeling of peace and love and felt like I was leaning into the safest place of all. It seemed to last for several minutes before it faded, leaving me in a state of joy. Although God did not speak to me audibly, He gave me great assurance of faith and presence with me. No, I was not healed of my blindness, but I have learned in faith to continue believing for healing with hope in the Lord. It is important for us to remember that God's ways and time are not the same as ours. I have been so blessed by these demonstrations of faith and love, which God gives me just when they are needed. I wish this to be everyone's experience as well. Wasn’t that an amazing witness? Imagine having the presence of Jesus sitting right next to you. Imagine being able to lay your head on His shoulder. I remember Bruce saying it was such an amazing experience that he didn’t want to move. He just wanted to sit right where he was. I was very happy for Bruce as he told me that he had always longed to have this sort of experience with the Lord. He knows God is always around, but he longed to feel his presence or to see him as others had. Tonight, that dream came true.I am going to be honest with you. As happy as I was for Bruce, I was also disappointed. I truly fel

Miracles Do Happen!Joshua 3:13 “When the soles of the feet of the priests carrying the ark of the Lord, the Lord of the whole earth, touch the waters of the Jordan, it will cease to flow; the water flowing down from upstream will halt in a single heap.”This is a story that I don’t remember from the Bible. I have gone through the Bible in a year twice with Father Mike, so I am sure I have heard it; I don’t remember it, so I thought we would take a look at it today especially because I know a lot of people who need some reassurance that miracles do happen. God will take care of you no matter what circumstances you find yourself in. God is not surprised you are in these circumstances. He knew you would be in them, and He has prepared you for them. He has a plan to help you through them. Trust Him.This verse is taking place when Joshua is trying to get the Isrealites to cross the Jordon River to go into the promised land. Let me read to you this part of the story so you can see how it all unfolded. Remember Moses led the people out of Egypt but was not able to live to lead them into the promised land. This was left to Joshua as He was faithful and trusted God could conquer the people who occupied that land currently. I will read you Joshua 3:7-17 “Then the Lord said to Joshua: Today I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. Now command the priests carrying the ark of the covenant, “When you come to the edge of the waters of the Jordan, there take your stand.” So Joshua said to the Israelites, “Come here and listen to the words of the Lord, your God.” He continued: “By this you will know that there is a living God in your midst: he will certainly dispossess before you the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites. The ark of the covenant of the Lord of the whole earth will cross the Jordan before you. Now choose twelve men, one from each of the tribes of Israel. When the soles of the feet of the priests carrying the ark of the Lord, the Lord of the whole earth, touch the waters of the Jordan, it will cease to flow; the water flowing down from upstream will halt in a single heap.”The people set out from their tents to cross the Jordan, with the priests carrying the ark of the covenant ahead of them. When those bearing the ark came to the Jordan and the feet of the priests bearing the ark were immersed in the waters of the Jordan—which overflows all its banks during the entire season of the harvest— the waters flowing from upstream halted, standing up in a single heap for a very great distance indeed, from Adam, a city in the direction of Zarethan; those flowing downstream toward the Salt Sea of the Arabah disappeared entirely. Thus the people crossed over opposite Jericho. The priests carrying the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood on dry ground in the Jordan riverbed while all Israel crossed on dry ground until the whole nation had completed the crossing of the Jordan.”Wow, the Israelites crossed on dry ground again! Remember, these are the ancestors of those who crossed the Red Sea on dry ground. These people were not actually there, but I am sure they heard all about it. So, why do you think God needed to show them again? Why do you think God parted the Jordan River for them to cross? It says above that it was to show the people that God was with Joshua the same way that He was with Moses. This miracle, like many others, is a testament to the power and faithfulness of our God. It amazes me how often we can see signs and wonders and yet still doubt the Lord will come through. The Israelites had seen miracle after miracle while they were in the desert. Their food miraculously showed up each morning. When they complained about not having meat to eat, Quail miraculously showed up. They walked across the Red Sea on dry land, and this is to name a few of the big ones.So, why would they need to see another miracle? I think it is because we sometimes think it is the person doing the miracle instead of God doing the miracle through those people. God knew the Israelites knew God was with Moses because He was the face of most of the miracles they had received. However, God also knew they weren’t sure if God was with Joshua. He was young and new to leading them. God understood that these people would need a sign to show them that He was with Joshua.How many times have we been like this? How many times has God called us to cross our own Jordan Rivers, and we have been hesitant because we don’t know that He is with us? How many times has He given us a sign, and yet we require another one? If we look back upon our lives, I bet we can all see how the Lord has been right here with us in each of the hard times. If we can see this, why do we still doubt He will be with us in this hard time? I am sure we have all seen miracles in our lives. If we haven’t, then we are not looking hard enough because the Lord is

