Walk Boldly With Jesus

If you would like to share your witness or your story about how God is working in your life, please send me a message. It does not take much time and could make a real difference in someone's life. Email me at [email protected] or (click here). 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

Click Here for the "A heart of Revival" Podcast 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

Praise Series #30 To Him Be The Glory Forever!Romans 11:36 “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.”I thought this would be a great verse to end this praise series because it is an excellent reminder of all we have to be thankful for. I looked this verse up on the Enduring Word Commentary website, and this is what I found…“Of Him and through Him and to Him are all things: “All these words are monosyllables. A child just learning to read could easily spell them out. But who shall exhaust their meaning?” (Meyer)i. It is all of Him: This plan came from God. It wasn’t man’s idea. We didn’t say, “I’ve offended God and have to find a way back to Him. Let’s work on a plan to come back to God.” In our spiritual indifference and death, we didn’t care about a plan, and even if we did care, we aren’t smart enough or wise enough to make one. It is all of Him.ii. It is all through Him: Even if we had the plan, we couldn’t make it happen. We couldn’t free ourselves from this prison of sin and self. It could only happen through Him, and the great work of Jesus on our behalf is the through Him that brings salvation.iii. It is all to Him: It’s not for me, it’s not for you, it’s all to Him. It is to the praise of the glory of His grace (Ephesians 1:6). It’s for His pleasure that we are created, and we find our fulfillment in bringing Him glory and honor.d. To whom be glory forever: The fact that Paul can’t figure out God makes him glorify God all the more. When we understand some of the greatness of God, we worship Him all the more passionately.I love this because it reminds us that God had to do what He did to Adam and Eve. He had to banish them from the garden, but it also reminds us that He never wanted that separation. God didn’t want to be separate from us. He didn’t want us to have to go through someone else in order to have a conversation with us. God wanted us to live in communion with Him.This verse is a reminder that the plan of our salvation came from God. He came up a plan to save us from ourselves. He came up with a plan for us to right this terrible wrong of our first parents. He came up with a way to bring us back into the fold so that we didn’t have to live apart from Him. While we were going about our business and thinking all was lost, God had a plan, and we didn’t know it. He had a way to save us. The plan came from the Lord.The plan also came through the Lord. None of us is worthy enough to be the sacrifice. None of us is a lamb without blemish. This is why the Lord had to send His only son to die on a cross for us. He is a spotless lamb. He is without sin, and therefore a worthy vessel to take our sins to the cross with Him. Jesus was able to defeat evil once and for all, and as a result, we can walk with the Lord again.There used to be a curtain (or veil) that was a thick, heavy barrier in the Temple that separated the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies, the most sacred space where God’s presence dwelt. Only the high priest could enter beyond the curtain, and only once a year on the Day of Atonement, offering sacrifice for the sins of the people (see Exodus 26:31–33 and Leviticus 16).When Jesus died on the cross, the curtain was torn in two from top to bottom (Matthew 27:51), showing that it was God’s action, not man’s. This signified that through Jesus’ sacrifice, the separation between God and humanity was removed. Access to God was no longer limited to one priest or one day a year—all people could now come directly into God’s presence through Christ.This in itself is reason to praise the Lord for the rest of our lives. We now have direct access to God. Did you know that? Did you know you can talk to the Lord anytime you want to? You don’t have to ask others to tell God something for you. You don’t have to ask a priest to talk to God for you. You, just as you are, can talk to the Lord any time you like. I often ask others to help me pray for something. However, that is not because I don’t think I can go to the Lord on my own. I ask others to help me pray because I think the more people praying for something, the better.Think about when you were little, and you asked your mom or dad for something. Did you usually get what you wanted if you just asked one time, or was it more likely if you asked multiple times? Also, did you get it sometimes if you asked, or was it better if one of your siblings asked? My sister used to always ask me to ask for her. She would say, “They like you more.” This was not true, but it did persuade me to ask when she didn’t want to. My point in telling this story is that if I have a prayer request that I really need answered, I will enlist the help of others to pray for it as well. Intercessory prayer, praying for others, is a great thing to do, and it is super powerful.The Lord tells us over and over again in the Bible to be persistent. Sometimes this can mean that you don’t give up and you don’t lose hope. It can mean that yo

Praise Series #29 The Song of MosesExodus 15:1 “Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord: “I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.”I thought this was a good verse to remind us that praise and worship is not just good when we are in need of God’s help. It is also really important to praise and worship the Lord when He comes through and answers our prayers. Exodus 15:1-21 is all about Moses and the Israelites singing to the Lord for saving them from the Egyptians.In case you are unfamiliar with the story, God asked Moses to lead the Israelites out of captivity from Egypt, as they were slaves there. The pharaoh finally said they could go, and then, when they left, he changed his mind and set out after them. The Israelites got to the Red Sea and had nowhere to go as they could not cross it. God parted the Red Sea so that the Israelites could cross it on dry ground. As soon as they were through it, the Egyptian army started to cross it, and God released the water, and they all drowned.This is where Exodus 15 picks up. The beginning part is called “The Song of Moses.” Let’s look at the words of the song.Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord:“I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea. 2 The Lord is my strength and my might, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him. 3 The Lord is a warrior; the Lord is his name.Let’s pause and look at these few verses. They acknowledge what the Lord has done; He has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider, He has thrown into the sea. However, it then goes on to talk about God and how great He is. It says that the Lord is my strength and my might. He has become my salvation. These are all things that you can say when you are looking to praise the Lord. They are also great things to remember when you are struggling to think of reasons to be grateful. You can be grateful that God is your strength and your might. He is your salvation. You can trust Him to come through and help you every time. It goes on to say,4 “Pharaoh’s chariots and his army he cast into the sea; his picked officers were sunk in the Red Sea. 5 The floods covered them; they went down into the depths like a stone. 6 Your right hand, O Lord, glorious in power— your right hand, O Lord, shattered the enemy. 7 In the greatness of your majesty, you overthrew your adversaries; you sent out your fury, it consumed them like stubble.Again, these few verses are a mix of stating what the Lord did and praising Him for how amazing He is. It says the Lord’s right hand is glorious in power and that it shattered the enemy. Do you have enemies that need to be overthrown? The Israelites couldn’t have seen this coming. I am sure that when they reached the Red Sea and saw how high and fast-moving the water was, they thought they would be captured. I am sure that not a single one of them could have predicted what God would do next. The same is true for your situation. Just because you can’t see a way out doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Just because you feel as though your time has come doesn’t mean it will. I have seen God deliver people I know and love from very difficult situations. Ones that seemed like there was no way out. Your situation is not hopeless. God is in it, and if He is not saving you from it, then He will help you through it.8 At the blast of your nostrils, the waters piled up, the floods stood up in a heap; the deeps congealed in the heart of the sea. 9 The enemy said, ‘I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil, my desire shall have its fill of them. I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them.’ 10 You blew with your wind, the sea covered them; they sank like lead in the mighty waters.These verses are good because they show us that it does not matter what our enemies say. It doesn’t matter how badly they threaten us. All we need to remember is how great our God is. These verses talk about how the enemy was saying things that were probably scary to hear. No one wants to hear that they will be overtaken and that the enemy will have their fill of our goods. However, the Israelites didn’t have to worry because God took care of the enemy. He drowned every single one of them. It does not matter how great your enemy is; God is greater. It doesn’t matter what your enemy is, either. It could be a physical illness, a mental illness, a financial problem, or a legal problem. Your enemy might be someone or something you can see, and it might be something you can’t see, like an illness. Whatever your enemy is, trust me when I say that God can either save you from it or help you through it.11 “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in splendor, doing wonders? 12 You stretched out your right hand, and the earth swallowed them.13 “In your steadfast love,

He WorshipedJudges 7: 15-18 “When Gideon heard the telling of the dream and its interpretation, he worshiped; and he returned to the camp of Israel, and said, “Get up; for the Lord has given the army of Midian into your hand.” After he divided the three hundred men into three companies, and put trumpets into the hands of all of them, and empty jars, with torches inside the jars, he said to them, “Look at me, and do the same; when I come to the outskirts of the camp, do as I do. When I blow the trumpet, I and all who are with me, then you also blow the trumpets around the whole camp, and shout, ‘For the Lord and for Gideon!’”We have been talking about times when praise and worship have won battles, broken chains, and set captives free. This is no exception. In Judges 6, Gideon is introduced as a reluctant and fearful man, threshing wheat in a winepress to hide it from the Midianites. When the Angel of the Lord appeared to him and called him a mighty warrior, Gideon doubted the message, pointing out that his clan was the weakest in the tribe of Manasseh and that he was the least in his family. Despite Gideon’s doubts, God assured him of His presence and called him to deliver Israel from its enemies.Chapter 7 begins by discussing a battle where Gideon went into battle with thousands of troops and yet was still outnumbered. Then God told Gideon that he had too many troops and he should send home any who were scared. A good majority of them went home. I think there were 3,000 left. Then God told him there were still too many and how to decide who else should leave. Now Gideon was down to 300 soldiers, and God was pleased. However, Gideon was not sure how this was going to work out. They were vastly outnumbered. It says in Judges 7:12 “The Midianites and the Amalekites and all the people of the east lay along the valley as thick as locusts; and their camels were without number, countless as the sand on the seashore. And Gideon had 300 and God on his side.One thing I love about this story is that it shows us that God knows us. He knows our weaknesses, and He loves us anyway. God knew that Gideon would be scared and would need some reassurance before going into battle. Judges 7:9-12 says, “That same night the Lord said to him, 'Get up, attack the camp; for I have given it into your hand. But if you fear to attack, go down to the camp with your servant Purah; and you shall hear what they say, and afterward your hands shall be strengthened to attack the camp.” Then he went down with his servant Purah to the outposts of the armed men that were in the camp. While he was there, he overheard one of the enemy soldiers explaining a dream he had and talking about how great Gideon was. This gave Gideon all the confidence he needed to go into war trusting the Lord.Do you see how God knew Gideon would be scared? Do you see how God didn’t discount Gideon because he was afraid to trust God and enter this seemingly unfair battle with just 300 men? God didn’t walk away and find someone else who was more qualified, or someone who would trust him without fail or without question. God saw Gideon’s fear and gave him what he needed to push past it. God is so good. He will do the same for you. God isn’t asking you to never be afraid of what He is calling you to do. He is asking you to trust Him and to do it anyway. If you feel you need confirmation or some sort of sign to know God is asking you to do it, then ask Him for that. He is faithful to answer when we ask.I thought this story was great for our praise series because of the verses I picked for today. “When Gideon heard the telling of the dream and its interpretation, he worshiped;” When Gideon heard the enemy talking about how powerful he was, He got the courage to push past his fear. However, before waking the army to tell them to go into battle, it says two very powerful words. He worshiped. You might even just gloss over those two words in the grand scheme of the whole story. However, the Lord highlighted them for me. He wanted me to not only see them, but to point them out to you. He doesn’t want us to miss it. Gideon knew where his strength came from. He knew who was going to win this battle for him, and it wasn’t those 300 soldiers. It was the Lord our God.Gideon worshiped the Lord. Did this change the outcome of the war? I have no idea. Did it change how God won the war for them? Again, I have no idea. What I do know is that nothing is put in the Bible accidentally. Every word in the Bible has a meaning. There is a reason God wants us to know that before going into a war where he was incredibly outnumbered, Gideon worshiped. How about you? Are you in a war that seems unfair? Are you in a war where you seem outnumbered? Have you worshiped yet? Have you come to the Lord and asked for his help and then worshiped Him even though you might not have seen that help yet? If you are in a battle, whether it is medical, physical, financial, or some other kind of battle, and you don’t

Today’s Witness Wednesday is from a friend named Gisele. We were in a prayer group last Wednesday morning, and she was sharing a testimony about how the Lord came and helped her out of a jam when she was on vacation. God is so good! Take it away, Gisele! We have all seen God working in our lives. However, maybe not everyone is aware that it is God who is working within us. That’s why it’s so important for us to start talking more about it. The more we share our experiences, the more people will understand how God acts and how much He truly loves us. If you’re willing to share an experience of how God has worked or is working in your life, please send me an email at [email protected] or click here. It won’t take much of your time, and your story could be just what someone needs to hear today. Consider praying and sharing. We all have a story, and the world needs to hear it. 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

He Played His Lyre, and The Evil Spirit Would Leave!1 Samuel 16:23 “Whenever the spirit from God came on Saul, David would take up his lyre and play. Then relief would come to Saul; he would feel better, and the evil spirit would leave him.”When I heard about this verse, I loved it because it shows us another example of the power of music. When David played his lyre, the evil spirit would leave Saul. Did you know that music could set you free from evil spirits? Are you starting to see the power of praise and worship? Are you starting to see the power of music and singing? Praise and playing musical instruments have been setting captives free for a very long time.God instructed Joshua to have the Israelites march around the city of Jericho once a day for six days, with priests blowing trumpets and the people remaining silent. On the seventh day, they were to march around the city seven times. When the priests sounded the trumpets, Joshua commanded the people to shout, and the walls of Jericho collapsed. God allowed the Israelites to take this city. (Joshua 6:1–20)God reduced Gideon’s army from thousands to just three hundred men so that Israel would know the victory came from Him alone. At God’s instruction, the men carried trumpets and torches instead of swords. When they blew the trumpets and shouted, God threw the Midianite army into confusion, and the enemy turned on itself. Israel won the battle without fighting by strength, showing that obedience, proclamation, and trust in God released His power. (Judges 7:1–22)When King Jehoshaphat faced a vast enemy army, he sought the Lord, and God declared that the battle belonged to Him. Jehoshaphat sent singers ahead of the army, praising God as they marched into battle. As they worshiped, the Lord caused the enemy armies to turn on one another, and Judah did not have to fight at all. The victory came through praise, revealing that worship invites God to act powerfully on behalf of His people. (2 Chronicles 20:1–30)While imprisoned in Philippi after being beaten and chained, Paul and Silas prayed and sang hymns to God in the middle of the night. As they worshiped, a sudden earthquake shook the prison, opening the doors and loosening everyone’s chains. Rather than escaping, Paul and Silas remained, leading the jailer and his household to salvation. Their praise not only brought physical freedom but also opened the way for lives to be saved. (Acts 16:22–34)Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego stood before King Nebuchadnezzar and refused to bow to the golden image, declaring their unwavering faith in God. They proclaimed that God was able to deliver them from the fiery furnace, but even if He did not, they would not worship any false god. Their words were an act of praise rooted in trust—honoring God above fear, outcome, or survival. Their worship was not expressed through song, but through bold confession of God’s power and faithfulness in the face of death. (Daniel 3:16–17)I like this example because it shows us that there are many ways to praise. If you don’t like music, if you don’t like singing, that doesn’t mean that you can’t be set free by praise and worship. There are so many ways to praise the Lord. Music happens to be my favorite, and for me, one of the easiest, because if I don’t know what to say, there are plenty of others who have written beautiful songs who do know what to say. However, if you don’t like music or singing, don’t count yourself out. You can praise the Lord with your writing, with your words said outloud. You can praise the Lord with gratitude or in the things you say to others. There isn’t just one way to praise the Lord. I pray that by the end of this series, you understand that there are so many different ways to praise. There is a way for everyone.When King Hezekiah received a threatening message from the Assyrian king, he took the letter to the temple and spread it before the Lord. In prayer, Hezekiah praised God as the one true Lord over all kingdoms and asked Him to act so that all would know His power. God responded by promising deliverance, and that very night the Assyrian army was defeated without Judah having to fight a single battle. Hezekiah’s prayerful praise and trust in God’s sovereignty led to a decisive victory and public recognition of the Lord’s supremacy. (2 Kings 19:14–37)Again, this is a different kind of praise. King Hezekiah went in front of the Lord and presented the letter from his enemies. He then praised God as the one true King and asked God for help. Do you see how easy it can be to praise the Lord at times? All it says that he did was to praise the Lord as the one true King over all kingdoms. This is why I have placed a link in the previous episode for the praise sheets that I received at my prayer group. However, you don’t even need those sheets. You can simply tell the Lord how great you think He is. I tend to say, “You are the Lord of Lords and King of Kings. You are the Almighty One. We worship you. We ado

Praise Series #26 Johan Saved From Deep Dark Pit!Jonah 2:7-9 “When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple. “Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them. But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed, I will make good. I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’”I was looking online for some Scripture verses that showed people who were in trouble and relied on the Lord, or were able to praise the Lord when they were in trouble, and they were saved. I know that praise helps in a bad situation. I have been in so many bad situations, and praise always helps. However, I know some of you don’t know me. Maybe you just started listening to the podcast, or maybe you have been listening for the last 5 years, and yet you only know what you hear in the podcast. I don’t want to just use my story because my story might be different than your story. We all have a story; we are all going through something. None of us is just skating through life with no hardships.This is why I am doing this series on praise. We all have stuff going on. Yes, someone may be struggling more than you, but that does not minimize your struggle, and that doesn’t mean God doesn’t have time for your struggle. God is not bound by space and time like we are. He can help all of us at the same time. Since all of our stories are different, I want to give you different types of examples. Also, I want you to know that even if your story isn’t exactly like any of the examples I give you, the basics still apply. God will help you, just as He has helped all those who have turned to Him in times of trouble.I want to read all of Jonah chapter 2 because it is not that long, and yet it is so great.Jonah 2:1-10 “From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God. He said: “In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead, I called for help, and you listened to my cry. You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me. I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.’ The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit. “When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple. “Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them. But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed, I will make good. I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’” And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.”The reason I wanted to read the whole chapter to you is that it shows us how deep in a pit Jonah was. Jonah wasn’t just upset and crying out to the Lord. Jonah was in dire straits. Jonah was dying, or at least he felt like he was. There are three times in this short 10-verse chapter that Jonah talks about God saving him. First, he said, “In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me.” Then he continued on by saying, “From deep in the realm of the dead, I called for help, and you listened to my cry.” And later in the chapter, he also said, “But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit.”In three different places and three different ways, this chapter is telling us that when we cry out to the Lord, He answers us and that when we need him, he will bring us up out of the pit. Have you been crying out to the Lord? Are you in a deep pit with no way out? God hears your cries. He is in the pit with you, and He is your way out. Call out to Him. Pray to Him for a rescue. You are no different than Jonah. When you call out to the Lord, He will answer you. When you call for help, he will listen to you, even if you feel you are calling from the realm of the dead. That’s the thing with God, it is NEVER too late. God will bring you up out of the pit. It may not be how you think it will happen, and it may not, probably not be in the time you think it should. He will save you from the pit, though. All you have to do is ask!You might be thinking your problem is greater than Jonah’s. You might believe that God helped Jonah, but he won’t help you. Let’s look at the situation Jonah was in. The scripture says. “From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God.” So, Jonah was inside of a fish. That does not seem good. Then it says he called from deep in the realm of the dead. So Jonah was, or felt like he was in the realm of the dead. Then it says, “You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me.” I am sure many of us have felt like this before. Maybe not in this exact situation, or I hope not anyway. I