A Spirit of SonshipActs 1:8 “But you will receive power when the holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”Yesterday was Pentecost. I have often thought about It and what it would have been like to be in that upper room. Whenever I prayed the glorious mysteries of the rosary, I would ask the Lord for my own Pentecost. I can’t imagine being that overcome by the Holy Spirit. I can’t even imagine the excitement in that room and then spilling out of that room to all those they talked to. I do know I have the Holy Spirit living inside of me. I have definitely seen it working through me. I have seen it give me boldness when I needed it. Often I wish I had more boldness. I wish I could say and do all the things I want to do without my insecurities getting in the way. I will keep praying and asking for more, and I know the Lord will provide exactly the right amount of courage that I need to do what He has called me to do.This morning I want to talk with you about something I just learned yesterday. In his homily yesterday, the priest explained the difference between the Holy Spirit of the New Testament and the Holy Spirit of the Old Testament. I thought this was really interesting because I knew the Holy Spirit was around in the Old Testament, and I thought some people were filled with it, but then I wasn’t sure. I wondered how the prophets could know what they knew without the Holy Spirit. But I also knew the Holy Spirit didn’t come upon all of us until Pentecost. It was confusing, and I never really understood it. So, in case you are like me, I thought I would give you the explanation the priest gave at mass yesterday as it was a great explanation. I will do my best to relay His message.The priest explained that it was a Spirit of Assignment or a Spirit of Function in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, it is a Spirit of Sonship. He meant that in the Old Testament, everyone was not filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was reserved for a select few people, such as the prophets who were spreading God’s messages. Those who were in charge of leading the Lord’s people, such as the kings and the judges. The Lord would give the Spirit to some people, and then He would also take it away. For instance, 1 Samuel 16:14 says, “But the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD troubled him.”Everyone wasn’t blessed with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was only given to some; if they misused their power, it would be taken away. This is why in Psalm 51:13, King David says, “Do not drive me from before your face, nor take from me your Holy Spirit.” David is aware that He is who He is because of the Spirit of God. He knows without that, He would be nothing. He would not be an effective king or an effective warrior; he wouldn’t be able to do anything without the Holy Spirit within him.In the New Testament, Jesus died on the cross for us. He took our sins to the cross, and there, He restored our relationship with the Father. Now we are adopted sons and daughters of God. When Jesus went to Heaven to be with Father, Jesus asked His Dad to send us the Holy Spirit, the advocate. An advocate pleads another's cause and helps another by defending or comforting him. Can you see why we would need this? Can you see what the apostles would need the Spirit? They were being sent out. Actually, we are all being sent out to proclaim Jesus to all those we meet. Can you see why we might need help defending our case?The Holy Spirit emboldened the apostles. They were hiding in a locked upper room when the Holy Spirit came to them. They were afraid and unsure of what to do or say. They were afraid their lives would end just as our Lord’s life ended. Yet, after the Holy Spirit came upon them, they were not afraid of anything. They boldly proclaimed the good news of Jesus. The Holy Spirit not only gave them boldness, but they were able to speak in languages so everyone could understand them. They could do signs and wonders. They were given all the tools they needed to do the task the Lord gave them.You and I, my friend, have this same Holy Spirit living inside of you—the same one Jesus has, the same one the apostles had, the same one that raised Jesus from the dead. It still boggles my mind when I try to wrap my head around it, but it is true. What can we do with this Holy Spirit living inside of us? I think a better question is, “What can’t we do?” The answer to that is nothing. There isn’t anything we can’t do when we rely on the Holy Spirit living inside of us. If you want the Holy boldness the apostles had, ask for it, and the Lord will give it to you.Right now, I am asking for the gift of being able to speak Spanish so others will understand me. Actually, when I think about it, He was probably giving it to me because I was doing really well with Duolingo. But then I stopped. Whatever gift you are looking for from the L

Don’t Change! Become!Today, I felt led to start with this poem I read the other day because it beautifully demonstrates that we don’t always understand what God is doing. We think we are a mess, we feel like we are falling apart, we feel like God has abandoned us, and yet God is ALWAYS right there in the middle of it all! He knows exactly what He is doing and wants us to trust Him in the process. This poem gives us some insight into that process. I feel it makes it a little easier to trust when we have a bit of understanding. This conversation is between someone and God.Me: Hey God.God: Hello.....Me: I'm falling apart. Can you put me back together?God: I would rather not.Me: Why?God: Because you aren't a puzzle.Me: What about all of the pieces of my life that are falling down onto the ground?God: Let them stay there for a while. They fell off for a reason. Take some time and decide if you need any of those pieces back.Me: You don't understand! I'm breaking down!God: No - you don't understand. You are breaking through. What you are feeling are just growing pains. You are shedding the things and the people in your life that are holding you back. You aren't falling apart. You are falling into place. Relax. Take some deep breaths and allow those things you don't need anymore to fall off of you. Quit holding onto the pieces that don't fit you anymore. Let them fall off. Let them go. Me: Once I start doing that, what will be left of me?God: Only the very best pieces of you.Me: I'm scared of changing.God: I keep telling you - YOU AREN'T CHANGING!! YOU ARE BECOMING!Me: Becoming who?God: Becoming who I created you to be! A person of light and love and charity and hope and courage and joy and mercy and grace and compassion. I made you for more than the shallow pieces you have decided to adorn yourself with that you cling to with such greed and fear. Let those things fall off of you. I love you! Don't change! ... Become! Become! Become who I made you to be. I'm going to keep telling you this until you remember it. Me: There goes another piece.God: Yep. Let it be. Me: So ... I'm not broken?God: Of course Not! - but you are breaking like the dawn. It's a new day. Become!!!~Author John Roedel I know many of you are struggling right now. Whether it is with health issues, money issues, or in the process of losing old friends and making new friends, I think this poem shows us that God can use these hard times to help us step into the person we are meant to be. The person He knows we are capable of being. There are several things I love about this poem. The first is the gentleness of God. He is so good. I think this poem demonstrates the love that God has for us. He didn't say no when she asked if God would put her back together. He said He would rather not. He then went on to explain why He felt that way. Notice how He didn’t get short with her. He didn’t seem irritated or annoyed with her. We often imagine God feels that way about us. We tell ourselves that He is tired of us coming and asking the same thing. We imagine He wondering why we can’t seem to get it together already. If we are honest, we have felt that way about our loved ones before. God is not us. He doesn’t have to wonder why we can’t get it together. He knows. He made us. He knows everything we have ever done and everything we will ever do.I also love that God doesn’t tell her never again to pick up the pieces that fell off. He tells her to take some time and decide whether she needs them. Maybe you are going through this shedding process right now. Maybe you are losing friends, workers, loved ones, or even material things. God isn’t telling you that they are gone forever. He is saying take some time and see if you need them. Do they bring joy into your life? Do they make you a better person? Do they help you grow closer to the Lord? Are they helping you on your journey to heaven?If the answer to some of these questions are yes, maybe you can pick them back up again. Take the time to ask questions. Pay attention to the answers. Don’t pick them back up again because it is hard without them. Don’t pick them up again because it is easier with them or you miss them. It is normal to want to. When you are tempted to pick back up the ones that are not good for you, remember what the poem said, “What you are feeling are just growing pains. You are shedding the things and the people in your life that are holding you back. You aren't falling apart. You are falling into place. Relax. Take some deep breaths and allow those things you don't need anymore to fall off of you. Quit holding onto the pieces that don't fit you anymore. Let them fall off. Let them go.The last part that I want to draw your attention to is what the poem says about changing. Listen to that part again. “Me: Once I start doing that, what will be left of me?God: Only the very best pieces of you.Me: I'm scared of changing.God: I keep telling you - YOU AREN'T CHANGING!! YOU ARE BECOMING!Me: Becoming who?