Praise Series #25 Delight In The LordPsalm 37:4 “Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”Have you ever thought about taking delight in the Lord? I am sure this is not the only time this idea is presented in the Bible. Actually there are more than 10 instances in the Bible where it talks about taking delight in the Lord or in His law. I have never thought of taking delight in the Lord before. I mean, I love him, and I spend time with him, but to be honest, when I read this verse, I wondered how I would even take delight in the Lord. I literally typed into the search bar on my computer, “How does one delight in the Lord?” I tell you this because I don’t want you to think that because I am doing this podcast, I have everything figured out. I don’t want you to think when I speak I am speaking with any authority as if I was an expert. I am on the same journey you are on. We could study the Bible our whole lives and still not have it all figured out.When I read a scripture verse, I listen to what the Holy Spirit has to tell me about the verse. I also think about what I have learned up until this point, and sometimes, many times, I go to the internet to see what others say about this verse. My goal with this podcast is for us to be on this journey together to discover God’s Word more fully and to see how we can apply that Word to our daily lives. I am not choosing verses that I already understand. Actually, I am not really choosing the verses. I am using the verses from my prayer group that people feel inspired by the Holy Spirit to share. This means that often I get a verse and don’t completely understand what it means. Sometimes the Holy Spirit gives me understanding, and sometimes I find it through research. I do know that it is important to read the scripture and to try to understand it. This was confirmed at my prayer group the other day, someone felt strongly that the Lord wanted to tell us that His word is as pertinent today as it was then. We have the Lord right in our tabernacle, and he is right there with us in adoration and in everything. His word is still as powerful today as it was. That is why it is important to read his word and fill us so that we can fill ourselves with what God wants to tell us. God will speak to you directly through the scriptures if you let Him.Ok, back to today’s verse. How does one delight in the Lord? I found two really good articles and I will put a link to them in the show notes. One of them was titled, “What Does It Mean To Take Delight In The Lord?” and was written by Tracy Kulwicki. In this article Tracy talks not only about this verse, but the verses we discussed yesterday. Psalm 37:3-4 “Trust in the Lord and do good. Then you will live safely in the land and prosper. Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires.” The author said that before you get the desires of your heart, you need to trust in the Lord, do good, and take delight in the Lord. She says the reason we need to do these things first is not that we need to win God over or because we need to work hard to get things from God. The reason we need to do these things is that when we do these things first, then our desires become His. We talked a lot yesterday about how to trust in the Lord and do good. Today we will talk about how we delight in the Lord? Here is what Tracy says about how we can delight in the Lord. “When I take delight in my children, I spend time with them. I watch the things they do. I notice who they are. I notice their features and character. I laugh at the funny things they do. I hold them close. I talk with them. I listen to them. I recognize the unique things about them that make them who they are. I think about them often. I focus on the great things about them that I love. I remember the words they’ve said that melt my heart, the great memories we’ve created together, and the times when we overcame something challenging together.She went on to say, “We can do the same things with God. We take delight in God by spending time with Him, watching the things He is doing in our lives. We can notice who He is, learn about His features and characteristics. We can laugh at the funny moments in our lives that come from His hand. We can hold Him close, talk with Him, and listen to Him. Recognize who He is, think about Him all throughout our day, and focus on His greatness and love. We can remember the times He has moved in our lives, the things He has done for us, and the prayers He has answered.”I think this is both a great description of how we already delight in things and also how we can apply what we are already doing to God. Just listening to that description of how we delight in our children made me smile. It made me think of how much I love my children. If you don’t have children, I bet you do have something that you delight in as she described above. It might be a pet, friends, nieces and nephews, cousins, friends. Whatever it is tha

Praise Series 24: There is Joy in Our TrialsJames 1:2-4 “My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.”This verse doesn’t talk about praise, but it does say we should consider our hard times nothing but joy, because the testing of your faith produces endurance. In other words, we are not going through this hard time for nothing. We won’t get to the other side and be the same person that we were before the hard time. This verse shows that it is okay to praise the Lord during hard times because something good will come of it. After we make it through this impossible time, we will have more endurance. Then endurance will lead us to becoming mature and complete, lacking nothing. All that sounds pretty good to me.The question is, how do we praise the Lord in these difficult times? I know a lot of you who are listening to this episode are struggling right now and have been for a long time. Your struggles are intense and real, and some days you feel like you can’t take it for another moment. You are tired of feeling so sick you can’t get out of bed. You are tired of feeling as though you are going to lose your house or your car because you don’t have any money to pay your bills. Some of you are depressed and don’t even want to get out of bed. Understanding that this is about building endurance isn't going to be what gets you out of bed.However, what if praise could be that thing that gets you out of bed? What if you just need one thing to start changing things for you? What if you just need to have a different outlook? What if this verse could help you switch from a “why me” mindset to a “thank you” mindset? You might be wondering what you have to be thankful for in this hard time that you are in. However, there is always something to be thankful for. Things could always be worse. I know it doesn’t seem like it at times. I know it doesn’t feel like things could be any worse, but they can always be worse.Another thing that can be helpful is to remember that you will be so much stronger when you get through this. When you make it to the other side of this hard time. I know if you have lost someone, then there isn’t really another side to this. The grief you feel will always be with you. However, you will learn to cope with the grief. You will learn to live with it, and I promise you that joy will come back into your life someday. You will begin to feel joy again, little by little. It won’t erase the pain and sadness, but they will both be there. Some days grief will be stronger, and some days joy will be stronger.Praise and worship can help bring light into the dark place that you are in. Especially if you feel you are under a spiritual attack. When we are suffereing and we praise God anyway, that confuses evil spirits. They don’t understand why we would still praise the Lord even when things feel overwhelming, and it seems like nothing is going right for us. Remember, this is how Job ended up suffering. The devil told God that Job was only faithful because God had blessed him. So God allowed the devil to take away the things that Job loved the most so that the devil could see what it really meant to be faithful to the Lord. Even after he had lost everything, Job was still faithful to the Lord. Even after Job got sick and was in agonizing pain, Job was still faithful to the Lord.I am sure when the devil made this deal with God, he was sure he had it in the bag. I am sure he thought he knew what he was doing. I am sure he was 100% positive that Job would turn on the Lord. And yet he didn’t. I want to be clear that God knew Job wouldn’t. God wasn’t just taking a gamble with Job’s life. God knew what would happen. He knew how it would all work out. God knows everything. However, this is a lesson the devil still gets wrong a lot. He still tries to take our family away, take our health away, take our financial security away, in hopes that we will turn on the Lord. That is not what we are going to do.Instead, we are going to praise the Lord all the more when times are hard. We are going to sing to the Lord, yell to the Lord, talk to the Lord, whatever it is we can do to let God know we are still with Him and we want Him with us. When we feel we are under spiritual attack, we don’t have to be eloquent with our praise. We can simply say the name of Jesus, and the enemy will flee. We can simply be grateful to God for the small things until we are ready to be grateful for the big things. And just in case you are wondering if I actually do the things I tell you to do. Yes, I do.The other day, I was having a really rough day with my boys. It was one of those days when I just wanted to throw in the towel. One of those days where I wonder and ask how much longer until this gets better, and will it ever get better. No on

Today’s Witness Wednesday is a story I read on Facebook today. I felt it was a great example of how God works through people and brings them together in the most unusual ways. We might not always understand what God is doing, or why He has brought certain people into our lives, but He always has a plan. The plan might not unfold for years, but one day it will make sense. I am sure the biker in this story had no idea his weekly visits to the Children’s hospital would end the way they did. But I am sure it all makes sense to him now. Here is his story.I'm a 58-year-old biker named Mike. I've got tattoos covering both arms, a beard down to my chest, and I ride with the Defenders Motorcycle Club.I volunteer at the Children's Hospital every Thursday, reading books to sick kids. It's something our club started doing fifteen years ago after one of our brothers' granddaughters spent months in pediatric oncology.Most kids are scared of me at first. I get it. I'm big and loud and look like I should be in a motorcycle gang movie, not a children's hospital. But once I start reading, they forget about how I look. They just hear the story.That's what I thought would happen with Amara.I walked into room 432 on a Thursday afternoon in March. The nurse had warned me this was a new patient. Seven years old. Stage four neuroblastoma. No family visits in the three weeks she'd been admitted."No family at all?" I'd asked.The nurse's face had gone tight. "Her mother abandoned her here. Dropped her off for treatment and never came back. We've been trying to reach her for weeks. CPS is involved now but Amara doesn't have any other family. She's going into foster care once she's stable enough to leave.""And if she's not stable enough?"The nurse looked away. "Then she'll die here. Alone."I stood outside room 432 for a full minute before I could make myself go in. I've read to dying kids before. It never gets easier. But a kid dying completely alone? That was a new kind of hell.I knocked softly and pushed open the door. "Hey there, I'm Mike. I'm here to read you a story if you'd like."The little girl in the bed turned to look at me. She had the biggest brown eyes I'd ever seen. Her hair was gone from chemo. Her skin had that grayish tone that means the body is struggling. But she smiled when she saw me."You're really big," she said. Her voice was small and raspy."Yeah, I get that a lot." I held up the book I'd brought. "I've got a story about a giraffe who learns to dance. Want to hear it?"She nodded. So I sat down in the chair next to her bed and started reading.I was halfway through the book when she interrupted me. "Mr. Mike?""Yeah, sweetheart?""Do you have any kids?"The question hit me hard. "I had a daughter. She passed away when she was sixteen. Car accident. That was twenty years ago."Amara was quiet for a moment. Then she asked, "Do you miss being a daddy?"My throat tightened. "Every single day, honey.""My daddy left before I was born," she said matter-of-factly. "And my mama brought me here and never came back. The nurses say she's not coming back ever."I didn't know what to say to that. What do you say to a seven-year-old who's been abandoned while dying?Amara kept talking. "The social worker lady said I'm going to go live with a foster family when I get better. But I heard the doctors talking. They don't think I'm getting better.""Sweetheart—""It's okay," she said. Her voice was so calm. Too calm for a seven-year-old. "I know I'm dying. Everyone thinks I don't understand but I do. I heard them say the cancer is everywhere now. They said maybe six months. Maybe less."I set the book down. "Amara, I'm so sorry."She looked at me with those huge eyes. "Mr. Mike, can I ask you something?""Anything, honey."She looked at me with those huge eyes. "Mr. Mike, can I ask you something?""Anything, honey.""Will you be my daddy… until I die?"The room went still. Even the monitors seemed to hush. I felt every one of my fifty-eight years settle on my shoulders like lead.I opened my mouth, but nothing came out at first. All I could see was my own daughter’s face at sixteen, laughing in the rear-view mirror the last time I ever saw her alive. All I could feel was the hole that had lived in my chest ever since.Amara didn’t blink. She just waited, small and brave and impossibly calm.I wanted to say yes. God help me, I wanted to say yes so badly my bones ached. But I was just a rough old biker who showed up once a week with picture books. I rode loud, drank hard, and still woke up some nights yelling my dead daughter’s name into an empty house. What did I know about being anyone’s father again, even for a little while?I swallowed the rock in my throat. “Honey… I’d be honored. But I gotta be honest with you—I’m not very good at this daddy thing anymore. I might mess it up.”Her whole face lit up like sunrise. “That’s okay. You can practice on me.”And just like that, I had a daughter again.The nurses cried when I told them. The social worker cried h

Praise Series #23 Garment of Praise Instead of a Spirit of DespairIsaiah 61:3 “And provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.”What drew me to this verse is the part that says, “a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.” I know a lot of you are struggling and have been for a long time. You are struggling medically and can’t understand why you haven’t been healed yet. You know God can heal you, you truly believe that, and so it can be depressing when you know God can do something and yet He doesn’t seem to be doing it. Or, at least not in the way you would like, or even a way you can see. Some of you are struggling financially and don’t understand why your prayers about your financial situation seem to go unanswered. You know God could “make it happen,” and yet it doesn’t seem like He is. Some of you are struggling with depression, anxiety, family issues, and all sorts of other things.This whole praise series is to help us realize that the best way through the hard times is not to wallow in them, but to praise God through them. God doesn’t mind if you are upset with Him. If you need to yell or scream at God for your circumstances, that is ok. He is tough, He knows your heart, and He can take it. However, if you want your atmosphere to shift. If you want to stop being sad all the time. If you are tired of feeling like you have been feeling for such a long time. Then it is time to switch from despair to praise. Praise the Lord for whatever it is you can praise the Lord for.I heard a speaker at a conference once, and I can’t remember her name, but I remember that she said she hurt her back at one point. She was newly married, she hurt her back, and she ended up addicted to painkillers. She didn’t see it at the time; she just knew she needed them for the pain. She started to just stay in bed all the time because of the pain. I think she eventually lost her husband. He just couldn’t take it anymore. She said she didn’t blame him; he really tried, but she was so wrapped up in herself and her pain, and she had nothing to give him. She eventually moved back home with her mom. She finally got tired of feeling like she was feeling. She was tired of being so sad all the time.She said she started off slow. She would make herself go sit outside and let the sun shine on her face for 5 minutes a day. That was it, just five minutes a day. She said that when she was sitting in the sun, she would ask herself what one thing she could be grateful for. Some days, the only thing she could think of was getting outside and sitting for 5 minutes. Eventually, she started to look around, and she could appreciate the grass, the flowers, the butterflies, whatever it was around her. Five minutes turned to 10, to 20, and so on. She finally felt herself coming back to life, to reality. She found she wasn’t just sad all the time. And it wasn’t a fast process, and yours might not be either. However, she did get back to her old self again. She was happy again. She did regain her life again. Part of gratitude is praise. You are thankful for the things God has given you. Even if they aren’t perfect. You will be surprised how much your attitude and outlook on life have changed when you switch from complaining to gratitude.Here are some simple shifts in what you are telling yourself. Instead of saying, I can’t believe I didn’t wake up till 1:00 today, you can say, I am so grateful God gave me another day of life. Some people didn’t wake up this morning, and their families will never see them again. Instead of saying that your back and side and head hurt, you can say I am grateful my feet don’t hurt. Instead of saying, I can’t believe my kid is acting out again, you can say, I am grateful I have kids and I am grateful for all the strength God has given me to deal with all the kids dish out. I am not trying to downplay what you are going through. I know it is hard. I have been through really hard times.I have kids who were verbally and physically abusive, I have had marital trouble and almost got divorced, I have had kids who overdosed on drugs and alcohol, a child in rehab more than one time. My kids have struggled with mental health and trouble with the police. My life has not been a cakewalk either. However, I truly believe what got me through it all, well, not all the way through it yet, was my reliance on God and my gratitude for everything, the good and the bad. The bad things I have gone through have made me the person I am today. I would not understand other parents struggling as I do had I not been through it. I would not be able to reassure other parents that it is not their fault and that they are doing the best they can if I hadn’t been through all I went through. God is using me to let other

Praise Series #22 His Love Endures ForeverPsalm 136 “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever.Give thanks to the God of gods. His love endures forever. Give thanks to the Lord of lords: His love endures forever.To him who alone does great wonders, His love endures forever.Who, by his understanding, made the heavens, his love endures forever.who spread out the earth upon the waters, His love endures forever. Who made the great lights—His love endures forever. The sun to govern the day, His love endures forever. the moon and stars to govern the night; His love endures forever.To him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt, His love endures forever. and brought Israel out from among them. His love endures forever.with a mighty hand and outstretched arm; His love endures forever.to him who divided the Red Sea[a] asunder His love endures forever. and brought Israel through the midst of it, His love endures forever. but swept Pharaoh and his army into the Red Sea; His love endures forever.to him who led his people through the wilderness; His love endures forever.To him who struck down great kings, His love endures forever. and killed mighty kings—His love endures forever. Sihon, king of the Amorites, His love endures forever. and Og, king of Bashan—His love endures forever. and gave their land as an inheritance. His love endures forever. An inheritance to his servant Israel. His love endures forever.He remembered us in our low estate. His love endures forever.And freed us from our enemies. His love endures forever. He gives food to every creature. His love endures forever.Give thanks to the God of heaven. His love endures forever.I know this verse is a lot longer than I usually do. I usually pick a verse or two, and this is all 26 verses of this Psalm. Psalm 136:6 “who spread out the earth upon the waters, His love endures forever” was the verse that led me to this Psalm in the first place. I decided to read the whole Psalm as I felt perhaps this was a small part of something bigger. When I read the whole thing, I instantly felt like I should share the whole thing. Since the phrase “His love endures forever” is repeated throughout the whole Psalm, I thought I would just take that out to make it shorter and just repeat it after each section. However, when I had that thought, I immediately got the sense God wanted me to leave it in there. I felt He was saying to me that we need to have that reminder over and over again today. This Psalm today has two purposes. First and foremost, to remind you over and over again, so many times, that there is no way you can forget that God’s love endures forever. Forever is a very long time. It means it never goes away. God’s love lasts forever; it doesn’t say it lasts a lifetime, it says forever. It doesn’t say that His love lasts until you do something He doesn’t like, it says forever. It doesn’t say that it endures until you get sick or are in a seemingly impossible situation, and then it goes away. It says it endures forever. It also doesn’t say that His love endures forever as long as you don’t walk away, as long as you do all the things you are supposed to do, or as long as you get it right all the time. No, it says His love endures forever, and that’s it. There are no conditions placed on it; there is no requirement for you. God has loved you from the beginning of time, and He will continue to love you forever, regardless of circumstances. That is pretty amazing when you really think about it. Who else can you say that about? Whose love will endure forever, regardless of your actions and regardless of time? The second purpose of this psalm today is to remind us of some of the remarkable things God has done for us over the years. The sense I am getting this morning is that some of you listening to this episode may be struggling with feeling God’s Love right now. Maybe you are sick, and you feel as though He is not answering your prayers. Maybe you are feeling stuck in a family situation that seems impossible and feel as though He is not hearing your prayers. Maybe nothing in particular is wrong; you just don’t really feel a sense that God is with you right now. Whatever your particular circumstance is, God wants you to know that He is speaking directly to you today. He hears you, He is answering your prayers, He loves you, and most importantly, He is right there with you through it all. This Psalm is for you. This is your heavenly Father letting you know that His love endures forever, and just as he did all these things for His people in the past, He will do just as much for you. He is moving mountains in your life. He is preparing you for amazing things, you just can’t see it yet. Hang in there, your miracle is coming!!“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. Give thanks to the God of gods. Give thanks to the Lord of lords: to him who alone does great wonders, who by his understanding made the heavens, who spread out the earth upon the waters, who ma

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 on the link below. 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

I Will Rejoice In The LordHabakkuk 3:17-18 “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”Talk about a bad day. This verse is from a time when the people relied very heavily on crops and animals for survival. This verse states that they have reached rock bottom. That nothing is going right for them. If their crops are not producing any food and they have no meat in their stalls, then not only do they have nothing to eat, but they also have nothing to barter with. Have you ever felt this low? Have you ever been in a situation where you couldn’t really imagine it getting any worse? That is where this person was when they wrote this. Even if you haven’t been in a situation this dire before, I am sure you can imagine how they must have felt. Please take a minute and try to put yourself in their shoes. Close your eyes and imagine you are walking through your fields. You look from vine to vine just praying for some grapes that you may have missed, or that miraculously grew overnight, but you find nothing. Now imagine you are walking by your fig tree. This tree that was once full of figs is now empty. Next, you walk through the olive crops and pray that there will be some source of food, but again, you find nothing. You think, at least you have your animals to provide you with food. However, when you go past the sheep pen, there are none. When you walk through the cattle stalls, they too are empty. You realize you have nothing; you have somehow lost it all. What are you feeling right now? What are you thinking? How do you think you would react? Would you be angry at God? Would you blame Him for not providing for you? I am not sure how I would feel or what I would think, but I do not think that my first thought would be to rejoice in the Lord. The verse says, “yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.” I am thinking that I would struggle to find anything to be joyful about. I am joyful in God my Savior. He is amazing, and I love Him so much. However, when I am at my worst, I am not sure that I would think of that. I do think I would turn to Him. I believe I would ask God for His help and for the strength and courage to make it through this difficult time. But would I rejoice in the Lord?Honestly, I can’t picture it. I can’t picture how that would work. I do know that when life is going against us, and we can’t see a way out, that is the perfect time to praise the Lord. We don’t have to see the way out. We can praise the Lord for being so awesome that He can see a way out even when we can’t. We don’t have to praise Him for the situation; we can praise Him for who He is and for what He does for us. Ok, so now that I am writing this, I am starting to see how this could work. I guess we wouldn’t have to rejoice in being in this dire situation, but we could rejoice that God was in it with us. However, would we think to do this? Would it occur to us when the chips are down that we should rejoice and praise the Lord? My first thought is no, not without someone reminding us, or without some practice ahead of time. Several things I have been reading over the last few years have been saying that the best thing you can do when you are struggling is to praise the Lord. The fastest way out of a difficult situation is to praise the Lord while you are still in it, even when all seems lost. So then, how do we do this? How do we try to practice ahead of time so that when we really need to remember this, we can? I have a couple of suggestions, some you may have heard before. Some I probably even mentioned before on this podcast. However, I think that’s how God works. He tells us something again and again until we get it. My first suggestion would be practicing gratitude. When you are focused on being grateful for things, you can’t also be feeling sorry for yourself or feeling miserable at the same time. Even if you can find just one small thing to be grateful for. For instance, you have to go to a funeral, and you are really sad, but you can be grateful that the weather is at least holding out for you. Or maybe the weather had been raining all day, but on the way to the cemetery, the rain stopped, and now you can see a rainbow. I promise you, no matter how bad things are, there is at least one small thing you can be grateful for. Practice finding that thing, focusing on it, and thanking God for it. I promise if you give this a try, you will find more joy in your life.Another suggestion would be to find a few verses that talk about praising the Lord, or rejoicing in the Lord, and either memorize them or post them around your house where you will see them often. You could put one on your mirror so you see it every time you look in the mirror. Or, maybe on your fridge, so you read it every time yo

Praise Series #20 Rejoice in the Lord Always!Philippians 4:4 “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!”Rejoicing in the Lord is one of my favorite things to do. Praise and Worship are so critical in our faith journey. Rejoicing in the Lord is a great way to foster joy. This is something that I love to use to get me out of a funk or a sad place. This works anywhere and everywhere that you are. It is best if you can listen to music because if you are in a sad, angry, or depressed state, you might have trouble worshiping. You might not be in a place where you feel you have anything positive to say to the Lord, or about the Lord. However, when a song that you love comes on the radio, it is hard not to sing along and get into that song. Or, at least, it is not hard for me, as I love music.I love singing along as loudly as I can in my car and in my shower. I listen to Christian music, which, honestly, I didn’t even know existed until 5 years ago. Well, I knew we sang Christian songs in church, but I didn’t know they had contemporary Christian music, pop songs, rap songs, and rock songs, among various other genres. I am so in love with all of it. I love upbeat songs. It’s like my body wants to dance along to the beat, even when I am out walking or running. Even when I am not somewhere where dancing is appropriate.If you don’t know what I am talking about right now, I invite you to download the KLOVE app on your phone. It is the radio station I listen to all the time now, and it has so many good songs. You might be hesitant at first, but give it 30 days, and you will know all the words and love all the songs. You can also go onto the Spotify app on your phone, and I have created a playlist called Walk Boldly With Jesus Favorites, and it has all my favorite upbeat songs. Actually, there may be a few slower songs, but they are all good songs!If you are having a really hard day, put on a playlist of upbeat songs that sing of the glory of God. I am telling you, it is really hard to be sad and to think that God has abandoned you when you hear all these singers reminding you of how great God is and how He has been there for them in their hard times. A real-life example of how powerful music can be is the day when I was at the courthouse. I had to go there to do something really hard, and I was really sad. I remembered that I had my earbuds in my purse, so I put them in my ears and put on some worship music. I was sitting there feeling sad, and then one of my new favorite songs came on. The song is called My Promised Land and it is sung by Josiah Queen. Here is the beginning verse and chorus:You had me standing on a mountainWalking through barren landsYou took my hand and You saidYou can have this worldBut I won't go with youOh, I won't go with you [Pre-Chorus]But I ran out of placesAnd feelings I was chasingAll I have is You and You aloneAnd I said [Chorus]Hold on, wait a minuteI don't want what You ain't in, andI don't wanna go unless I'm going there with You It's You there, rain or shiningYou're the sun on my horizonsYou are my everythingMy promised land is You! The music is so upbeat, and I love it! Whenever I hear these songs, they remind me that God is my everything. If He is not in it, then I don’t want it. It reminds me that He is there with me, rain or shine. I like to play my playlist on shuffle, and I like to believe the Holy Spirit is choosing the order of my songs. I am sure the Lord knew I needed this song the other day at the courthouse. I honestly considered going outside of the courthouse and dancing my sadness out. However, I didn’t want to miss my name when they called it, so I just sang in a whisper voice and imagined myself dancing it out.I can't emphasize enough how critical praise and worship can be in changing your mood and lifting you out of a pit. The enemy gets so confused when we praise the Lord when we are struggling. They don’t understand why we would praise God when we are hurting, sad, or angry. Also, the enemy can’t stand the name of Jesus. All you have to do is say the name Jesus, and the enemy flees. I heard a speaker once who asked his friend, who is a Catholic priest and exorcist, what the most powerful prayer is when it comes to fighting the evil spirits and demons, and he said the most powerful thing we can say is, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” That is pretty simple and yet powerful.If music is not your thing, that is ok, you can still praise the Lord. When I joined the Charismatic Prayer Group, they taught me to praise the Lord out loud by using various names for the Lord. For instance, you can say, “You are Lord of Lords and King of Kings. You are a miracle worker and a way maker. You are the prince of peace and the lion of Judah.” The prayer group gave everyone a piece of paper filled with praise phrases to help us out until we got comfortable coming up with our own. There is no right or wrong way to praise. You can praise the Lord in

Chocolate MilkJohn 20:21-22 “Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.This verse takes place after Jesus has been crucified. The apostles are all locked up in the upper room because they are afraid that if the Jewish people knew where they were, they would be crucified, too. I am sure this was a very confusing time for the apostles. They had been living life with Jesus for the last few years. Every day, extraordinary things happened. Then they find out that Jesus is going to be crucified. I mean, they knew Jesus had enemies, but I don’t think they understood what was truly going on. How could they? How is it possible to comprehend the man they had been following, the man they knew was the one true king, was going to be crucified? The Messiah was supposed to come and deliver them from their captors. Yet Jesus hadn’t defeated the Romans yet. How could He be leaving them?I am sure this thought was going through so many people’s minds at the time. It must have been very confusing. They had read or been taught that when the Messiah comes, He will save them. They assume this means He will save them from the Roman occupation. They don’t realize that Jesus is here for much bigger things. Jesus has come to save their souls.The apostles are locked in the upper room, and Jesus appears to them. I wonder if they were frightened at first. I wonder if they asked Him if it was really Him. Take a minute, close your eyes, and try to picture what it was like for them in that upper room. The man they thought was the Lord was crucified, and then they felt they needed to lock themselves in a room for fear of death, and then Jesus appeared to them in this locked room. I wonder if they thought He was a ghost? I wonder what they were thinking, what was going through their mind.It says in the verse above this one that Jesus showed them his hands and feet, and then they rejoiced that He had risen. The first thing that Jesus did, even before showing them His hands and feet, was to impart peace to them. The first thing He said in that room was, “Peace be with you.” I think this makes perfect sense because they probably weren’t very peaceful. They were scared and unsure of what to do next.After Jesus shows them his wounds, and they rejoice that He has returned, Jesus talks to them. “Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Jesus knows they are confused about what just happened and what is going to happen. They had been following Jesus. That was their job, their life for the last several years. They had to have been wondering what they were going to do now that Jesus was gone. Then Jesus appeared and told them what to do. He told them that He was sending them out to do the works that He did. This gives them some direction and some guidance.However, how could they go out and do the things that He did when they were scared of persecution? The next line answers this. It says, “When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit.” Jesus gave them the Holy Spirit to build them up and give them strength. The Holy Spirit gave them a holy boldness to go out and proclaim the good news about Jesus Christ. It gave them the courage to come out of the locked room and say all the things they had been taught to say. They witnessed all they had seen and heard over the several years they were with Jesus. They had the courage to leave the room, and that very same day, they baptized 3,000.This is the same Holy Spirit that each one of us has living inside of us. We each, you and I, have the Spirit of Christ living inside of us. We have the potential to have this same holy boldness that the apostles exhibited. We have the potential to do all the signs and wonders that they did. The reason for this is that they were only capable of doing signs and wonders because Jesus gave them the authority, and He gave the Holy Spirit. Jesus didn’t just give these gifts to the apostles, and then they died with them 2,000 years ago. When Jesus gave them to the apostles, He was giving them to all those who were to follow after them as well.If you have been baptized, you have received the Holy Spirit. This means you have all the power and all the courage that the apostles had living inside of you. You just have to access it. There is an analogy that I heard in Encounter Ministries, and I have also heard it at the Life in the Spirit seminars. I am not sure exactly how it goes, but it basically compares our lives to a glass of chocolate milk. Our life before the Holy Spirit, before baptism, is just plain milk. However, when you add the Holy Spirit, it is like you are adding chocolate sauce to the milk. Now that we have added the chocolate sauce, do we automatically have chocolate milk? No, we need to stir the milk to spread the chocolate sauce all around. This is si

Kingdom Mindset (Replay)Mark 8:17-21 “And becoming aware of it, Jesus said to them, “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?” They said to him, “Twelve.” “And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?” And they said to him, “Seven.” Then he said to them, “Do you not yet understand?”This verse comes after the feeding of the four thousand in Mark’s gospel. Right before this verse, the Pharisees came and began to argue with Jesus and were asking Him to show them a sign. Then Jesus got on the boat and warned the disciples about the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod. They did not understand and were wondering if Jesus was talking about the fact that they forgot to bring bread. Jesus hears them talking, and this is where the verse picks up. Jesus is upset with them because they still don’t seem to understand who they are with. Right before getting on the boat, Jesus fed four thousand people with just 7 loaves of bread. Then they get on the boat, and the disciples are worried because they only have one loaf of bread. The first thing Jesus asks is, “Do you still not perceive or understand?” I think this is a really important question. It shows us something that is so important. If we want to follow Jesus, we need to have a renewal of our minds. We can’t filter the things we see the Holy Spirit do through our worldly brains. They just won’t make any sense to us. What we can see in this verse is that the disciples haven’t quite developed what they called in my class the “kingdom mindset.” Jesus even asks them, "Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear?” The disciples just saw Jesus feed 4,000 people, and yet they didn’t really understand what they saw. They weren’t able to understand it as well as they could if they let go of their worldly mindset and took on a kingdom mindset. In our worldly mindset, we understand that some things can and can’t be done. We understand the laws of nature, and we honor them. We know from experience and everything we have been taught that some things are just impossible to do. We know this to be true. A kingdom mindset is one where we understand that nothing is impossible for our God. When we have a kingdom mindset, we understand that God can do more with less. He can feed 4,000 with 7 loaves. He can feed five thousand with five loaves. God can do the impossible. He can heal the leper and cure the blind. He can solve any problem that comes His way. A kingdom mindset is not something that is easy to develop. It is something we can work towards, and it is also a gift from God. First, I say we can work towards it because we can spend time going over the miracles Jesus performed, not just Jesus, but the disciples, too. We can read and reread them so that we know them like the back of our hand. We can read them so many times that they seem normal to us, because that is the thing. When you have a kingdom mindset, when you are with Jesus, a supernatural lifestyle is normal. You will see miracles everywhere you look once you are able to see them. Once your eyes are opened and the film is removed from your eyes, you will be amazed at all the things God is doing in your life and the lives of those around you. Secondly, I say it is a gift from God because Faith is a gift from God. We can read about more and more miracles, and that will definitely increase our faith, but to get the kind of faith we need to move mountains, that is not something we can manufacture on our own. That mountain-moving faith is a gift from God for those who are seeking it. The more we trust God, the more He allows our faith to grow. However, we need to do our part also by renewing our mind and working toward developing a kingdom mindset. It says in 1 Corinthians 2:12-13, “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual.” Through our baptism, we have been given the Spirit of God. We have this Spirit living inside of us. This Spirit is the one who helps us interpret what we see and what we hear. Although He can only help us if we listen to Him. That still small voice you hear inside of you, that is the Holy Spirit. The thing is, the voice inside is so soft, and the voice of the world is constantly screaming at us. Sometimes it is hard to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit. If we want to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit, we need to practice. We need to intentionally set aside time to sit and quiet our minds and ask the Holy Spirit wha

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. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!Thank you so much for sharing your witness. What an amazing testimony of how much freedom you can get from inner healing. Unbound is a remarkable model of inner healing. Unbound deliverance ministry is a model of prayer developed by Neal Lozano. It is the model for deliverance most widely endorsed by Catholic bishops and priests throughout the world. Unbound guides people to surrender more fully to Jesus and encounter the truth that sets them free.UNBOUND is a safe, loving, effective prayer model that helps people respond to the good news of the gospel. UNBOUND ministry teaches how to listen and respond in Five Key areas as people seek greater freedom in Christ and help others to do the same. If you would like to learn more about unbound, Click Here. I have personally been trained in the unbound prayer model as well as having gone through at least two unbound sessions of prayer myself. It is an incredible method that truly frees people from bondage. The freedom felt afterward is amazing. I highly suggest everyone check into it. If you would like more info on Unbound or if you would like Rosa to pray with feel free to email her at [email protected]. Thank you again, Rosa, for your powerful testimony. I hope you will share more testimonies about all the ways the Lord is working in your life. We look forward to hearing from you again. 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

Praise Series #19 Can We Worship Through The Struggle?Job 1:20-21 “20 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 in 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 us get 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 giv