Waiting At Wisdom's DoorwayProverbs 8:34-35 “If you wait at wisdom’s doorway, longing to hear a word for every day, joy will break forth within you as you listen for what I’ll say. For the fountain of life pours into you every time that you find me, and this is the secret of growing in the delight and the favor of the Lord.”Man, I really love the Passion Translation of the Bible. It really speaks to me. If we are paying attention, God will highlight things for us. This is something I didn’t really know much about until I went through this Encounter Ministries class. I can look back on my life and see that He was doing it all throughout my life. I just didn’t realize it. I didn’t know it was Him drawing my attention to things. When the Holy Spirit highlights things for you, it just means that He brings them to your attention. For instance, we could both be watching the same movie, and yet different things might stick out to you and other things to me.I was surprised last year when a few of my fellow Encounter students and I got together after the conference to compare notes and talk about what we had learned. Listening to the ladies explain what stood out the most to them was interesting. It was as if I hadn’t even been to the talks they were discussing. Some of the things they felt were most impactful weren’t even in my notes, and the most impactful to me weren’t in their notes. I love how God does that. He can have an auditorium full of thousands of people and speak to each of us individually. He can speak right into our current situation. It is so amazing.The Lord has been highlighting wisdom for me lately and how I need to be asking and searching for it more. We had two speakers in Encounter, and they were both amazing, and they taught us so many good things. Yet, I remember most when they said to keep asking God for wisdom. God has also been highlighting the Saints to me. I feel as though I need to read so many books so I can gain more wisdom. The Lord tells me to come to Him, and He will give me wisdom. He points to our Saints like Thérèse of Lisieux and Saint Catherine of Sienna. Both of these saints were doctors of the church, and yet they did not have a lot of formal education.What they did have, was an amazing relationship with the Lord. They had an intimate relationship where they spent a lot of time in solitude with Him. I think this is what the Lord is calling me to, more time in solitude with Him. Yet, I don’t think this is just a call for me. I think He may be highlighting this for me so that I can share it with you too! Even yesterday in Witness Wednesday, the thing that was highlighted for me was when she said she is trying to get her knowledge for the Bible and not the world, social media, or personal development books.Now, don’t get me wrong. I love personal development books. I have read most of them and probably almost all the parenting books ever invented. Personal Development and self-help books can be amazing and really helpful. I am not saying you shouldn’t read them. However, the Lord told me several years ago that I was relying on those books more than on Him. I would bring my problems to Him, ask Him for help, and then go try to solve the problem myself. What God was calling me to do was spend more time with Him. He wanted me and still wants me to come to Him with my problem and then actually sit and listen to what He thinks I should do.I say He still wants me because I struggle with this, and maybe you do too. I struggle with listening to the Lord. I have been intentionally doing this for over 4 years now, so I am getting better at hearing Him, but I am not sure if I am better at listening to Him. I am grateful I can hear when God is talking to me. I am grateful I write down what He says so I can go back and look at it. Yet, I struggle with actually doing what He asks me to do, which is crazy to me because He has such good ideas, and they are solutions to problems I want solved. So, why don’t I do the things?This is why I love the famous verse from St. Paul in Romans 7:15, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” This is so true. I am not sure a truer thing has ever been said. I ask God what I should do, and then He actually tells me, and then I don’t do it. It amazes me every time I look back at my prayer journal and highlight things that God told me to do that I still haven’t done. These are not difficult things to do either. For instance, spraying holy water in my kids’ room while they are in school and blessing their rooms. I went to the store and bought the spray bottle months ago. Then I went to the church and filled it with Holy water a month or two after that. It has been sitting on top of my filing cabinet in my office for over a month, and I still have yet to do it.I say all of that to let you know that you are not alone if you are struggling to do what the Lord tells you to do. If you are one who doesn’t struggle to do w