Praise Series #18 Christian Music Can Be Life ChangingPsalm 35:1-3 “Praise the Lord! Praise the name of the Lord, give praise, O servants of the Lord, you that stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God! Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good; sing to his name, for he is gracious!”I have shared personal experiences about praising God through the hard times on this podcast and at my prayer group. During prayer, we have a quiet time when we listen for words from the Lord, similar to the ones I share at the end of each episode. This day, the Lord kept guiding us with scriptures about praise, like the one above. The Bible is filled with instances of praise. King David, for instance, was a great example of praise. Some of the most powerful Psalms of praise we have from David were not when everything was going well for him. Some of the most impactful ones came from him when he was hiding in a cave from his son or from Saul.One reason I suggested that we listen to praise and worship music often is that it is what you will have running through your head. Whatever you surround yourself with is what you will think about; it is what will contribute to the thoughts running through your head, and it will have an effect on how you act. Think about how different things could be if you were constantly listening to music that told you how great God is, how He is always there for you. If you heard stories of how He has helped others, then He will help you, too. What if you heard every day that God loves you and doesn’t make mistakes?This is the transformative power of Christian music. It doesn’t just uplift us, it changes us. When we listen to it, our hearts open up a bit, and our hearts soften a bit. When we listen to Christian music frequently, we begin to believe in an even deeper way that Jesus loves us and that we are His. We start to believe the things they talk about. We begin to believe that we don’t have to be perfect to come to Christ. We believe that we can be forgiven. We believe He died for us, you and me.My husband used to listen to the WAAF radio station. The station number on the radio was 107.3. It has been around since I was a kid. It was a rock station, and they also had a morning show that he liked. However, now 107.3 is KLOVE radio, which is a Christian radio station. I have never heard of a Christian radio station before. It is amazing. If you don’t have KLOVE near you, although it is all over the United States, I believe, then they have a website and an app. So, even if you can’t get them on the radio where you live, you can still get their music. They also have all sorts of events. They have a section of their website where you can submit prayer requests, and they let you know when someone prays for you. They have pastors you can call and talk to when needed.Another reason listening to this music can be so beneficial is that they often use words in the songs that are right out of the Bible. When I first started listening to Christian music, I remember being so surprised when I would hear the words to the songs in the readings at church. It helped me connect more to the readings because I had already heard the words before. This can happen when you read the Bible, too, but that wasn’t where I started. I wasn’t there in my faith journey yet.One final benefit I will talk about today is the fact that the music can reach people that the church can’t. There are many people who have either been wounded by the church or have preconceived notions about the church, and so they have no desire to ever step through the doors of a church. However, they could be flipping through radio stations and happen to hear a song about Jesus that really touches their heart. Music is a great way to touch hearts because people aren’t usually on the defensive while listening. If you start talking to someone about Jesus, they might instantly go on the defensive. They might sense that you are going to preach to them. However, with music, people tend to listen without feeling like that. Music finds a way into people’s hearts and souls that is different than anything else.The radio station KLOVE is fundraising this week. They are listener-funded, so every quarter, they do a week of fundraising on the show. I will be honest: this is not my favorite week to listen because I don’t like how much they're asking for money; I would rather listen to music. However, what I do like about their fundraising weeks is that they read so many testimonies about how KLOVE and the music they provide have changed so many people's lives. They talk about the power of the music they play and give real-life examples of how it has brought people to Jesus. I have heard some amazing testimonies from this radio station. I have taken a few from their website so that I can show you how powerful music can be. Here are a couple of the ways KLOVE and the music they play have affected others.I enjoy listening to K-LOVE every morning on my wa

Praise Series #17 The Joy of the Lord is Your StrengthNehemiah 8:10 “Then he said to them, “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”Right before this verse, Ezra the priest and scribe had gathered all the people together so he, along with the Levites and the governor, Nehemiah, could read the law of the Lord. All the people wept when they heard the words of the law. This is where our verse for today picks up. “Then he said to them, 'Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”I decided to go to the Enduring Word Bible Commentary as I wasn’t quite sure what this verse meant. I wasn’t quite sure why the people were crying when they heard the words of the Law. This is what I found on the Enduring Word Bible Commentary page, “All the people wept, when they heard the words of the Law: The word of God was doing its intended work. 2 Timothy 3:16 tells us two things that the word of God is profitable for: reproof and correction. Sometimes it hurts to be reproved and corrected, and these tears were evidence of some of that pain.b. Do not mourn nor weep: Ezra, Nehemiah, and the Levites did not want the people to mourn, even though it is a good thing to be sad under the conviction of the Holy Spirit through the word of God. Yet if the sense of conviction is greater than the sense that God is doing a good and holy work, then tears are not good.Our knowledge of our sin should never be bigger than our knowledge of Jesus as our Savior. We are great sinners, but He is a greater Savior.Therefore, the joy of the Lord is your strength – even when you are being convicted of sin. When we are convicted of sin we know that God is doing a work in us, so we can be glad and take joy.c. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the LORD is your strength: The people felt sad because they were aware of their own sin. But they could walk in joy because God was doing a great work. Our emotions are not beyond our control; we can do God’s will even when we don’t feel like it.They didn’t want the people to be sad because even though they may not have been perfect in carrying out the law, it is ok. God is still with them. Those in charge wanted them to know that it is good to stop everything every now and then and remember the law. It is good to stop and examine your behavior and how you are living, and see if it is in accordance with how God wants you to live. However, if it isn’t, they didn’t want them to be sad and to focus on how much they were messing up. They wanted the people to focus on how great God is and how, no matter how much we mess up, He can still redeem us.The same is true for us. It is important that we examine our behaviors, the way we live our lives, and how we treat others, to see if we are living according to the Lord's will. Are we following His commandments? Are we loving Him above all else? Are we loving our neighbors as we love ourselves? If we aren’t, what should we do? We should bring it to the Lord. We can apologize for getting off course again, and then let Him know how sorry we are, and then we can just try again. God does not expect us to be perfect. He knows we will mess up. He knows we won’t always get it right. He is ok with that as long as we always repent and turn back to Him!Let’s look at the aspect of joy in this verse. This verse said, “For the joy of the Lord is your strength.” How is the joy of the Lord our strength? In this verse, we can find joy in the Lord because He always redeems us. I love it when it said in the commentary that, “Our knowledge of our sin should never be bigger than our knowledge of Jesus as our Savior. We are great sinners, but He is a greater Savior.” This is such a great reminder that no matter how bad our sin is, our Savior is greater than it. No matter how bad we have messed up, Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross still covers it. We can take joy in the fact that there is nothing we can do that is not covered by Jesus’s sacrifice. It is ok to be sad that we have hurt our relationship with the Lord. It is ok to be sad that we think we might have let God down. However, we can’t stay there. We need to then find the joy that God has given us by sending his son to make up for our sins. God sacrificed His only son so that he could repair the closeness that Adam & Eve lost. This is something we can celebrate. This closeness is something to be joyful over.Another thing I love that the commentary said was, “Do not sorrow, for the joy of the LORD is your strength: The people felt sad because they were aware of their own sin. But they could walk in joy because God was doing a great work. Our emotions are not beyond our control; we can do God’s will even when we don’t feel lik

Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. Did you all notice that before she received the healing she took a leap of faith and started testing out to see if she was healed? Sometimes, that is when we are healed, when we step out in faith to test the healing. Testing the healing means trying to do something you couldn’t do before. Like in Caitlyn’s case, she tried to see outside without her sunglasses on. This would have normally induced a headache, but she tried it anyway, and she did not get one. She also put her feet in hot water, which again would have usually been really painful, but there was no pain. She trusted that God gave her the healing she asked for, and He gave her the healing she asked for. St. Augustine said, “Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.” Caitlyn believed she was healed despite no evidence of that healing. She stepped out in faith and tested the healing that was granted to her. I know praying for healing, even just hoping for healing, can be scary because what if we are let down? However, Romans 5:5 says, “ and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” I am so proud of Caitlyn. I am proud she was brave and went to the healing service. I am proud that she took the leap of faith to test her healing when nothing indicated she had been healed. I am proud of her for signing up for the class to learn to be the Lord’s instrument and help heal others. I can’t wait to watch her light get brighter and brighter and to see all the amazing things God has planned for her. I am so grateful he brought the two of us together. I know he has great plans for us and all those at the Encounter School of Ministry Boston Campus. Look out, Boston Diocese, a revival is coming, and we are here for it! 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

Praise Series #16 Bless The Lord, O My SoulPsalm 103:1-5 “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits—who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”Yesterday I couldn’t get a song out of my head. It is such a good song. I wanted to share that song with you this morning. The song is called “10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord).” It was written by Matt Redman and Jonas Myrin and is based on Psalms 103:1-5. It explores how we can never run out of reasons to worship and praise God. On Monday of this week, Episode #1036, we talked about how vital praise and worship are to our faith journey. This song and this Psalm remind us that there are so many reasons we can be grateful to the Lord.Let’s first look at these verses. They begin with “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name.” This is exactly what we talked about on Monday. Praising the Lord is so important. Even when we are in a really difficult season of life, there are many reasons we can be grateful to the Lord, and we can praise Him.In the verse, it says, “who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” Those are some pretty amazing things to thank God for. You might not have experienced all of them, but I bet you have experienced some of them. Have you felt God’s steadfast mercy and love in your life? Have you experienced His forgiveness? Some of you have even experienced his healing touch. I know some of you have been redeemed from a pit as well. I love the line that says your youth is renewed like the eagles. We could all use our youth to be renewed.Can you see all the amazing things God has done and will do for us? Can you see how there are endless possibilities when it comes to praising the Lord? The song for today also talks about praising the Lord. I invite you to listen to the song sometime today. You can look it up on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Music, wherever you usually listen to music. The reason I would like you to listen to the actual song, instead of just this podcast, is that it is really good. Here are the words to the song.[Chorus]Bless the Lord, O my soul, O my soulWorship His holy nameSing like never before, O my soulI'll worship Your holy nameAs you can see, this chorus comes almost directly from the Psalm. I love it when artists do this. I love it when they use the Bible verses in the songs. It helps get the Lord’s word out to more people.Next is Verse 1: The sun comes up, it's a new day dawningIt's time to sing your song againWhatever may pass and whatever lies before meLet me be singing when the evening comesThis is something we can always be grateful for: that we got to wake up to a brand new day of life. I love how this verse says, whatever may pass and whatever lies before me, let me be singing when the evening comes. Wouldn’t it be great if we could be singing to the Lord at the end of the day, no matter what happens to us throughout the day? How great would it be if we got so used to praising the Lord that we could praise Him no matter the circumstances?Verse 2:You're rich in love and you're slow to angerYour name is great, and Your heart is kindFor all Your goodness, I will keep on singingTen thousand reasons for my heart to findWe tend to have a perception of God that he is angry at us all the time. We look at some parts of the Old Testament, and we think God is full of Vengeance and Wrath. This is not what He is constantly telling our prayer group. He always tells us how much He loves us. God is rich in love and slow to anger. Does he get angry? Probably, we all do. However, He loves us so much more than his anger. I love how the verse says, “For all your goodness, I will keep on singing ten thousand reasons for my heart to find. If you are looking, there are always reasons to be thankful to God. Even in your most difficult season, there are things you can praise the Lord for; you just have to look for them. Or, as I mentioned on Monday, you can put on praise and worship music and let the artists praise the Lord for you![Verse 3]And on that day when my strength is failingThe end draws near, and my time has comeStill, my soul will sing Your praise unendingTen thousand years and then forevermoreForevermoreIt is beautiful to think about praising the Lord when our time on this earth is ending. When we can feel our strength failing. How great would it be to get to the end of our lives and still want to sing the Lord’s praises? I like how it says ten thousand years and then forever more. Once we are in heaven, all will make sense. We

Praise Series #15 God Has A PlanActs 16:25-28 “About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly, there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once, all the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted, “Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!”This story actually begins a few verses before this. In Acts 16:16-24, it says, “Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a female slave who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. She followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” She kept this up for many days. Finally, Paul became so annoyed that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to come out of her!” At that moment, the spirit left her. When her owners realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities. They brought them before the magistrates and said, “These men are Jews and are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.” The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rods. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. When he received these orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.”This is where our verse takes place. They have been beaten with rods and are now chained up in prison. You would think after a day like that, they would feel defeated. You would think that they would be questioning God and asking Him why they have to suffer so much when they are just doing what He asked them to do. You might also think that they were passed out in pain and sleeping. Is this what they were doing? No, the verse says it was midnight, and they were still praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. This is something that always amazes me about the apostles and other believers in the faith, such as the Saints. I am always amazed by their strength. I know that God underwent extreme suffering in the 24 hours before He was crucified. He sweats drops of blood. If that is not suffering, I don’t know what is. And yet, I think we can downplay it sometimes and think, well, He is fully God and fully human, so of course He can withstand it; he is God. However, countless other Saints have gone through extreme suffering and have done it with joy. Paul & Silas had just been beaten with rods, and yet they were not questioning God. They were praising and singing to Him. This is something that I think we can hear sometimes and not pause and think about how truly amazing it is. I don’t know if we glaze over it because we don’t understand it or because we don’t think we are capable of it. I don’t know the reason, but I wanted to pause and take a moment to recognize how remarkable these two are for how they endured their suffering. We could all learn a lot from them and how they lived, not only when times were good but also when times were tough. The verse says that at midnight, while they were praying and praising, they were set free. The door opened, and their chains came loose. What strikes me about this verse is that they were set free yet did not leave. They stayed there until morning, when the guard woke up. What I hear the Lord saying to me about this verse is that everything He does is for His glory and the good of His kingdom. If Paul & Silas had left at midnight, they could have escaped. However, it would not have been known how they escaped. People could have said that someone broke in and freed them. God would not have gotten the Glory. However, by waiting until morning, they not only converted the guard and his whole house to believers, but they were also set free and did not have to worry about being caught for escaping.Sometimes, the things we are going through or the things others are going through make no sense to us. If we had been there in that jail cell, it would have made no sense to us that when they were freed, they didn’t leave the cell. I can’t imagine sitting in that cell and just waiting for the jailer to wake up when we could have escaped and been hours away by the time the jailer woke up. Luckily, Paul and Silas were good at listening to the Lord and trusting in Him. They were not scared in that jail cell. They praised the Lord and trusted that the Lord would get them out of the situation. They were patient and waited on the Lord

Mary Liked to Ponder Luke 2:1-20 "In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.”There are two things about this verse that I would like to focus on today. The first is how Jesus was born in a manger. Growing up I didn’t understand this. I felt like if Mary was giving birth to the Son of God, then the least He could do is provide her with a comfortable bed to deliver the baby in. I felt like it was all so disorganized and I really didn’t understand why God didn’t plan better. Now that I am an adult, or actually more accurately, now that I know more about God and the story of Jesus I am able to understand that it was all very well planned out. God always has a plan. God had been preparing His people for this birth for a very long time. He had given very specific details and He was ensuring that all the details were accurate so that His people would know that His son was the Savior.Jesus was not born into luxury because He was not going to be that kind of king. He was going to be an amazing leader and yet He would also be a servant. I have a rosary app on my phone and I like how they describe Jesus’ birth. Jesus enters the world in poverty to teach us the detachment from earthly things. I have also heard others describe that he was born in the stable to teach us humility. I am not sure why Jesus was born in a stable, but I think it set Him on the path for what kind of person He wanted to be. If we have a lot of stuff, we don’t need to rely on the Lord as we feel we can provide for ourselves. We also get distracted by all that stuff and then sometimes don’t think about God or don’t want to give up that time we spend doing other stuff to spend with Him. When you experience poverty you are also more grateful for the things that you have. I now know that Jesus’ birth happened exactly as it was supposed to and was very well thought out.The second thing I would like to talk about are the word at the end of this section. Luke 2:19 says, “But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” I think Mary does this a lot. I remember Father Michael Gaitley talking about Mary’s heart pondering in his Book 33 Days to Morning Glory. When the magi, or the shepherds visited Jesus they told Mary and Joseph all that the Angel’s said about Jesus. Mary did not get overwhelmed, she did not freak out, she treasured all they said and she pondered them in her heart. I am not sure what I would do if I were in her circumstance. I think I would feel that was a lot of pressure, but it doesn’t seem like she felt that way.At the end of chapter 2 in Luke it mentions Mary pondering again. Do you remember the story of when Mary & Joseph went to Jerusalem for the festival of Passover and then when it ended they started the return home and Jesus wasn’t with them? They were traveling with friends and family and assumed He was with them, but He wasn’t. They were a whole day’s journey away before they found out. When they found Him and asked Him where He was. In Luke 2:49-51 Jesus said to them, “‘Why were you searching f

Today, I want to replay my witness about Christmas 2023. I felt like with this Christmas being Christmas Eve, a Christmas witness would be good. In 2023 it was the year my sister Dee moved back to CT and bought a new house. She had a Christmas Eve party because my aunt used to have one each year, but she is now moving to FL. I went to Dee’s house on Christmas Eve alone as my family wanted to chill out at home. Well, Sam & Noah were both working. It was great to see my parents, Dee, my sister Suzy & her husband John, two of her boys and her granddaughter, and then my sister Theresa and her husband Glenn. We ate dinner together and talked. Some played games. It was a really great time.Then, when I got home, Sam & Noah were in the kitchen talking, and then Ryan came down. The boys and I stayed in the kitchen talking for over 2 hours. This in itself is a Christmas miracle as they are teenagers, and so they don’t love talking to their parents. We talked about all kinds of things, and it was so great. Of course, sometimes they were arguing, which I didn’t love, but it was awesome to see them interacting with each other. I feel like 2024 is going to be a great year. I think they are starting to come out of their rooms a bit more. They are starting to talk a bit more and hang out with friends a bit more. I am really looking forward to this upcoming year. Noah is a senior and is planning to go far away for college in the fall, so I am hoping to get to spend some good family time with him before he leaves.On Christmas day we always go the Duggan’s house. The Desilets, my family, always celebrate on a different day, so we are lucky, and we don't have to alternate. I like that we get to do the same thing each year. I love that we get to see his entire family. His brother and wife, their two girls, my mother and father-in-law, and Tony’s aunt. Usually, when we go, our boys are on their computers, and their cousins are, too. Occasionally, we will play a game or two, but I would say the majority of years, we just hang out. It is nice to get a chance to catch up. They don’t live far away, but we don’t really see them too much. They have kids, we have kids, they work, we work. Life gets busy, and we don’t schedule time to visit.It’s funny because when we lived in NJ when the boys were younger, we saw them a lot more. We would come up for all the holidays, and so they would come up and visit as well. It has been dawning on me more and more lately that we saw family more when we lived further away than we do now. We are only one and a half hours from Tony’s parent’s house and an hour and 10 minutes from my family, and yet we don’t see them that much. This is something I will change in the New Year as family is important. You never know when the last time you will see someone is.Regret is something that is difficult to live with. I try to live my life so that I don’t have any regrets later. We can’t ensure this, but we can do our best to live in a way that we will be proud of later. I don’t want to wish I would have spent more time with people when they were alive. I want to actually spend more time with people when they are alive. This is something we can all work on. Do you have people you are unhappy with? Are you waiting for someone else to make the first step or the next move? Don’t wait on others. If someone is hurting you, let them know. What have you got to lose? If they don’t respond well, at least you gave it a try.We only have one life, and I, for one, do not want to have regrets. Make amends, say the thing you have been wanting to say, and forgive the person you are angry with; you might not get the chance later. I know you may be waiting for them to do the right thing, but what if they never do? Are you ok with things never being said? What if you just confronted them? What if you just said you wanted to get past this? What if you said the thing that hurt you?Ok, back to Christmas this year. I just want to thank God for it because it was really great. We had to wake our boys up because they are teens, and so they sleep late. I asked the night before, and they agreed to get up at 10. We didn’t actually know what to get the boys this year for Christmas as they didn’t give us too many ideas. We got them some practical gifts, and we weren’t sure how that would go over. They all had a great time opening the gifts, and they all seemed not only happy but appreciative, which you don’t always get with kids. Or at least we don’t always get it. Then we asked if we could change plans and leave earlier than we agreed, and no one got upset. They were all ok with it.I had bought myself and the boys matching pajamas so we could do a family photo. They were all okay with it, and we wore the pajamas all day. When we got to the Duggan’s house, I realized none of the boys had brought their computers. They were sitting around the table, talking and playing on their phones. I asked if they wanted to play a card game, and they all said

Saint Joseph’s FaithfulnessMatthew 1:18-25 “This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.I thought since Christmas is coming, I would focus on that this week. Today I want to focus on Saint Joseph. I think he is someone that we don’t talk about enough. Everyone I know who has read or learned more about Saint Joseph just keeps talking about how incredible he was. Let’s talk about the different things in this verse.The verse begins by describing how they were pledged to be married, but before they were together, he found out that Mary was pregnant. Joseph now finds himself stuck because it says he is faithful to the law. He wants to follow the law, and yet, according to the law, back in the day, if a woman was caught cheating on her husband, she was to be stoned to death. Joseph didn’t want to disobey the law, and he also didn’t want to publicly disgrace Mary. He was a good man, and so he was going to quietly divorce her to keep her from all of that. However, he was visited by an angel in his dream before he could do anything. This angel explained what was going on and told Joseph to name the baby Jesus. Can you imagine being visited by an angel in your sleep? When I was little, I used to imagine what it would be like to have an angel come and visit me, like Mary or Joseph. I wondered what it would feel like. I wondered if I would believe what I was seeing. I wonder how Joseph felt when he woke up from that dream? Did he know it was a visit from a real angel and not just a normal dream right away? I wonder why the angel came to Joseph in a dream, but to Mary when she was awake. I think it is hard for us to imagine what it would feel like, as it is so foreign to most of us. I like to think things were different back then. It was easier for them to believe because they lived in a time when there weren’t so many distractions or when the faith was stronger. However, I don’t think, even back then, it was a common occurrence to be visited by an angel. I don’t know that those around them would have any easier time believing it than we would. Yet, Joseph did believe, and he did obey.Joseph had a choice, just like Mary did. Joseph could have decided that it was all just a dream. He could have believed that Mary had cheated on him, and he could have left her. However, he made a choice to stay. He chose to listen to the angel and to name the baby Jesus. He was faithful to the Lord, and he raised Jesus as his child. Did you know that Joseph was visited by an angel a second time in a dream? This time was right after the Magi visited baby Jesus. Matthew 2:13-15 recounts, “ When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”Again, Joseph had a choice to make. His wife had just given birth recently. He had a baby, and I am sure they were all tired as she gave birth in a manger. I can’t imagine they were getting great sleep there. Then the angel of God tells Joseph to get up in the middle of the night and take his wife and baby to Egypt. Remember the first time the angel visited he was told that what he was asked to do was to help fulfill the Lord’s word through a prophet, “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” Now the angel is asking Joseph a second time to fulfill the Lord’s word, “Out of Egypt I called my son.” The benefit that Joseph has over many of us is that he would have been well-versed on the Old Testament prophets since he was a Jewish man. The Jewish males went to school/class to study the Jewish scriptures.I wonder if knowing about all these scriptures or words from th

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 episode to replay for you today for two reasons. The first is because if you are listening to this on the day I released it, then we celebrate Jesus' coming into the world in just four days, and we need Jesus more than ever! The second is because there was a loss in our family last Thursday, and so many people are hurting, and they just need Jesus right now to help them through it. There is a song that I have heard on the radio more and more recently, and these last few days, it has been running repeatedly 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 the 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 Jesus This 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 t

Praise Series #14 I Keep My Eyes Always On The LordPsalm 16:7-8 “I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.”When I read this, my first thought was, I wish my eyes were always on the Lord. I wonder if sometimes, in the Psalms and actually in any part of the Bible, they are saying what they know they should do instead of what they are actually doing. The person writing this Psalm, were their eyes always on the Lord, or were they saying this as a reminder to themselves of what works best? The beginning of this verse says I will praise the Lord, and you guys know that is one of my favorite things to do. Praising the Lord is something I tend not to forget to do too often. Luckily, I am in a prayer group that knows how important praise is, so even if I didn’t do it regularly on my own, we praise God every Thursday for an hour. That is one of the great things about surrounding yourself with other people who love God; they help you remember what is truly important. “I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me.” This is a great verse because it reminds us who is leading us through this crazy thing we call life. The Lord is there to counsel us. Are we seeking His guidance? Are we stopping to ask Him what He thinks of all the plans we are making in our heads? When is the last time you slowed yourself down long enough to run something by God before you did it? Has it been a while? Have you been running into a lot of dead ends lately? Have you noticed that things aren’t bad, but they aren’t great either? Maybe that’s because you are going so fast, you haven’t had time to listen to God's counsel. He really does have some pretty great advice if we slow down and listen to it. Things just go more smoothly with the counsel of the almighty one. You can tell just from His name that He knows what He is talking about. He has seen your entire life, He knows what turns you will make, and He knows how to help you get to the life you want faster than you could ever do on your own. So, why don’t we listen to His counsel then? We don’t listen because we are too busy. One luxury that Covid afforded us was the gift of slowing down. There was so much bad that came from COVID, and I am not disputing that. However, COVID also allowed us to clear our calendars. To just stay home and be with our family for a little while. The amount of time we were all home with family varies by person, but we all had some time when our schedules were completely clear. No one was going to work or school; grocery stores and other stores weren’t open for a bit. The whole world slowed almost to a stop. This was not good for many reasons, but the fact that it allowed many people to stop and consciously choose what to add back into their schedules was a benefit. Some people found out they liked the less busy schedule. Some people decided they liked spending more time with their kids. Some families were so busy they went from one activity to the next without any time to even eat a meal together. However, with the forced time to slow down, they were able to spend that time together. People were able to spend more time in quiet with God because they no longer had a long commute to work each day. There was a brief period in time when life slowed down, and we all had the chance to check in with God and ask for His counsel. I am sure not everyone used this time to check in with God, but they had the chance. When I read the second half of that first line, “even at night my heart instructs me,” I thought of how it was dark at night. I am not sure if this verse is talking about at night, meaning, even when I am asleep, my heart instructs me, or even through the dark parts of my life, my heart instructs me. However, I think, regardless of what the Psalm is saying, both of these are true. God doesn’t guide us sometimes, and then other times leaves us on our own to fend for ourselves. He is always there, guiding us. He is always there in that “still small voice” down deep inside of us. However, we can’t always hear him because we aren’t always listening. If you are going through a difficult time right now and you feel like you could really use some direction, take some time and sit with the Lord. Ask Him for direction, then wait and listen until you receive it. We tend to ask God a lot, but we don’t really ask expecting a reply. God wants to talk with you; He wants to guide you. If you ask Him a question, sit expectantly, and He will answer you. The last line in this verse is awesome, if we can remember it. It says, “I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.” There is so much anxiety in the world, and I think there wouldn’t be if we could remember this verse. If we kept our eyes on the Lord instead of on the news, our friends' Facebook pages, celebrity tabloids, politics, and all the

Today’s Witness Wednesday is about my trip to Ecuador. Let me explain in a bit more detail how and why I decided to go to Ecuador. My brother-in-law, Daniel’s best friend, has been in the hospital for a month now. He had a heart attack and then a stroke. Daniel sent me a message asking me to pray for his friend Anival. I then sent this prayer request out to all those I know who could pray for him. Everyone started to pray for him, and I asked Daniel for an update. He said he was still in a coma and they were waiting for him to wake up so they could do the CT scan. However, they were decreasing the sedation, and he wasn’t waking up.Then Daniel asked me for more prayers as they did the CT scan, and it said that there was more damage than they thought. It showed that he still had oxygen bubbles in his brain. When I got this text message from Daniel, I relayed it to all those who were praying for him, as I feel the more specific we can pray for someone, the better, as it shows all the more glory to God when he answers our specific prayers. Then I got another message from Daniel a week or so later, saying that Anival got worse and they need him to start breathing on his own so that he can start eating, as he is not getting enough nutrients.When I got this message from Daniel, I also felt like I got a message from the Holy Spirit asking me to go to Ecuador to pray over Anibal in person. I thought this sounded a bit crazy, so I did what everyone should do when they feel like the Holy Spirit is telling them to do something that seems crazy. I discerned it with my spiritual director. I told her what I thought I heard, and I asked her to pray about it and see what the Holy Spirit says to her about it.She said the first thing she heard was “go” and then she asked Him to confirm it for her. The way this usually happens for her is that she sees the word she heard other places throughout the day. In this instance, she saw what looked like “go” on two different license plates throughout her day. She felt that was the confirmation she was looking for. As I was walking into the prayer group on Thursday morning, I asked the Lord to let me hear something at the meeting that confirmed that He wanted me to go. I was surprised because I didn’t really hear anything during the meeting. Then, at the end, while we were cleaning up, one of our members, who just went to the national conference for Charismatic Catholics in the United States, said, “The main message of the entire conference was to Go Out. Don’t just stay in the comfort of praying within your prayer group, but be bold and go out into the world and pray with others.” I took this as the confirmation that I had asked the Lord for.Now it was time to talk to my husband about it. It was not a good time for me to go to Ecuador, as he works for the government, so he is not getting a paycheck right now. Also, he was going out of the country to visit our son Noah since he is away in Scotland for school and happened to have a week off for his Birthday. Tony is not working and has a free travel credit. They were staying with a friend, so it would not be an expensive trip, and the timing was great for that trip. Another reason the timing wasn’t great for this call to go to Ecuador is that in order for me to go with my sister, Daniel, and their daughter, I would have to leave before Tony got back. This isn’t a big deal, as our kids at home are 17 and 21. They would be fine without us for a night, but it would have been better if we didn’t have to leave them alone for a night.Anyway, I talked with Tony about the trip, and he wasn’t thrilled with the idea of me going, especially since he is not getting paid and we would both be out of the country at the same time. However, he didn’t say I couldn’t go, and I felt strongly that I was supposed to go, so I looked at getting a ticket. Before going to dinner, the tickets were $576. When I got home from dinner and tried to buy the ticket, it had gone up to $698. I went back and forth between Expedia and Travelocity, and I couldn’t find a ticket for less than $600 now. I sent my sister a message explaining that the tickets were too much, and so I didn’t think I could go. Then, I had a chat with God. I explained that there was no way I could spend $700 on a ticket when Tony wasn’t thrilled about me going in the first place. I told him that if he wanted me to go He was going to have to do something about these ticket prices. I switched back to Expedia one last night before giving up for the night, and there was one ticket for $540. Thank you, Jesus!! I bought it and was excited that I would be on my way to Ecuador in just one week.There were lots of things that were trying to get in the way of my going on this trip, which is another way I knew I was supposed to go, and that God was going to move powerfully. Whenever we are about to do some amazing work for the Lord, the enemy tries to put up a million roadblocks. I fought through each one of them

Praise Series #13 Let’s Have A Conversation With Our Heavenly FatherPsalm 145:8 “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”I heard this as the verse of the day on KLOVE radio, and I instantly knew it was one I wanted to talk about because I have been thinking a lot about God lately and who we think He is. I have heard several people say lately that they think of God as a task master in the sky who is watching us carefully and is just waiting for us to mess up so he can punish us. I can’t say that I ever thought of God in this way. However, I used to think I needed to do the right thing or say the right thing in order to make God happy, in order to earn his love or his approval. I can also see how one can look at God like He is up there waiting to judge us. I mean, we are taught to fear God, and yet I don’t think we are taught what that actually means. When it says we should fear God, it actually means to have reverence for God. Our fear of God is not negative but a positive attitude of reverence that helps us ascribe to God His due: Omnipotence, Sovereignty, and Supremacy.I now think God is Love. I know God loves me. I know He delights in me and that He is pleased with me. I know I am His beloved daughter. I know I don’t have to do anything to earn these feelings; they are freely given. I know he is not up there waiting for me to mess up so that he can punish me, although he is waiting with open arms for me when I mess up so that I can come back to Him. When I try to think about how I know this, I am not too sure. When I was on the Big Life New Year’s Retreat, I was reading one of my journal entries to two of the ladies there, and I felt like the Holy Spirit said to me, “This is how you know. This is where your confidence in yourself and in my love for you comes from.” I took a minute to think about it, and I knew He was right. I mean, He is the Holy Spirit, so of course he was right. But I could see how He was right. I learned about writing letters to God in my journal and then asking Him to write back to me using my pen in 2019, when I was learning to be a life coach and a spiritual coach. I started doing this regularly sometime in 2020. I was listening to the Bible in A Year Podcast, and Father Mike was talking about how if we want a more intimate relationship with God, we could start by speaking to Him more intimately. I don't know what he said exactly, but that is what I heard. I started writing in my journal as if it were a letter to God. I began addressing it, Dear Father, because Dad felt too informal, and I wanted to make sure I was being reverent. However, over the days to come, I experimented with other terms: Dad, Daddy, Papa. It felt strange at first, but the more I did it, the more comfortable I felt with it. I was growing closer to Him. I went back and looked in my journal. I am not sure which journal I used before this one, but his one starts May 1, 2020. I was writing pretty often during this time. That is probably because it was during COVID, and so the world kind of slowed down, and we had more time. The first time that I can see in this journal that I asked God to answer me through my pen was June 2, 2020. This is what I felt He said to me:“Dear Holy One, I love you! I do not feel you lack trust. You are a good and faithful servant. Thank you for getting the prayer group online. I missed you, ladies, and the praise and worship. I am here for you, lean into me. I love you, my daughter. I love what you are becoming. I will mold you if you let me. Help the leaders of the prayer group, as the leaders are tired. You can bring new energy into the group. The workshop is a good idea.”Can you see how hearing words like this from your heavenly Father would help you see that God is love? How would it help build your confidence and help you better understand who He is and who you are in His eyes? It is not always super positive. It is not as if the letters are always filled with compliments, and that is it. Sometimes we need correction and guidance, and sometimes we don’t want to hear that. However, when it comes from God, correction is given with love and grace. When you spend time listening to what God is actually saying, you realize He is not a mean task master waiting for us to screw up. He is a loving Father who wants to help and protect us. Here is an example from June 24, 2020. This is the second time in this journal that I have asked to hear from God. This is just a portion of what I felt He was saying:“You will do a great many things. I will show you when you are ready. Stay the course. Your work pleases me. Your effort pleases me. Notice the good more in Tony. Point out the light you see. Live by “will this matter in 5 years?” Help bring more light into your family, not darkness. No sarcasm, no teasing, just building each other up. You are better than that. Be a good listener, put first things first. You are doing great, keep going. I love you, my da

Praising Through Hard TimesMatthew 10:29-31 “Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.”It is essential to praise God in Hard times. I recall a time when I was going through a particularly challenging period, raising my boys, and in my marriage, and I found solace in praising God. It was a powerful reminder that my problems were not insurmountable and that God was with me. It is important to praise God even when we don’t feel we have any reason to. One of the most important reasons to praise God in a difficult situation is that it puts the focus back on God rather than on our problem.One piece of advice I love is: “Instead of focusing on how big our problem is, we should focus on how big our God is.” I have never forgotten this, and it is so true. God is bigger than any problem we might be facing. There isn’t anything too big or too hard for Him. When we praise the Lord, we bring our focus back to Him.Also, when we praise God, we are reminded of all the things He has done for us in the past. It reminds us that if He did it for us before, He would do it again. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. (Hebrews 13:8) If we are in a difficult situation, we can look back to other times when we were struggling, and we can see how God helped us out of or through that situation. Sometimes God helps us out of a problem we are in. Sometimes, He helps us through the situation. What I mean is that he doesn’t remove us from the situation; he gives us all we need to get through it. He gives us the strength, perseverance, and peace to get through each day.While studying about praise from my mentoring group, I read an article that mentioned something I hadn’t really thought of before. It said that praise reminds us that God is in control. While reading this article, I came across a line that made me laugh. The article said, "As I praise God during the difficult times, I am reminded that God is still in control. God is never surprised by the things that come into my life. God never says, “Wow, I didn’t see that coming. I hope Billy makes it through this.” This made me laugh because it is so true, yet we don’t really think about it. We can praise God in the difficult times because He knew we would be in this season of waiting. And because He knew we would be in it, He has a plan to get us either out of this season or through it.It is funny to me that we would think we could ever catch the Lord off guard. It’s weird to think something could happen that He wouldn’t know about. Jesus says in Matthew 10:29-31 “Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.” God knows everything about you. He knows about your situation and what you are waiting for.Praising the Lord during a hard season is telling Him that we trust Him and know He has a plan for us. Our job is to wait and to keep trusting that God is in control. It is hard for us to let God be in control. We want things done our way and in our time. I saw a video on Facebook the other day of a woman who was showing what it is like when we try to let God be in control. She was all excited and told Jesus to take the wheel. However, she wasn’t happy when He didn’t take the exit she wanted Him to take. She wasn’t pleased when he wasn’t driving as fast as she wanted him to. She tried to stop and pull over for a snack, but Jesus wanted to keep moving. Then she finally said, “I just thought that when I said Jesus take the wheel, we would take turns. You know, you would drive a little, I would drive a little. I thought this would be a little more collaborative.”It is hard to let Jesus take the wheel. It is hard to let God be in control, but it is always worth it. Have you ever tried to take the wheel, tried to run things your own way, and then had it not turn out so good? Abraham and Sarah tried to take things into their own hands, and Sarah had Abraham sleep with her handmaid so they could have a baby. It worked, and then Sarah got jealous of her handmaid and sent her away. God told them He would give them a baby, but Sarah got tired of waiting. We get into trouble when we grow weary of waiting and take things into our own hands.This is why praising can be so beneficial. While we are waiting, we praise God for all he has done in the past, all that He has planned for our future, and all that He is in control of, so that we don’t have to be. When we praise God, we keep ourselves busy, focused on God, and remind ourselves that God is in control.The article I read had some practical suggestions for praising God in difficult times. Here they are:It may not seem natural, and you may feel uncomfortable, but go ahead and praise God. Don’t fake it, be