Today’s witness is another friend from the Big Life mentoring group with Pamela Crim. Laura has been through a lot over the years, including several unhealthy relationships in her search for love. She lived with a lot of shame for many years. Finally, someone she loved pointed her to the Big Life Devotional podcast by Pamela Crim. She started listening and then joined mentoring. She went on retreat where Pamela baptized her in the ocean and her faith was renewed. Listen to her testimony, and you will see how God transformed her life. He can do the same for yours. Just keep turning back. It’s ok if your path isn’t perfect. Just keep getting back on the road to salvation. Take it away, Laura. We have all seen God working in our lives. However, we might not all be aware it is God working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience of how God has worked or is working in your life, please email me at [email protected] or click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com CLICK HERE TO DONATE CLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emails CLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio training about inviting Jesus into your daily life CLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace

Where the Spirit of the Lord Is, There Is Freedom!2 Corinthians 3:12-18 “ Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not see the end of the fading splendor. But their minds were hardened; for to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their minds; but when a man turns to the Lord the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”This verse powerfully reminds us of the stark contrast between our lives today and the time of Moses. When Moses communed with the Lord, his face radiated with divine splendor, an overwhelming sight for those around him, prompting him to veil his face. However, when Christ came, this veil was lifted. There was always a curtain between God and His people in the Old Testament. They couldn’t have direct contact with Him. There was a separation. This separation was necessary because of the fall of man.When Adam and Eve were created, God walked among them. Nothing was separating them. They were as close as they could be. However, when Adam and Eve ate the apple and betrayed God’s trust, they had to leave the Garden, and then there was a separation between us and God. This is not why God created us. He didn’t want there to be a separation between us. He didn’t want anything to keep us apart. This is why He sent Jesus to die on the cross in reparation for our sins so that there wouldn’t be anything between us and God.This verse mentions that the Lord is the Spirit and that there is freedom where the Spirit of the Lord is. We all need to hear that again. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. Guess where the Spirit of the Lord is? It is inside of you and me. It is inside of all of us. That means that there is freedom inside of us. So, why don’t we feel free? Why are so many of us living under the weight of our sins and judgments? Why do we feel like we are held captive by our past or those who surround us? Why aren’t we living in this freedom?I wonder if we aren’t living in freedom because we aren’t cooperating with it? Is it possible that our chains are made by us? Is it possible that we aren’t free from our sins because we haven’t accepted that freedom? God makes it clear over and over again in the Bible that our sins are forgiven when we repent and turn back to Him. So why do we struggle so much to believe that? Why do we insist on holding onto our sins? Is God a liar? Does He tell us things that aren’t true? If God says we are forgiven, why can’t we accept that? Why can’t we believe Him?God sent Jesus, his only son, to die on the cross for our sins. Then He raised Jesus from the dead and sent the Holy Spirit to live inside of us. God thinks we are worth it. He wouldn’t have done all of that if He didn’t want us to be free to have a relationship with Him. He wouldn’t have done all of that if he didn’t think we were worthy enough.This verse goes on to say, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” The Lord is changing each one of us little by little. Looking around, it may seem that the transformation is happening quicker with some people than with others. I have found that the more we cooperate with what the Lord is doing, the more quickly the transformation happens.When we fight God the whole way, it tends to take much longer. The process of becoming more and more like God means that we are becoming less and less like our worldly selves. God is trying to purify us, and that process can be painful. That process can consist of turning away from things we like that are not helping us grow closer to the Lord. It may mean we must walk away from situations or even people who are constantly leading us into sin. Or, maybe they aren’t leading us into sin, but they are definitely encouraging it. It may also take longer because we are unaware that the Lord is trying to lead us. If we aren’t paying attention to what the Lord is saying, we might miss it. That is not to say the Lord can’t get our attention; he definitely can. However, he honors our free will. So, if we want to continue to ignore his requests, then He will let us. God has so much more available for each of us. He really does. We have to want it. We have to be looking for it. If we expect more, we will get more.God is talking to you each and every day. Do you hear Him? Are you listening? How different would your life be if you turned to God more throughout the day and asked what He thought or what He wanted you to do? What if we paid