Why Praise Is So ImportantPsalm 103:22 “I will bless and praise the Lord with my whole heart! Let all his works throughout the earth, wherever his dominion stretches—let everything bless the Lord!”My top 3 favorite topics to talk about are praise, forgiveness, and God’s love, not necessarily in that order. These are my favorites because I think they are some of the most important. God has really been showing me over the last few years how important praise is to Him. He often gives us a word of prophecy at our prayer group that talks about how much He loves that we come together to praise Him each week. Here is one example from June 2025: “Praise me with your whole heart and soul. I long to know you from the depths of your very being. Sing praises to me, for I am your God who loves you.”He has also been telling me over the last few years that praise is a big part of the reason I have been able to grow in my faith so much and that I am able to trust so much. When I ask what I am doing differently, He tells me that I am praising more. I am praising God, not just when I feel like it, and not just when all things are going my way. I am praising God every single day, whether it is a good day or a bad day. I actually praise Him more on bad days sometimes because listening to praise music can help me change my mood.If you have not discovered any really good praise music, go to Spotify and search through Christian music. My mentor, Pamela Crim, put together an awesome playlist called The Big Life Mornings playlist. It is a public playlist on Spotify, and if you type "Big Life Mornings" into the search, it will come up. I also have one called “Walk Boldly With Jesus Favorites,” which you can also find on Spotify. Some of my favorite artists, in case you are not into playlists, include for King and Country, Lauren Daigle, Elevation Worship, Phil Wickham, TobyMac, Cory Asbury, and so many more on that playlist. There are several reasons that I recommend you find some great Christian music that you like.First, listening to Christian music has helped me learn even more about how much God loves me. I have included some of my favorite songs in various episodes over the years. However, if you have not heard the song Reckless Love by Cory Asbury, you are really missing out. If you do not use Spotify, you can check out YouTube as well. There is actually a playlist on my channel, “WalkBodlyWithJesus”, on YouTube called Prayer Group, and it is a great list of praise songs. It would be a great place to start. Whether you are on Spotify or YouTube, you can save songs to a playlist and listen to it whenever you need to.Another reason I recommend you find some good Christian music is that it can change your mood or your focus. Anytime we are anxious, angry, scared, mad, frustrated, or any other feeling, it is because of the story we are telling ourselves. If we are anxious, we are probably focusing on what may or may not happen. If we are angry or frustrated, we might be looking at a situation we can’t change. Listening to this music can help shift our focus from our problems, our worries, and our situation to our God. There is a saying that says that instead of looking at how big our problems are, we can focus on how big our God is. Music can help us do this. If you are listening to songs about how God is a miracle worker and a way-maker, it shifts your focus and helps you praise God in tough times.A third reason I recommend listening to praise music is that it fills your head with God. God will be on your mind more because the things you listen to become the thoughts in your head. Have you ever noticed that when you hang around someone a lot, you start to talk like them? This is because you spend so much time with them and constantly hear how they talk, so your brain picks it up. This can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what they are saying. When I first learned this, I was discouraged because the people in my house, with whom I spent the most time, were very negative and used very bad language. I did not want to start talking like they did. I needed to figure out a way to surround myself with different voices. This is when I started listening to Christian podcasts and found more Christian music. Imagine if you were listening to songs each day that talk about how much God loves us, how much He forgives us, and who God is. If you are hearing this over and over again, these will be the thoughts that fill your mind, and these will be the thoughts that come to your mind in times of trouble.I feel I could go on and on about why I love listening to praise music. However, I will end with this last point. Praising God helps us become more grateful people. I know sometimes it doesn’t feel like we have much reason to praise God. It is not as if my life has been perfect over the last few years; that is why I have been able to praise God. I have had some really difficult times over these past few years, actually over the past 20

Why Take The Longer Path?Exodus 13:17-18 “When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, “Lest the people repent when they see war, and return to Egypt.” But God led the people round by the way of the wilderness toward the Red Sea. And the sons of Israel went up out of the land of Egypt equipped for battle."I was listening to a sermon on the Elevation podcast. The pastor of Elevation church, Steven Furtick, gave a great sermon called “This May Be Plan C.” When I heard him talking about one part in particular I felt like the Lord wanted me to share it with all of you. There were many things about the sermon that stood out to me but it was almost an hour long so I can’t go into all of it. However, I do recommend you check out the whole sermon as it was really good. I am just going to talk about the part that has to do with this verse.Pastor Steven was talking about how God didn’t take the Israelites on the shortest path out of Egypt. The verse says, “When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near.” This makes us think that there was a way to the promised land that was shorter. And if God is explaining why He didn’t take them that way, then that leads us to believe that way would have made more sense. If we are taking the quickest, easiest way, we usually don’t explain why we are going that way. Everyone knows why. However, if we are taking an unexpected path, or one that is longer, we might explain why.So, why did God take them on a longer path? The verse says, “Lest the people repent when they see war, and return to Egypt.” God knew the people were leaving Egypt but if they ran into trouble and had to fight their way out of Egypt, they might turn around and go back. Also, God knew that the Pharaoh was going to change his mind and come after them. God knew the way of the Philistines would lead them into a situation they were not ready for yet. He also knew what was coming after them and He knew that they would need the Red Sea.I wonder if you have had a time, or maybe many times in your life when you felt like God took you on the round about way to get to where you were going? You feel like there must have been an easier and quicker way to get to where you ended up. What if we trusted that God knew what He was doing? What if we look back and try to see how God might have been protecting us from taking the easy or most quickest path because we might have encountered something we weren’t ready to encounter? What if God took us the way He took us because He knew we would need something from that journey or that other path.Pastor Steven talked about how sometimes the problem we are trying to wish away is actually the answer to our prayer we have be asking from God. When the Israelites got the the Red Sea, I am sure they thought it was a problem. I am sure they saw the water on one side of them and heard the army coming up behind them and they questioned why God would lead them to this body of water when there were other paths they could have taken. I am sure they were wishing they were anywhere but in front of the Red Sea at that moment. Yet God used this perceived problem to answer their prayers. He parted that sea and allowed them to walk across it on dry ground. And then he used that water, the one they thought was a problem, to swallow up their enemy.Do you have any problems in your life that might be the answer to your prayers? It may not look like it at first. You may just look at the problem and see it as a problem. However, what if you looked at it and explored how it might be an answer to your prayers? What if you look at the path that the Lord has taken you down and try to see why that path makes sense? Is there a reason God didn’t take you down the quickest easiest path? Is there something you needed to go through so that you could be the person He created you to be? Is there something you needed to survive so that you could show others they will survive it too? Was there something on that other path that the Lord knew you weren’t ready to face yet?When I asked the Lord what He wanted me to teach today this is what I felt like I heard, “Teach them about how they may not be where they thought they would be. They may not have taken the path they thought they would have but if they keep walking with Me and trusting in Me then they will get there in the end. Show them I am walking with them and leading them. There is a reason I led them on the path they are on. I will help them get to where they are going. It’s never too late for Me to grant your heart’s desire. Don’t give up asking for what you truly want. I do hear you. I am working all things for your good.”I know some of you are disappointed with the way things in life have turned out. I know some of you have been asking for some pretty big things for a long time. I know some of you really need a heali

Witness Wednesday #187 Summoned to PrayToday's witness is from Chicken Soup of the Soul, A Book of Miracles by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hanson, and Leanne Thieman. The title of this story is Summoned to Pray.Matthew 11:28 “Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours.”“Honey, I'll leave as soon as duty is over. That should be right after midnight,” my new husband promised. I hung up the phone, a newlywed anxiously anticipating our every other weekend reunion. At that moment, I questioned the sanity of our decision to spend our first year of marriage apart as I completed my teaching degree at UT Arlington, and he completed his last year of service at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.I straightened up our tiny one-bedroom apartment, then went to bed to await his arrival. In spite of my anxiety, I still managed to fall asleep, dreaming about our weekend together. Suddenly, I was awakened from my sound sleep with a summons to pray, as real as if it had just been delivered by a mailman.It was accompanied by an urgent knowledge of what to pray for. My husband's immediate safety. I thought back to another instance just the year before, when I had felt an urgent need to pray for Jim in Vietnam.Later, I received a letter he wrote, telling me about a late-night trip back from taking a shower when he nearly stepped on a bush viper. Miraculously, he had seen it just in time. He was not wearing his glasses at the time, and the only light was from a friend's tent where a prohibited candle burned.I wrote back telling him about my urgency to pray for him on that very same night. We both knew it was the Lord's doing. So now, I fell out of bed on my knees. I cried as I prayed to the Lord. Then, as quickly as the summons had come, it was gone. My tears dried, and I fell back asleep, remarkably peaceful despite the traumatic awakening.The last thing I remembered was glancing at the clock on the nightstand. It was 2.50 a.m.There was a knock at the door. I sat up in bed and looked at the clock again, 6 a.m. I thought to myself, Jim must not have been able to leave when he originally planned. Then I remembered the urgent call to prayer. I rushed to the door, opened it, and there stood my young husband, a bit disheveled, his right eye covered with a black patch.He quickly answered my questions. A car going only 30 miles per hour, with no lights, pulled out of a bar onto the highway just outside Fort Worth. My husband was driving 70 miles an hour on the highway, and there was a collision. Our new car was totaled. The officer at the scene said the other man had been drinking. The only injury was broken glass in one eye.For some reason, I felt that I needed to buckle my seatbelt right before getting to Fort Worth, Jim said. He'd never done that before. Back then, in 1969, there were no seatbelt laws. Thank God I gasped, hugged him tighter. What time did this happen? I'd just checked the time. It was 2:50 A. M. By: Sharon L. Patterson.I thought this was a really good Witness Wednesday for today because I know a lot of you get woken up in the middle of the night, and you're not sure why, and you're not sure what to do. So I just wanted to share this with you and to tell you if you do get woken up in the middle of the night, ask the Lord if there's something specific or someone specific He wants you to pray for. Your prayers could make all the difference in the world. And thank you to Sharon for sharing this story in the book so that we can all learn from it. 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

Are We Underestimating Praise?2 Chronicles 20:21-22 "After consulting the people, Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and to praise him for the splendor of his holiness as they went out at the head of the army, saying: “Give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures forever.”As they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were defeated.”In this chapter of Chronicles, God’s people have armies coming to attack them from three different places. Things were not looking good. Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jahaziel, son of Zechariah, as he stood in the assembly. He told the king and all the people of Judah that they shouldn’t be afraid because this was not their fight. It was God’s fight. He told them to march down against the invading armies, but that they would not have to fight the battle. This is where the verse picks up. “After consulting the people, Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and to praise him for the splendor of his holiness as they went out at the head of the army, saying: 'Give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures forever.”Jehoshaphat and his army were headed into what seemed like a hopeless battle. There were three different armies waiting to destroy them and take their land. You would think they would have the soldiers lead them in this battle. Even if they trusted God, you would think that just to be on the safe side, you would have the soldiers go first. However, King Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and to praise Him for the splendor of his holiness as they went out to face the armies. “As they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were defeated.”Did you catch that last part? It doesn’t say that once they started fighting, the Lord gave them victory. It doesn’t say their enemy was defeated by their mighty hand. It says that as they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against their enemy, and they were defeated. They didn’t even have to fight a single person. They didn’t have to lift their hands at all in this fight. They just needed to lift up their voices. Do you have enemies that you need to defeat? Are you praising God now while you are in the middle of it, or are you waiting until you get out of it?Sometimes we are trying to fight our enemies on our own. We know we need God, and yet we ask Him for so much that we feel we should try to do this one on our own. Yet, instead of leading with praise, we lead with anger, frustration, sadness, jealousy, and whatever other emotions we are feeling at the moment. Can you think of a time when you have charged into a situation with your emotions leading the way? How did that work out for you? For me, it never works out. When I go into a situation on my own without inviting the Lord to come with me, it never works out as I intended it to. However, when I do think to praise the Lord while I am in the middle of a difficult situation, it always turns out well. There are times when we think God has abandoned us. We are praying and it does not seem like He is with us. Maybe we are the ones who have abandoned God. We may be praying, but are we praying with a hopeful heart? Are we trusting God will come through for us when we pray? Are we praising God for all He does for us? God is working in our lives every single day. Are we praising Him for that? I talk a lot about gratitude because I think it is so important to go through life being grateful for what we have. I think when we are grateful for what we have, God blesses us with more. Being grateful is also a great way to shift our mood if we are feeling sad or having a bad day. Sometimes, all it takes is a perspective switch, and we can turn our whole day around. Praise is different from gratitude. Sometimes, we can be praising God for what we have and what He has done for us, and yet praise is so much more than that. We can also praise God for who He is. Sometimes we are in a situation where we may not want to or be able to praise God for the situation. For instance, in this verse God’s people were not praising God for the situation they were in. They were not grateful they had three armies coming after them. They were praising God for “the splendor of His Holiness.” They were praising God for who He is. He is the Fountain of Life. He is the great “I AM.” He is the Just One, and He is the King of kings. He is the Lord of Lords, and He is the Light of the world. He is the Lord our God. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. How often are you praising God for simply being God? How often are you spending time in prayer thanking and praising God for being everything you need Him to be? Maybe the next time we are in a hard situation, instead of charging into the situation with our guns blazing, we can lead with our praise. Instead of leading with our anger, frustration, and

Praise Series #9 Praise & Thanksgiving Psalm 145:1-3 “I will proclaim your greatness, my God and king; I will thank you forever and ever. Every day I will thank you; I will praise you forever and ever. The Lord is great and is to be highly praised; his greatness is beyond understanding.”I read this and thought it was a great verse for this series. I was talking to a friend on the phone, and she mentioned that she was talking to a family member and they had a great discussion on gratitude. She said they talked about being thankful for this day, the sun, and all the little things. She was explaining to him how important gratitude is.I was talking with another friend after mass, and she also happened to mention gratitude. She suggested picking one night of the week and having the kids think of at least one thing they can be thankful for and then talking about how important gratitude is. There are so many benefits to gratitude and no downside. One benefit of gratitude is that it can help you shift your mood. You can take any circumstance that you are in and find something in that moment to be grateful for. No matter how bad the situation is, if you can find something to be grateful for, then it will help shift your mood.For example, if you have lost a loved one recently, you can be grateful that you had that loved one to lose; some people don’t. If you broke your arm, you can be thankful that you still have your arm, or that it will heal eventually. Some people lose their arms and have to figure out how to live life without them. Although even in that circumstance, you can be grateful that you didn’t lose more than your arm, or you can be grateful that although you lost your arm, at least you didn’t lose your life. These are examples of how you can find something to be grateful for in any situation, even the bad ones. However, what about the good times? It is important to be grateful in the good times as well. Sometimes, when things are going well, we don’t take the time to stop and be grateful for it. Why is this? Is it that we are just too busy? Is it that we don’t think of it? Is it because we don’t want to jinx it? I’m not sure why we don’t do this more. Maybe it is a combination of all those reasons. The reason why isn’t really important. What is important is that we start doing it now. If we want God to trust us with more, then we need to show him that we appreciate what we already have. What can you be thankful for today? Can you pause this episode and list five things that you are grateful for today? They don’t have to be big things; it could be as simple as the changing of the leaves or the snow falling. I find myself so much more grateful this time of year. I drive around in awe of God’s magnificent beauty, and it makes me so grateful to be alive. What makes you smile, brings you joy, and makes you grateful to be alive? Have you thanked the good Lord above for it yet? Why not? You wouldn’t have it without Him. “I will proclaim your greatness, my God and king; I will thank you forever and ever. Every day I will thank you; I will praise you forever and ever. The Lord is great and is to be highly praised; his greatness is beyond understanding.” I just talked about gratitude and how we should be grateful to God for all that we have. Now, I want to talk about praise. This is why I read the verse to you again. It is so beautiful. I will proclaim your greatness, my God and king, I will thank you forever and ever. Do you see how the two sentiments go together so nicely in this verse? First is the praise, talking about how great the Lord is. Then it ends with I will thank you forever and ever. The author is taking time to stop and thank the Lord for all that He has done for him. Then it says, Every day I will thank you; I will praise you forever and ever. Do you see how both of these things are so important to the Lord? He wants us to thank Him every single day and also praise Him forever. Praising the Lord can be something else that we forget to do. We don’t usually forget to pray to the Lord when we need something; however, praising him is not something that we think to do. What if you started adding praise into your prayers? What if, at the same time as you are asking God for something, you were also telling Him how great He is? For instance, “Dear Lord, I ask that you be with my son as he has a contest at school today. Please help him to be calm and remember what he has learned. Please help him to be gracious, whether he wins or not. Lord, you are truly amazing. You do so much for us, and we are so very thankful. I love you, Lord, and I ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen. Did you see how easy it is to praise the Lord? It could be as simple as adding a line or two to the prayers you are already saying. Another time we seem to forget to praise the Lord is after He has answered our prayers. This may sound strange, as you would think the first thing we would do when our

Praise The Lord, Both Now And Forevermore Psalm 113:1-2 "Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, you his servants; praise the name of the Lord. Let the name of the Lord be praised, both now and forevermore.”This verse was given at the prayer group last week, and when I first looked it up, I was hesitant. I had a little conversation with God about how I have already talked about praise a lot and that maybe I should use a different scripture. I still think it is so crazy how I always try to talk to God about how my ideas might be better than His, or try to tell him something like He doesn’t already know everything. Anyway, while I was trying to convince God about how I wasn’t sure praise was the topic I should talk about today, he reminded me of what I learned while listening to Father Mike’s Catechism in a Year podcast. This podcast is so great. I know I have talked to several of you who started it and couldn’t really get into it, and so you stopped. I just want to say that I get it. It was not super interesting like the Bible in a year was when it first started. Now, I love it. I thought it was going to be just a litany of rules that I didn’t really want to listen to, but that I would because I want to be able to defend my faith to others, especially my loved ones, and also because I truly want to know why Catholic’s believe what we believe. I was so wrong. It is not at all a litany of rules. It is an explanation of so much. It talks about who God is, who Jesus is, who the Holy Spirit is, and who they are in relationship to one another. That part was beautiful. Recently, we have been talking about the mass and why, where, when, and how we meet. I had no idea about most of the stuff he was talking about. It helps me to see the mass in a whole new light. A much-needed new light. I have always liked being Catholic. I mean, I didn’t always love going to mass every single week, even when on vacation. I didn’t love getting picked up early from a friend’s house so I could go to mass. However, I did like the mass. I like how I know what to expect; I like how every mass is the same all over the world. I love that we have the body and blood of Jesus at Mass. I love all the prayers and sacraments. I love being Catholic, and yet after listening to the Catechism for a year, I am falling even more in love with our faith. It is not just about our faith, either; it is about so many things. I thought it would be a bit like the 10 commandments, a list of what we can do and what we can’t do. However, it explains in so much detail not only what we believe, but why we believe it, and where in the Bible you can find reference to it. It has been amazing.This week was about the mass, and it was talking about praise, specifically praise music. The church says that out of all of the art, out of all of the things that can help us pray well, singing and music are of inestimable value, greater than that of any other art. That is from CCC #1156. The reason music and praise songs are so important is that they combine sacred music and words. Many praise songs use words right out of the Bible. I remember when I first noticed this, I was so excited. After I went to a retreat with the Military Council of Catholic Women, I picked up a CD of Anne Trufant's music. I had no idea that Christian music was a thing. I mean, I knew we sang songs at church, but I didn’t know there was a Christian artist in all genres of music. It was the greatest discovery ever! While I was listening to this music all the time and starting to learn the words, I would then begin to see or hear the words when I was reading or listening to the Bible, or when I was in church. Over the last few years, when I talk with God about the growth in my prayer life, the deepening trust I have in Him and His plan, and the calm I am able to have in the storm, He repeatedly tells me it is due to my praise. I truly feel praise can deepen our faith more than we know. The more we praise, the more we can see the amazing things God does for us, even in the hard times. When we are focused on praise, we are focused on finding the good, even in a bad situation. Praise can be hard at times. There can be times when we feel as though we don’t have any reason to praise God. There can be times when it feels like everything is against us, and everything we try fails. When it is hard for us to praise, I think this is a sign that we need to praise all the more. The good thing about praising God is that you can do it through listening to music. You don’t even have to say anything if you don’t want to. You can let the words of the music just wash over you. The songwriters and singers of Christian music do such a good job of praising God. They have taken lyrics right from the Bible and put them to music. Not only is this good because we get to hear God’s words, but also because it helps us learn them. Matt Maher took the Our Father prayer and made it into a song with a nice beat. He did this because one of hi

Praise Series #7 Great Is The Lord, and Greatly to Be Praised Psalm 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 who 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 it 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 who 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 do 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 aweso

Today I have two witnesses or you. One is from a friend of mine that recently went on a vacation to see her daughter and she shares how the Lord was with her the whole time. The second one is 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 one testimony from the Anxiety/Depression Category. I know so many people who are struggling with anxiety and depression right now. Suicide seems to be increasing as well. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray that when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation, too. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your anxiety and depression, He can help.First up, my friend from the prayer group.. She realized once she got to FL that she had lost her passport. She didn’t really have any other current form of ID, and so she had no idea how she would get on her plane back to MA. This is the message she wrote after she got back from her trip.I want to thank everyone who prayed for me during my trip to Florida. God showed me that He was God and that He was taking care of me. I was not supposed to board the plane without my passport, but I did. My daughter Maria and I arrived early at the airport on Monday, 11/24/25. I had a late flight. The plane was supposed to arrive at Logan at midnight. We went directly to security. When I saw the security officer, I immediately asked the Holy Trinity to soften his heart. He took my expired license. He photographed me and then let me go. He asked Maria to obtain a pass so she could stay with me. JetBlue changed my flight to an earlier one and upgraded my seat to 6F. A male passenger helped me with my bags until the wheelchair assistant arrived to help me. He brought me directly to where my ride was parked.The perfect moment arrived when I listened to my phone messages on my landline. I heard JetBlue say, "We have found your passport. Please call us at this number. I could hardly believe it. I had to set up a FedEx number so JetBlue could mail me back my passport. I received a phone call today regarding the tracking number. I should get my passport back this coming Monday. While I was in Florida, someone charged my credit card for an unauthorised transaction, but my bank caught it and prevented it from going through. They froze my card. I had to go to the bank yesterday to obtain another credit card. I can testify that the Lord is taking excellent care of me!I was mostly sick throughout my trip, but I will always be grateful to God for showing me His love and care.Brianna: From the age of 10, I was stuck with the label “child prodigy,” winning piano competitions, featured in local newspapers, and recognized as a passionate, fiery recitalist. Yet, even as a youth, I was severely depressed. I was insecure, seeking affection, and perpetually in pursuit of attaining “good enough.” Right before my 16th birthday, my world suddenly turned upside down. In an unexpected turn of events, I faced a close encounter with death, had my innocence taken, and watched helplessly as my mother’s health began to rapidly fail. Too ashamed to ask for help and blaming myself for the situation, I despairingly turned to self-harm, eating disorders, and eventually, planned my own suicide. One day, I heard the song ‘Broken Pieces’, and I found something onto which I could cling to – Truth, even when I could not feel it and it failed to make sense.Through involvement with an organization called Csehy Summer School of Music, I came to personally know Christ. For the first time in my life, I experienced peace, hope, and true joy. Dedicating my life to God, I went back home with a different perspective. My life was still intense – balancing high school and conservatory studies, living between home and the hospital, while being a full-time caretaker for my undiagnosed mother. By the grace of God, I managed to graduate as Salutatorian and get accepted into music school. However, shortly before college began, my mother passed away.I started my B.A. in piano at Charleston Southern University, using every spare moment to pour my heart out into the keys as a wordless prayer. Yet, a lingering pain in my right hand soon became constant. A few months after my mother’s funeral, I was diagnosed with severe damage in my right hand, incited by the physical strains from being a caretaker. The only option left was surgery, followed by excruciating therapy, without a guarantee of returning to the keys. My doctor strongly advi

Praise Series #6 Praise the LordPsalm 117: “Praise the Lord, all you nations; extol him, all you peoples. For great is his love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord.”Praising the Lord is so important. It is important not only when things are going well, but when things are not going so well. God can and will use all things for your good. It may feel impossible to see that when you are in it, but he will take what the devil means for harm and use it for good. I was going to say that praising God when things are going well is easy. But actually, that is not always true. A lot of times, when things are going well, we don’t think about God. We are busy just living our happy lives, and unless something comes into our lives to upset the good things we have going, we often don’t think of God.I don’t think the problem is that we don’t want to thank God for all the good he has given us; I just think that it doesn’t occur to many of us. We think more of God when we need something. When things are bad, we are quick to blame God, or to ask Him why this is happening, but when things are good we don’t think to ask God why it’s happening. What did we do right to deserve all this happiness? Why did God allow the great things to happen? Those are not questions we usually ask Him. However, he is the first to be blamed when things go wrong. Why is that? Why do we give him none of the credit when things are going right and all of the blame when things go wrong? God is there in the good and in the bad. We would be nothing, have nothing, without him. It would be so great if we could learn to praise in both good and bad situations. That probably sounds strange, praise Him in the bad situations? What am I supposed to say, thank you so much that my baby boy is sick? No, that is not what I am saying. You don’t have to thank him, but you can praise. You could say something like, “Lord, you are all-knowing, you are the great physician, and I know that you can heal my son. You are all-powerful, and your ways are better than my ways. I don’t know why this is all happening, and I know I may not understand this side of heaven. What I do know is that you love us and you want the best for us. We ask that you heal our son. We thank you so much for answering our prayers. As you have said in Matthew 7:7, “Ask, and it will be given, seek, and you will find, knock, and the door will be opened.” So, Lord God, we are grateful for your hearing our prayers and answering them. We thank you for the strength you have given us, the strength to get out of bed in the morning. We love you, Lord, and we praise you for being you.” Do you see how there are ways to praise God even in an impossibly bad situation? There are plenty of bad things that happen. God does not want all these things to happen; they are not his perfect will. I don’t know why he allows bad things to happen. However, I believe, if we start praising God more in our own lives, then we will see fewer bad and more good things happen. If we can learn to praise God when we are struggling, and also remember to praise him and thank him when things are going well, I truly believe that is the way to a happier life.I have been listening to Father Mike Schmitz read the Bible in a Year podcast. We have spent quite some time now listening to the story of King David. Actually, David was discussed long before he became king. When he was just a young boy, he took a slingshot and four flat stones and defeated the giant that no one else would go near. The whole army was afraid of the giant, Goliath, but David knew God could do anything, so he was not afraid. David had a complicated life. He did so much good, and yet, he also did some really terrible things. One thing that David did really well was praising God. He thanked God when he was being blessed. He remembered to thank God when things were going well. He pointed out to all who would listen that God was the reason for his success. However, even when things were bad, he praised God. That doesn’t mean he didn’t question God. He definitely did that. He definitely asked why he had to go through things, why God was allowing them to happen, and how long the hard times would last. Then, after questioning, he usually ended up praising. The Psalms in the Bible are full of David’s praises and his questions to God. In one minute, David will be asking God how long he will have to endure this suffering, and then in the next verse, David will be praising God and thanking God for all that He has done to bless him and provide for him. I think when we start praising God more, we start to see more good things happen. I believe this happens for two reasons. First, I think God blesses us more when we remember to take a minute to thank Him and praise Him for all He has given to us. Second, I think we see more because we are looking for the good. When we stop to praise God when something good happens, then we are taking the time to not

Praise Series - Praise Is The Way Out Of The DarknessPsalm 150 “Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty firmament! Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his exceeding greatness! Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp! Praise him with timbrel and dance; praise him with strings and pipe! Praise him with sounding cymbals; praise him with loud, clashing symbols! Let everything that breathes praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!”There is so much power in praising God, and the enemy knows that. One day, I was talking with some of the ladies in my Encounter class about dryness in prayer and when we feel we are in the darkness. Have you ever felt like that? Have you ever felt like you are doing your part, praying to God, and yet you can’t feel Him, you can’t seem to find Him? Have you ever felt like He has abandoned you? You are not alone; this happens to everyone at some point. We had a speaker at our conference who said that when we feel like God is pulling away, that is not a bad thing; it is actually a good thing. Damian Stayne said during his talk that when we feel like God is pulling away from us, He is actually just stretching our heart muscle. If we want to grow in our faith, in our trust, in our love of God, our heart muscles must grow too. God is helping it to do that by gently pulling away at times and then coming closer. During a discussion with my friends and classmates, we talked about what we do in the dark times. One woman said she just had a few days where she felt alone. In the previous days, she had felt very close to the Lord, and it felt amazing. Then she entered a few days where she couldn’t feel the Lord. She felt alone. She said she remembered hearing somewhere that when you are in the darkness, you should praise the Lord. She decided, even though she didn’t feel like it, she would praise the Lord, and in a few days, she came out of the darkness.I may have mentioned this before, but in case you haven't heard it, Mother Teresa was known for her love of Jesus. She had a very personal, intimate encounter with Jesus on a train once, and it fortified her faith beyond words. She loved Him. When others met her, just by being around her, they came to love Jesus too. Her love for Jesus was overflowing. Mother Teresa also went through a dark time. She would go into prayer time, and she couldn’t pray; she didn’t feel God anywhere. There were times when she questioned if He existed. She knew He did, because she had seen Him, yet she didn’t feel as if He existed. This dark period for her wasn’t just a year or two; I believe it was more like 50 years. I saw one place online that said, “For nearly 50 years, Mother Teresa endured what the church calls a 'dark night of the soul' — a period of spiritual doubt, despair, and loneliness that many of the great mystics experienced, her namesake St. Therese of Lisieux included.”Can you imagine that? Fifty years of spiritual doubt, despair, and loneliness, and those around her did not know. She did share this information with her spiritual director, but most of those around her would have said she was a happy person, so full of the Light of God. She smiled often and spread God’s joy to many others. It makes me sad to think she didn’t have that joy inside of her. I pray that none of you listening to this podcast have to endure 50 years of suffering as she did. You will probably have to endure some times of darkness, times when you feel lonely, you think God has abandoned you, and so on. When this happens, remember this episode and praise God through it.I believe that praising God more is the answer to so many questions. It is the solution to so many of our problems. I was praying one time while I was out for a run, and I asked God to tell me what I was doing that was different than others. I asked Him to tell me why I was able to have such a deep trust in Him, and I really felt like He said it is because I praise Him so much. I love to listen to praise and worship music. Ever since I discovered Christian music, I have been in love with it and listen to it whenever I get the chance. Spending all this time praising God has definitely increased my faith. I have also had a practice of daily (or as close to daily as I can get) gratitude. This has really made a difference, too. I think both of these help train my mind and keep it focused on the things that are important. They keep pointing me back to Jesus.If you find yourself enduring what the church calls the “Dark night of the soul,” try praising God through it. I don’t know a lot about the “Dark Night of the Soul,” but I don’t think it is typical for it to last as long as it did for Mother Teresa of Calcutta. I believe Damian said his lasted about 10 years. However, you can also have dark periods of isolation that last just a few days, as my friend had a few weeks ago. The timing of it all is up to God. God has a purpose for this period of isolation, a

Today’s Witness Wednesday has two stories I read on Facebook. They are stories of people giving of themselves when they didn’t need to. The first one starts with one young girl's selfless acts and ends with a whole lot of people. The next one is about a man who made a lot of mistakes and yet at the end of his life does something remarkable for a little girl he didn’t even know. I pray that when you hear them, you can see God moving in the world. I pray that when you hear them, you can see that yes, there are a lot of bad things going on in the world, but there is also a lot of good. We need to focus more on the good.”My name's Walter. I'm 69. I'm the night custodian at Lincoln Middle School. Been mopping these halls for 11 years. Most folks don't even know my name. I'm just "the janitor guy' who empties trash and fixes broken lockers.But I notice things. Like locker 247, every morning, I'd find food wrappers stuffed in the vents. Candy bars, chip bags, cracker boxes. At first, I thought it was just messy kids. Then I realized someone was hiding food.One night, I stayed late. Around 8 p.m., I heard the side door creak. A girl, maybe 13, sneaked in with a backpack. Went straight to locker 247, stuffed it with grocery bags, then left quickly.The next morning, the food was gone.I didn't report it. Instead, I watched. For two weeks, the same pattern. She'd stock it at night. By morning, empty.Finally, I left a note in the locker, "You're not in trouble. I just want to help. -Walter, the custodian."The next night, she came to my supply closet. Terrified. "Please don't tell anyone," she begged. Her name was Sarah. She'd been sneaking food to three younger kids, brothers whose dad worked double shifts and forgot to buy groceries. "They're too embarrassed to ask anyone," she whispered. "So I use my lunch money and... borrow from my mom's pantry."My heart shattered."What if," I said slowly, "locker 247 just... had food in it? And nobody asked questions?"Her eyes went wide.I started small. Spent $30 of my paycheck on peanut butter, bread, juice boxes. Left it in the locker overnight. By morning, gone. So I added more. Granola bars. Apples. Crackers.Then something unexpected, I found money taped inside the locker door. $5 and a note, "I'm a teacher. I know what you're doing. Here's for more food."Then $20 from someone else. "My kid graduated from Lincoln. This school saved him. Keep going."Within a month, other staff knew. The nurse donated. The librarian brought canned soup. The gym teacher left his Costco card. "Buy in bulk," he said. "I'll cover it."Locker 247 became legendary. But quiet. No announcements. No assemblies. Just... there. A place where hungry kids could take what they needed without shame.Sarah graduated last year. Came back to see me during finals week. "Walter, I'm studying social work now," she said. "Because of you. You taught me something. Hunger hides in plain sight. But so does kindness."She handed me a photo. Locker 247, but at a different school. Across town. "My college volunteer project," she smiled. "We're putting them everywhere."I cried in my supply closet that night. Sixty-nine years old, crying over a locker.Now? Seventeen schools in our county have them. They call it "The 247 Project." Stock the locker. Ask no questions. Feed the invisible kids.I'm just a janitor. I mop floors and unclog toilets. But I learned this: Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is notice. And then quietly make space for dignity.So look around. At school, work, your neighborhood. Someone's hiding their hunger. Their struggle. Their shame.Leave something behind. Food, money, hope.Locker 247 isn't just metal and paint. It's proof that caring doesn't need permission. Just action.And it starts with seeing what everyone else walks past."Let this story reach more hearts....Please follow us: AstonishingBy Mary Nelson The Death Row DonorAt County General Hospital, 6-year-old Maya's kidneys were failing. Nine months on the transplant list, and her rare blood type meant no matches. Her tiny body was shutting down.Two hundred miles away, Marcus—a number, not a name anymore—sat in a Death Row cell. Twenty years he'd been there, waiting for an execution date for a crime that destroyed lives, including his own.In his cell, he kept one possession: a faded photo of his daughter, who died at six from sudden illness. That was 25 years ago, before everything fell apart.When the prison chaplain mentioned a public plea for Maya's rare blood type, Marcus recognized it immediately—the same type he and his daughter shared. He volunteered for testing, knowing it wouldn't change his fate. The prison board suspected manipulation. The media called it a publicity stunt.He was a perfect match.After brutal legal battles, officials approved the donation as his "final act." Yesterday, handcuffed and flanked by guards in his green jumpsuit, they brought him to meet Maya before surgery.The little girl, told only that this man was "her hel