Do We Trust Jesus?Luke 5:4-5 “And when he had ceased speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word, I will let down the nets.”I like this verse because it reminds me that I am not the only one who argues with the Lord. I am not the only one with a reply other than “Yes” when Jesus asks me to do something. Simon had been out fishing all night and had not caught any fish. He was tired and, I am sure, very discouraged. Then Jesus asked him to push his boat back into the sea a bit so that Jesus could stand on it and talk to all those on the shore. Simon did so.Then, after Jesus had finished teaching those on the shore, He told Simon to go out into the deep and let down his nets for a catch. Can you imagine how frustrated Simon felt and how tired he probably was? He was washing his nets out to call it a day when Jesus climbed on His boat, and who knows how long Jesus preached before telling Simon to go out into the deep. Then He tells Simon to put his net out into the water again. Jesus is a carpenter, and Simon is a fisherman. I am sure He didn’t understand why He should do what this man said, and yet He did it anyway and yielded more fish than their nets could hold, and the nets began to break. There were so many fish that they filled both boats so full that the boats began to sink.Have you ever been in a situation like this before? Have you ever felt like God or Jesus was asking you to do something you really didn’t want to? There could be many reasons why we don’t want to do what He asks us to do. Simon was tired and frustrated. He might have also felt that his efforts were in vain. But despite all these, he obeyed. This story reminds us that even when we are tired, frustrated, or feel like our efforts are in vain, we should still obey God's word, for He has a plan that we might not understand.In this verse, the Lord knew that if Peter obeyed him, he would catch more fish than He could have imagined. God knows the same thing about you and me. He knows that if we obey Him, he will provide more than we need, whether in our jobs, families, or friends. Where is God calling you? What has He been asking you to do, and yet you have been ignoring Him because you have tried it before many times, and so you figure it won’t work this time either? What areas of your life are you desperate to see change?In this verse, Peter is desperate to catch some fish and has tried all night with no luck. When he listened to the Lord and then saw how many fish they caught, he finally recognized Jesus for who he really was. Peter recognized Jesus as Lord. It says in verse 8, “But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” Has Jesus ever helped you come face to face with your sinfulness? Has He ever answered one of your prayers in a way that there was no question it was God who answered that prayer?I have had this happen many times. I am grateful to my parents because they told us about times in their lives when this happened to them, and so I began to be aware of when it was happening in my life, too. We miss so much when we are not looking for it. When you intentionally try to see God working in your life, you will see God working in your life. Notice I didn’t say you might see God. I am 100% confident that you will see it if you intentionally look for where God is working in your life. This is the main reason why I do Witness Wednesdays on this podcast. If you hear how God works in other people’s lives, you will become more aware of how He works in your life, too!I can see how God worked his miracles in my son Noah’s surgery and recovery. Actually, how we even discovered he needed surgery. Noah was having headaches, and they were treating them with medicine, and that wasn’t really working. The neurologist ordered an MRI to ensure it wasn’t too serious. If she hadn’t ordered the MRI, she would have never found out that he had a Chiari malformation. You can only see them on an MRI. Then we were supposed to have surgery at a hospital that was an hour and 40 minutes away from our house. The surgeon could not get Noah on his surgical calendar until July. Noah wants to go to college in Europe at the end of the summer.We asked if they could put in a referral for Mass General Hospital, as it is less than an hour's drive. They put in the referral, and after we got the records transferred, they set up a pairing with a surgeon who does both pediatric and adult surgeries. They were able to get him scheduled within a few weeks. Also, they scheduled him for after spring break, so I was able to take Noah to England to look at some colleges. It was amazing timing that only God could have arranged.Then, on the day of the surgery, Noah had an awesome nurse who happened to be his birthday twin. She was so kind and distracted him from thinking about the surgery