Praise Series—God Provides In Mysterious WaysPsalm 145:14-18 “The Lord upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all his ways and faithful in all he does. The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.”There are so many good things in this passage. “The Lord lifts up all who are bowed down.” How often do we need the Lord to lift us? It is so great to know that the Lord lifts us when we pray to Him and ask Him to. When we are bowed down to the Lord, we are praying and worshipping Him. When we spend this time with Him, He can lift us. This verse helps us to see the power of praise. When we praise and worship the Lord, He lifts us to higher heights. I heard a saying once that I absolutely love and placed on the door in front of my treadmill. It says, If you complain, you remain. If you praise, you will be raised.I have seen this time and time again. I have seen the difference between people who sit and complain about their circumstances and those who can be grateful. Those who spend all their time thinking about what they don’t have and those who focus on the little that they do have. We have a choice in every situation. Are we going to turn to the Lord? Are we going to ask Him and rely on Him for all that we need? Are we going to be grateful for what is going right or focus on all that is going wrong? I promise you, if you start to focus on the good. If you start to praise the Lord for what you do have, you will get more of it.Next, the verse says, “The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time.” This one is a hard one for many of us. We do not want to wait for the proper time. We want things to happen on our timeline, or maybe we think our timeline is the proper time. Then we struggle when God disagrees. My dad told me a story once that shows how God will give food to those who look to him at the proper time. My mom & dad have 11 children. They also had a friend who had several children, I think at least 7. This friend called up and asked my parents if they could watch their kids, as something important had come up. My parents said yes because they were always there for those in need. However, my parents had just been talking about how they had no idea how they were even going to feed their own children dinner that night, and now they had seven more mouths to feed. So, they did what they always did in these situations: they turned their eyes to God and asked Him to provide.Shortly after their prayer, they received a knock at the door. It was a neighbor holding bags of groceries. It turns out the neighbor's father had to move in unexpectedly, and they needed to combine his father’s household with his. They had just gone grocery shopping, and so they did not have room in their cabinets for all the food from his Dad’s place. So, they asked my folks if they could use any of the food. My parents graciously accepted. When looking through the bags they notice that there was plenty of pasta. My parents prayed, “Lord, if we only had some meat, then we could serve spaghetti to all these kids.”Guess what? There was another knock at the door. It was a different neighbor. He had a cooler full of meat. He said that he and his friend had been hunting and they had too much meat. He explained that he and his friend had already stuffed their fridge and freezer, and still they had no room for this leftover meat. Again, my parents graciously accepted. Then, when they looked in the cooler, there was ground meat for spaghetti. They were so thankful. This was not a one-time thing for my parents. My parents were faithful in their prayers, not just when they were in need, but even when things were going well. God was faithful in answering them. My parents did not have a lot, and yet I didn’t hear them complain a lot. My parents knew that God was their provider. They knew that all they had came from Him, so they praised Him and thanked Him for all He gave them.Next, it says, “You open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.” This is another great verse. I believe that God puts our desires in our hearts. I am talking about our deep desires, not the desire to eat ice cream at midnight. The desires I am talking about are the desires to have a specific job, the desire to be married and have children, the desire to sing, or act, or whatever it is you feel you are called to do. As this verse states, God wants to satisfy the desires of every living thing. I know this can be hard to believe if you have a desire that you have been waiting for God to satisfy. Maybe you have been waiting for the right man/woman to come along so that you can be married and have children. I know it is hard when we want something, and we have to wait a very long time. Isaiah 55:9 says, “As the heavens are high

Praise Series- Praising in the WaitPsalm 40:1 “I waited and waited and waited some more, patiently, knowing God would come through for me. Then, at last, he bent down and listened to my cry.”My friend gave me this verse above, and I instantly loved it. I love that it captures our reality at times and also captures the love of the Father. Sometimes, we feel like we are asking and asking the Lord for something, and yet we wait and wait and see no answers to those prayers. Have you been in a season of waiting? Have you been asking the Lord for something, and yet you are still waiting for the answer to those prayers? This can be really hard. We pray to the Lord, and we want Him to help us right away, or at least I do. I really struggle at times with waiting to see the results of my prayers. This is especially true if I am praying over someone for healing.I struggle because I know how powerful God is, and I know He can heal anyone at any time. I struggle because I don’t believe he wants to see anyone struggle, and yet He doesn’t heal everyone, and He definitely doesn’t heal everyone the second we pray for healing. So, we end up doing what this verse says: we wait, and we wait, and we wait. Sometimes we wait patiently, as this verse says, and sometimes, not so patiently. It all depends on our circumstances at the time. One thing I like about this verse is that it says I waited patiently because I knew God would come through for me. This is important for us all to remember. God will come through. It is also important to remember that His ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts.If I can remember this, I could wait more patiently. I need to remember that God knows what He is doing and that His plan is better than my plan. He is the creator of the Universe; of course, His plan is better than my plan. If he is not healing someone right away, there is a reason for it. I don’t have to know that reason, I just have to know that He has one.One way to remind myself that God has a plan and to trust that God will come through is to think back to all the times He has come through in the past. When did the Lord come through for you? When in the past did you wait on the Lord, and then he answered your prayers? I know for me, He has always come through, and sometimes I ask for some pretty big things. When I asked the Lord to heal my niece and let her live, He did, and we didn’t even have to wait very long. Well, I am sure it felt like a long four months in the hospital before she could come home. When I asked him to help my son get off of drugs, He did. When I asked Him to take away my dad’s pain, He did. When I asked Him to take away my sister’s pain, He did. When I asked Him to save my marriage, He did. God has come through for us more times than I can count, and this is why I can wait patiently. I know He will always come through for me. He will always come through for you, too! We just have to wait longer than we would like at times.I love that this verse says, “Then, at last, he bent down and listened to my cry.” I love this because it shows the Father as a loving father. It shows that He cares about us. It doesn’t just say they finally heard us. I love that it says he bent down and listened to my cry. What I picture is a loving Father who bends down to listen to me cry. He doesn’t just stand there and let our cries go up to his ears. He bends down to show us we have His attention. I picture Jesus; since we don’t really know what God looks like, bending down, and I picture us as little children whispering our requests into his ear. It's almost like we are telling Him a secret, one that no one knows.I love to picture the Father like this. I think if we read more verses like this, we begin to see God as our loving Father rather than a stern Father figure who is judging us and just waiting to call us out on everything we are doing wrong. God loves us, and He wants to answer our prayers. However, like a loving Father, He also knows that when we ask for something that is not good for us or that we are not quite ready for. He knows this, so he either gives us something else or waits until we are ready. God is so good!One thing that I have found really helps in the waiting is praising the Lord. If we are going to have to wait anyway, then how are we going to spend that time? We could spend it complaining about the wait and how miserable we are, or we can spend it praising the Lord for the good He does every single day and for the good we know He will do when He answers our prayers. Which would serve you better? Which would be a better way to pass the time? God is good. If you look back over your lives, I am sure you can see many ways in which He has come through for you. It might not always be exactly how you would like or when you would like, but He does always show up.If things have been bad for a really long time and you honestly can’t think of a time when God has come through for you, then praise Him for w

Praise Series — God Is Not Punishing You!Psalm 103:8-10, “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.”Praising the Lord when we are in a good place is one thing. It is a completely different story when we are struggling. One reason is that we might think we are going through this hard time because God is punishing us. I was praying for someone who was suffering from tinnitus. While I was praying with him, he mentioned that he thinks he has tinnitus because God didn’t want him to listen to so much music and wanted him to pray silently more. If you lose your job or even if you lose a loved one you may believe that these bad things are happening because of something bad you have done in the past. We are all sinners and we may feel like God is punishing us for our sins.I want to reassure each of you that God is not punishing you! I am 100% sure of this! God does not punish us. God is only good. If you want proof that God does not punish us, you can look at today’s Psalm. Psalm 103:8-10, “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.” God does not create the bad things that are happening in our lives. You did not get cancer because you had an affair. You did not have a miscarriage because you don’t go to church. God is not punishing you. God did not do this bad thing to you.God is all-powerful and all-knowing. If he wants you to learn a lesson, he can teach it to you in a million different ways. He doesn’t have to have you get sick before you turn to Him. Just because God can use this awful tragedy or the illness for your good doesn’t mean He gave it to you. God does not create illness. He is a healer. God is love and mercy. God blesses people; He does not curse them.If you need another scripture verse, look at Romans 8:1, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Condemnation (punishment) is not for those who belong to Christ. God does not punish His children—He saves and restores them. John 3:17 states, "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. The central message is that Jesus's mission was not to judge and punish humanity, but to offer a way to be freed from sin and its consequences.It is easier for many of us to believe that Jesus wouldn’t punish us, but harder for us to believe that God does not punish us. God is a good and loving Father. Regardless of what our own father was like, God is always good and always loving. It is hard for us to believe things if we have no frame of reference for them. I think part of the reason I can believe that God is a good Father who loves me and doesn’t want to punish me is because my own father was a good example of God’s love to me. I am not saying I never got into trouble as a kid. I did occasionally do things that weren’t ok. I did get in trouble. But my parents did not condemn me or make me feel shame for what I did. They gave me consequences so I would learn not to do it again, but they didn’t punish me.I know that I am lucky and that so many kids don’t grow up with a loving, caring example of a Father. In the United States, 1 in 4 kids grows up without a dad in the home. That means 25% of kids in America are growing up without a dad. In the 2020 Census, there were 18.4 million kids who were living without their biological dad. It is easy to see how the view of God got so distorted. We are living in a world of broken people. We are all just doing the best we can, and yet the best for so many of us is not good enough. These are just the kids who grow up without a dad. We also have the kids who grow up with an abusive dad. If so many people have no reference for a father who loves you unconditionally and who would never hurt you, then how are they supposed to understand that God could actually love them like that?If none of those other scripture verses convinced you that God is not punishing you, hopefully this one will. Isaiah 53:5 “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.”Jesus took the full punishment, so we don’t have to. What we receive now is peace, not wrath. Do we deserve to be punished? Absolutely. Every single one of us has done something wrong, deserving of punishment. However, that is why God sent Jesus to us. Jesus came to save us from the punishment we deserved. "Jesus died the death we deserved, so we might live the life he earned.”Why would God send his only Son to earth to die a gruesome death if he was just going to punish us for all we did anyway? If God is punishing you for your sins, why did J

Praise Series-Sacrifice is the Heart of WorshipPsalm 95:6-8 “O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. O that today you would listen to his voice!”This verse was received at the prayer group yesterday, and when I read it this morning, I thought it would be a great one for today’s devotional. It talks about worshiping the Lord and hearing the Lord’s voice. These are both things I love to talk about, so it seemed perfect. I also think they are great topics to end the week with. I believe the world could be a much better place if more of us were worshipping the Lord instead of all the things in this world that we worship.I was listening to Father Mike Schmitz's sermon from Sunday, October 27th, yesterday on Spotify, and I really enjoyed it. He talked about how the heart of worship is sacrifice. He said you can tell how important something is to someone by what they are willing to sacrifice for it. I thought this was interesting and also challenging at the same time. Everything involves a sacrifice or at least a giving of something. For instance, if you want to eat healthily, you need to give up your soda, your junk food, and your comfort foods. If you want to watch TV, you need to give up that time that could have been spent doing something else. If you want to worship God, you need to give Him your time.Father Mike talked about one of the most important times to worship the Lord in Jewish culture: Passover. He described how the Jewish people would sacrifice a lamb to the Lord at Passover. However, they wouldn’t just buy a lamb and then sacrifice it. They would buy a lamb the Sunday before Passover, and they would bring this lamb into their home. They would live with this lamb for a week. They would begin to care for this lamb, and they may even love this lamb by the end of the week, as they have just spent the week taking care of it. Then, they would carry this lamb upon their shoulders and bring it to the temple to sacrifice it to the Lord. They would do this every year. All this talk about sacrifice being the heart of worship really challenged me. It challenged me because I am in a season where sacrifice is hard for me. Well, true and meaningful sacrifice is hard for me. These days, it seems I am all too happy to sacrifice my productive time so that I can watch TV. However, what am I getting from the TV? What is that saying about what I am worshipping? I am really struggling with sacrificing for the Lord. My heart wants me to fast, and my brain finds all these reasons why I can’t. My heart wants to spend more time alone with the Lord, and yet I find myself watching TV instead.I am not sure why sacrifice is so hard for me right now. Sometimes, it comes much easier. I used to be pretty good at fasting or not watching TV. I am not sure why it is more of a struggle these days, other than the fact that life is not always linear. I heard this term when I was teaching about the dark night of the soul, and I think it not only applies to that, but it applies to all of life. Sometimes, we can think that life is like a mountain we are climbing, and we climb this mountain slowly and steadily, and then we reach the top. However, have you ever really climbed a mountain or seen someone climb a mountain? Yes, slow and steady is a good pace, but you aren’t always moving forward. Sometimes, you slip and fall. Sometimes, you catch yourself right away, and other times, you slide down a bit before getting back up again. Sometimes, there will be a big cliff you can’t climb directly, so you need to take another path, which might not be headed up the mountain, but rather around the mountain until you find a safe way up the mountain.Do you see how walking up the mountain is probably not just a straight path up? Life is like this. It is not linear, meaning we go from one step to the next to the next. Sometimes, we go to the next step, and then we regress back three steps, then we take the next right step. Life is a process. It is one we all go through, and I am sure if you look over your life, you will see that it didn’t always feel like you were moving forward. Sometimes, it felt like you were moving backward.I think going into this weekend, we can remember what Father Mike said about the sacrifice being the heart of worship. How can we worship the Lord better this weekend? What can we sacrifice in order to show our love for the Lord? If we look at what we are already sacrificing in our lives, that will show us what we are worshiping right now in our lives. What are you worshiping? For me, I think it is food and TV, but I wish it was the Lord. This weekend I will spend some time talking with the Lord and seeing what He thinks I should be sacrificing.Which brings me to the second part of this verse. The last line of this verse says, “ For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his han

Today’s Witness is from a very dear friend of mine. It is her testimony of how she forgave someone who did the unthinkable to her. She is a wonderful woman who has such a strong love for Jesus. She is a mother of two kids and a wife. She is a photographer, a karate champion, and so much more! You can hear in her voice just how excited she is for this breakthrough. God is so good! 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"fine us. It is not fun, 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

Matthew 18:21-22 “Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”A few of the ladies from my prayer group and I attended a bootcamp to teach us about the unbound method of deliverance. Unbound is a method of setting people free from the things that weigh them down. Sometimes we open doors to the enemy in ways we didn’t know and Unbound helps us close those doors. There are 5 Keys in the Unbound program. The five keys are: Repenting of sin and expressing faith in Jesus; forgiving oneself and others; renouncing the lies, spirits, and tactics of Satan; taking authority over the works of Satan; receiving the Father's blessing. When you go through an Unbound session you meet with someone and they walk you through each of these keys. In our first night of training we covered an intro and then we learned about the first two keys. The first one was repenting of sin and expressing faith in Jesus. We all sin, it is a part of our daily life, and yet when we sin in hurts our relationship with God. When we sin we are opening a door for the enemy to come in. Repentance for our sins is a big part of our freedom. If we truly want to be free we can’t have our sins hanging over us. One way our sins can invite the enemy in is because He will then use that sin to make us ashamed of what we did. Shame is straight from hell, it is not from God. Once we start to feel ashamed then we pull away and we tend to isolate because we feel as though we aren’t worthy of anything. Once we repent we bring our sins out of the darkness and into the light and they no longer have hold over us. The second key we talked about is forgiveness. This is the one that left the biggest impression on me. This is the one that I don’t think we realize how important it is. I remember when I was at a Bible study and they were talking about forgiveness. We were talking about Matthew 6:14, “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.” When they said that God forgives us the same way we forgive those who trespass against us I was so surprised. I had no idea what they were talking about. Now, I have been a Catholic for my whole life and this was only about 10 years ago. I have probably said the Our Father prayer more times than I can count and yet I never really put two and two together. Have you ever had a time when you heard something or realized something and it was life changing for you? I can remember two times this has happened for me with scripture. The first one was when I discovered Romans 8:11, “And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.” When I discovered we have the power of the one who raised Jesus from the dead, the same power Jesus had, that was life changing for me. The second time was when I discovered what I am really saying when I say the Our Father prayer. “Forgive us O Lord as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Did you know that is what you are saying? How many times do you say that prayer, have you said that prayer? If you say the rosary every day you have said it at least 6-5 times daily. When I heard this I was determined to learn how to forgive better. I was determined to not hold things against people. I have done my best to do this. Over the course of the last 10 years have a learned quite a bit about forgiveness in my quest to become better at it. First I learned what forgiveness is and is not. Forgiveness is making a decision that you are no longer going to give the thing that happened any space in your brain anymore. You are not going to think about it and you are not going let it dictate what you do and how you act. Forgiveness is an act of the will, it is not a feeling. You can, not feel like forgiving someone and yet you can still forgive them. You can forgive someone and yet not feel like anything has changed. Forgiveness is not saying the thing that the other person did was ok, it was not. When you forgive you are not letting the other person off the hook and condoning their behavior. Forgiveness is making a decision to turn the judgement over to God. Forgiveness is making a decision that you are no longer going to let the unforgiveness eat you up inside. The person you are refusing to forgive probably has moved on and your unforgiveness is not bothering them at all. The analogy that I have heard time and time again about forgiveness is that it is like taking a little sip of poison every single day with the expectation that the other person will die. I know you are angry, hurt, sad, I am sure you have every right to be and also, as long as you keep thinking about it and refusing to forgive, you can’t really heal. I talk to people I know about unforgiveness all