Invite God Into Your HeartPsalm 24:7-8 "Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors! That the King of glory may come in. Who is the King of Glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle!”Psalm 24 was given at Prayer Group last night. Then, afterward, someone gets a word or prophecy that goes along with it. The word of prophecy is, “The Lord was just saying, yes, He is the King of Glory, and He deserves all the praise, all the honor, adoration, all the worship, all the fanfare that we would give in worship. But that He desires something even a little more than that. And what He desires is that He wants each of us to invite Him to be the King that sits on the throne of our hearts.” Psalm 24 came at the beginning of the meeting, and this Word came a bit later. I honestly didn’t put the two together.One of our other members confirmed this Word and said she didn't quite get those exact words, but she had a real feeling about that individual invitation to the Lord into our hearts. If the Lord takes the time to tell us the same message through three different people, we should probably pay attention to that message. The message the Lord wants us to hear is that we need to open the doors of our hearts and invite Him in. The Lord is a gentleman who will not come unless you invite him.In my Encounter Ministries Class, we looked at this method of evangelization called Jesus at the Door. There is a picture of Jesus at the door, and yet there is only a door knob on the inside of the door. Jesus can not come through the door unless you open it. There is a heart around the picture. When we show it to people, we tell them that Jesus is knocking on the door to their hearts. We ask if they want to invite Jesus in. That image is really powerful, and it is also very anointed. Many people have accepted Jesus into their lives just by looking at this picture and answering the few other questions that are asked with the picture.One thing we ask them to do after they see the picture is to imagine they have a backpack on their back. Now we tell them to imagine the backpack is filled with their sins. Would it be heavy? Most of us can say yes to that question. Then we asked them to imagine they owed the bank $100,000. What would happen if we gave them a check for $100,000 and they took it to the bank and deposited it? Their debt would be gone, right? This is what Jesus did with our backpack full of sins. He paid the price. He wrote a check out for our sins and signed it with His blood. Our sins have been forgiven, and we are no longer in debt.Isn’t that an incredible way to explain how our sins are forgiven? Jesus paid our debt for us. He took our sins to the cross with Him. So, why are we so afraid to come to Jesus and invite Him into our hearts? We were talking about this yesterday at prayer group, and we said that sometimes we don’t want to invite Jesus into our hearts because we know that Jesus will call us to live our lives differently, and we may not be ready to do so.If this is you, or if you know someone who might be struggling with this, you can take heart and remember St. Augustine of Hippa. He was an amazing Saint. He was also infamously known for saying, “Lord, give me chastity and continence, but not yet!” This infamous prayer of the young Augustine of Hippo (354-430) reflects the inner conflict of any soul who recognizes the virtuous thing to do yet fears the demanding struggle against human urges and passions.The first step is to invite the Lord into our hearts. He will take care of the rest. God is gentle with us, and He will not instantly expect a 180-degree change from you. Or, if He does, He will give you the grace and the power to do it. Look at Saul from the Bible. One day he was headed to a town to round up any Christians and put them in jail. Then he encounters Jesus, is blind for a few days, and completely transforms. He is a completely different person. His name was even changed. I don’t think this is the way that it works for most of us, though.Most of us struggle with the temptations of this world. We know what we should do, yet we don’t. God understands this. He knows that we get caught up in the wrong things and make the wrong choice more than the right one. He understands this, yet He calls us to invite Him into this struggle. He is calling us to invite Him into our hearts.Last week for mentoring, I was studying what scripture says regarding coming to the Lord as we are and not feeling that we need to change before we can come to God. This is what I talked about yesterday in the devotional as well. One scripture verse I found goes well with this idea that we want to follow Jesus, but we don’t want to stop doing everything we want. Jeremiah 13:23 says, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil.” What the Lord revealed to me when I heard this verse is, why would we think we could change without Him

Truth Be ToldLuke 5:30-32 “But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”The theme for my Tuesday night mentoring group is “Come As You Are.” I chose this because too many of us feel we aren’t worthy to come to God as we are. We think we need to get it all together before we come to God. We think we need to clean up our lives and then we can come to God. I can see why we would think this because that is what society tells us. That is what it looks like on Social media. It looks like everyone else has it all together, so we need to get it together before we are good enough to ask God for anything. We can’t attend mass or church service because our kids don’t behave, or we don't have the right clothes, or because we make bad choices.I love a song called Truth Be Told by Matthew West. Let me read you some of the lyrics because I wish we all knew the truth.Lie number one you're supposed to have it all togetherAnd when they ask how you're doingJust smile and tell them, "Never better"Lie number 2 everybody's life is perfect except yoursSo keep your messes and your woundsAnd your secrets safe with you behind closed doorsTruth be toldThe truth is rarely told, nowI say I'm fine, yeah I'm fine oh I'm fine, hey I'm fine but I'm not I'm brokenAnd when it's out of control I say it's under control but it's not And you know itI don't know why it's so hard to admit itWhen being honest is the only way to fix itThere's no failure, no fallThere's no sin you don't already knowSo let the truth be toldHow true is this song. We think that we need to keep it all together because everyone else is keeping it all together, but that’s the thing, they aren’t keeping it together either. We are all just pretending. I love it when it says, There is no failure, no fall, there’s no sin you don’t already know. Why do we think we need to keep our mess from God when He already knows about all of it? There isn’t anything we can keep from Him, so why are we so ashamed to admit it? The song goes on to say…There's a sign on the door, says, "Come as you are" but I doubt it'Cause if we lived like it was true, every Sunday morning pew would be crowdedBut didn't you say the church should look more like a hospitalA safe place for the sick, the sinner and the scarred and the prodigalsLike me. Well truth be told The truth is rarely toldThis is where Matthew West reminds us what Jesus said in the verse above. Not what the world says, but what Jesus says. Come as you are. Imagine how filled churches would be if everyone knew they could truly come as they were. If we all knew that God wants us, even when we don’t have the right clothes or did the wrong thing. Even when we yelled at our kids or our spouse, even when we stayed out too late drinking, God wants us just as we are. No matter what it is, you can come to the Lord. The songs ends with…Can I really stand here unashamed, Knowin' that your love for me won't change?Oh God if that's really true Then let the truth be told This is the truth that I wish everyone knew. The truth that God loves us completely and fully before we are even born and that love never changes. It doesn’t matter what we do or even what we don’t do. He still loves us the same. We can do nothing to make Him love us more or less than he already does.When we see how the world sees us, we think God is the same. We think that we're not worthy of his love until we get it all together.However, in the verse above Jesus tells us something different. God sent Jesus to die on the cross for us while we were still sinning. If you want to know how much God loves you, it says in Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Hear that again while we were still sinners Christ died for us.This is how God demonstrates his love for us. This one statement shows us that we don't have to be perfect to come to God. Jesus didn’t wait for us to have our lives together before he died on the cross for us, so why should we wait until we figure things out to come to Him?The verse above says that those who are well have no need of a physician. Those who are righteous, those who are not sinning, those who are praying perfectly, and those who are getting it all right have no need for Jesus.Jesus died for us, for you, and me, and he did it strictly because he loved us. He did it because the Lord wanted us to come to him. The Lord didn't want anything to be in between us. When Adam and Eve sinned, there had to be a separation, and God hated that. He hated that we couldn't be with him.He hated that they brought this upon themselves and wanted to redeem them. God could have done that in any number of ways, and the way he chose to do it was to become h

We have all seen God working in our lives. However, we might not all be aware it is God working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience of how God has worked or is working in your life, please email me at [email protected] or click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them. www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE TO DONATECLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emailsCLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio training about inviting Jesus into your daily lifeCLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace