Walk Boldly With Jesus

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. This month in mentoring, we're discussing finding joy in the struggle. 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.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 other 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! And I know I am probably crying while I am saying it, but the music is so upbeat and I love it! Whenever I hear these songs, it reminds 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 closing 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 rig

Can Your Faith Heal You?Mark 10:52 “And Jesus said to him, 'Go your way; your faith has made you well.” And immediately he received his sight and followed him on the way.”How many of us have the faith of this man that Jesus healed? He was sitting on the side of the road, and when he heard Jesus was passing by, he called out to him. The crowd of people told him to be silent, but he kept calling out. How many of us listen when others tell us to be silent? Or worse yet, we don’t feel like we are worthy to speak up in the first place, or we are too nervous to speak out and ask for help for fear of rejection. Bartimaeus did not listen when others told him to be quiet. He kept calling out. He believed that Jesus could heal him, and he was not going to let the chance pass him by. Once Jesus heard him calling out, Jesus told him to call him over. When the crowd told him that Jesus would see him, the bible says, “He threw aside his cloak, sprang up, and came to Jesus.” How great is that? How many of us are jumping up at Jesus’ call? I know it’s different. Jesus was right there, and he got to see him and talk to him. But we can also talk to Jesus anytime we want to. Even though we cannot see him, he is calling us to him. He wants to invite us into a deeper relationship with him. Do we hear this call? Do we jump up, throw our cloak aside, and run to him when we are called? I love the faith that Bartimaeus had. He knew Jesus could heal him. He did not seem to have any doubt that Jesus could cure his blindness. He also didn’t seem to doubt that Jesus would want to help him or to question whether he was worthy enough. He saw Jesus walking by and called out to him. Do we do this? Jesus is here for us; he wants us to call out and rely on Him. Are we doing that? It seems each week at my Prayer Group, God is showing up for us, and he is telling us to come closer. He keeps telling us to rely on him, that he is our protection and our refuge. Why are we not calling on him more than? When Jesus healed Bartimaeus, He said, “Go your way; your faith has made you well.” How great would it be to hear those words from Jesus?One scripture verse that I think is amazing and that I struggle with is Mark 11:22. This verse is Jesus’ reply to the cursed fig tree. Jesus said to them in reply, “Have faith in God. Amen, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it shall be done for him.” This is the type of faith that I strive for, and yet sometimes wonder if it’s possible. I wonder if there are humans who can have this type of faith? I know that God can do anything. I truly believe this. And yet, when I think of myself commanding a mountain to be lifted up and thrown into he see, I can’t seem to wrap my head around that. I have searched for this type up faith for a very long time now. Probably since the first time I actually heard this scripture and let it sink in. The very next verse is Mark 11:23, “Therefore I tell you, all that you ask for in prayer, believe that you will receive it and it shall be yours.” This again just blows me away. All that you ask for shall be yours if you believe. That seems like a lot of pressure, and at the same time, a huge promise on God’s part. As I said above, ever since hearing scripture like this, I have searched for this type of faith. I would love to believe without a shadow of a doubt that God can do all the things that I ask him to do, that he will answer all of my prayers. I find it a struggle to believe as much as I would like to, and I wonder if this is because I have a human brain and we were trained from an early age not to believe in things that we can’t see or prove. We were mostly taught that there are certain things that can be done and things that can’t be done. I think as humanity grows, we are learning to question that more and more. But it takes time to overcome years of that type of thinking. I thought I would give you one way that I have been able to deepen my trust and faith that God can do all he says he can do. I read books about all the miracles God has done and continues to do. I love to read books about healing. God is so amazing and he is performing miracles every single day, and if we would just be on the lookout for them, we would see them. If we can’t see them in our lives, we can read about them in others’ lives. Harold Hill’s book, “How to Live Like a King’s Kid,” is an excellent example. If you read all the amazing things that God did in his life, you can’t help but start to believe he will do it for you as well. Harold Hill also talks about his faith journey and how he got to a point where he began to see God do amazing things in his life. Also, reading any books on healing, Francis McNutt, Randy Clark, Mary Healy, Matthew & Dennis Linn are just a few that I have read that have been really good. When you read about God’s healing of others and how there are peo

Offer God Your Everyday Ordinary LifeRomans 12:1 “So here is what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life-your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking around life- and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for Him.”When thinking and praying about what to talk about today I look back at scripture verses God has given to my prayer group recently. The first one that I saw was this one. I went to the Bible app on my phone as I did not bring my Bible with me today. It was set for the message translation and when I read this verse I felt the the Lord confirmed this is what He wanted me to talk about.This verse is likely one that you would recognize in another translation, as it is one that I definitely recognized. However, it seems very different in the message translation. In the New American Bible Revised Edition this verse says, “I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as al living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.” Does that sound familiar?I have heard many people do talks about this verse and yet the message translation seems to come at it from a bit of a different point of view and that is what I felt the Lord wanted me to focus on today. I felt God wanted me to focus on the part that says, “Take your everyday, ordinary life- your sleeping, eating, going to work, and walking around life and place it before God as an offering.” What struck me with this is the thought that this is probably harder for many of us than to offer many other sacrifices.Many of you listening are wanting to live your lives walking boldly with Jesus. You are trying to pray every day, you may be saying the rosary often, if not daily, you may be fasting or do something other things as a sacrifice to the Lord. Praying isn’t always easy, but it is familiar to many of us. Scripted prayers, especially if you are Catholic, are easy because you know all the words, you don’t have to think about it, you could say those prayers from mass anywhere. You have them memorized. Sacrificing your time to pray, or to talk about God with others, or even to fast isn’t that difficult because you know how to do it. You feel holier, or closer to the Lord when you are doing these things.However, what about the regular, every day parts of your life? Can you offer those to the Lord as an offering? Can you stop before you begin your day and offer your day up to the Lord? Can you invite Him into your day? I saw a YouTube video about this a few years ago and it has always stuck with me. It was a video with Father Mike Schmitz. I will summarize that video for you now. It was called “3 Steps to Unceasing Prayer,” Father Mike Schmitz. If you google this you can watch the video yourself. It is just over 5 minutes long. In the YouTube video, Father Mike Schmitz lists three steps, he learned from St. Francis DeSales, that you could do to transform everything you do into a prayer.Ask God to be present. Yes, God is always present and attentive to you, but by asking him to be present you are letting him know you will be present too.Offer this moment to God. Offer him all the joy, the suffering, whatever you may be feeling, offer it to God. Accept –Resolve to accept whatever comes out of this momentThis will not only transform how you have a relationship with God, it will transform how you live. This is because when you are asking God to be attentive to you, you are allowing every moment to be a sacrament. You are inviting God into that moment which makes it a channel of Grace. Then, when you offer the moment up to him you make each moment a sacrifice. When you choose to accept the outcome you are making every moment a moment of surrender. For instance you can do this when you are going to bed at night. God, I ask you to be attentive to me and I am attentive to you. I offer this night’s sleep to you as a sacrifice, as a gift to you and I accept whatever comes out of it.God is not just with us when we are praying or when we are at church. He is not just with us when we are calling upon Him or calling out to Him. God is always with us. He really wants us to know that He is in the ordinary mundane parts of our life as well as the glorious parts where we are praying or participating in mass. He want us to know that He is not judging you for not making the time to pray. He is with you in all that you are doing.Yes, He would love for you to spend time sitting down with him one on one and talking together. However, He is also happy when you talk with him while you are driving into work or when you are doing the dishes or the laundry. He is not demanding your full attention. He just wants to be with you in all the ways He can. Can you offer your suffering to God? Can you offer your joy to God? Can you offer it all to God? Why is it so hard for us to believe He is with us in the everyday things we do? Why do we strive so hard to D

Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website, called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose three testimonies from the Healing Category. 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 situation, He can help. I hope you enjoy these testimonies.Christine and Darrell Thank you for your prayers for my bestie, June, who had a four-hour brain surgery on Monday in Omaha, NE. She had no side effects. She came home Thursday afternoon. She has 100 stitches in her head and 20 staples. She is almost 80 years old.The doctors were floored by her fast recovery. I’m not! I thank God so much for popwe and all who prayed for her! She told me she cries often with her thanks to God for all He did for her and is in such gratitude for all who prayed for her. She has such appreciation for all who have shown love, caring, and concern for her.I saw her yesterday, and you would never know she had surgery unless you saw the back of her head. God is still in the miracle business. As Matthew says in his song, Don’t Stop Praying, “Mountains move with just a little faith.”We just thank God for giving Juney back to us and for popwe praying!God bless you! My name is Caleb, and I wanted to share my story of healing. In 2017, I had some tests done after I had developed symptoms of lightheadedness, extremely painful headaches and a few other symptoms. One of the tests was a brain scan, where they found an anomaly. My parents and I were kept mostly in the dark with the whole situation. We only found out how serious it was when they rang us and asked for us to send the scans to one of the big hospitals in Sydney, Australia.A few weeks passed with back and forth phone calls and doctors appointments, when we found out what it was. It was a tumor, which the doctors couldn’t work out if it was cancer or an abnormal growth of cells. The doctors said that surgery was an option due to the tumor possibly being cancerous. They declared the date for my operation was the 13th of December, 2017. I was 13 at the time, and scared, as I knew the risks and how quickly things could go wrong. While family, friends, and strangers prayed for me and healing, I couldn’t work out why God was putting me through this.A week or two before the surgery, my mum had a fight with my nan (her mum), after my nan accused her of having no faith or trust in God. Mum did trust in God and had faith, but she was looking at the other possibility of losing me. I remember turning to mum after my nan left and said ” Yes, we must trust in God for healing, but we also must remember to account for the possibility of me not coming out of the surgery”. I know it’s a bit of a grim thought, but I wanted to comfort my mum, just in case.The surgery came and went. I woke up a bit groggy the first day, but by the second, I wanted to get up and run around, go outside and try new things. But the tubes and cables attached to me stopped me. My parents bought me a Lego Technic set to build while I recovered, which was meant to last more than a day, if I rested (which I did not, despite multiple nurses and doctors asking me to). When the day finally came when the results of the tumor came back, we were relieved that it wasn’t cancer. The same day the doctor came for the results, he also checked the stitching on where they operated and was astonished to find it had healed faster than he had ever seen. We were given the all clear to go home a few days later.Later that year, I developed symptoms of migraines and epilepsy, which were confirmed. It was hard with new restrictions on what I was allowed to do. I was banned from getting a license to drive, I was banned from rifle shooting with my Grandfather and wasn’t to be left alone. I became very depressed, I became angry with God and blamed Him for my misfortune. I turned from God. To be honest, I believe that was the worst thing I did. My life became even darker without His light to guide me. Eventually I had thoughts of ending my own life. I went to see a counselor, but it didn’t make a difference.One morning I woke up, in the middle of the first COVID lockdown, extremely depressed and went to attempt to end my life, when something stopped me. It felt like a presence, and like a voice telling me to stop. I felt like I could see again and I realized what I nearly did. I eventually worked through it, opening up more

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.”The theme for mentoring this month is Joy in the suffering. Several bible verses came up while researching this topic. I had already written at least one episode about most of them. However, I had not covered this verse yet. 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 not 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 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 peo

Calm The WatersPsalm 89:9 “You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them.”There are several instances in the Bible when the sea was raging and God calmed it. One of the times was when God asked Jonah to go to Ninevah and preach repentance. Jonah did not want to do this and instead of going to Ninevah he went in the opposite direction and got on a boat going elsewhere. While they were at sea the waves began to rise up and a great storm came upon them. They called Jonah to see if he had any ideas as they had all prayed to their gods and nothing had happened. Jonah told them to throw him over the side of the boat into the sea. He explained that God was mad at him because he disobeyed God’s orders. Once they threw Jonah off the boat, the seas calmed, and those that were on the boat offered a sacrifice to God and made vows to him. You can read more about this in the Bible in the book of Jonah.Another time that God calmed the storm is recounted in Matthew 8:23-27. “Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him. Suddenly a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!” He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm. The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!”The third time I was thinking about was when Jesus was walking on water to get to the boat. This can be found in Matthew 14:22-33. “Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone, and the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it. Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear. But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.” “Come,” he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?” And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”I think each of these instances can teach us a lesson about what we should do when we are in a storm and the waves are rising and we need God to come and quiet them. In the first story, Jonah was trying to avoid doing what God asked him to do. God gave him a direct order, and he didn’t want to do it, so he thought he could run away from the problem. I am not sure if you know the story of Jonah or not, but running away did not solve his problem. In fact, as soon as he was thrown overboard he was swallowed whole by a giant fish and there he stayed until he agreed to go to Ninevah. Has this ever happened to you? No, I don’t mean have you ever been swallowed by a giant fish. I mean have you ever tried to run from your problems, or responsibilities, only to end up in a worse situation than you could have imagined. I am not sure exactly what Jonah was running from. At first I thought he was scared of the people in Ninevah hurting him, as they were terrible people. Then I read that he was running away because he knew they would repent and he didn’t think they deserved forgiveness. Either way, his situation did not improve by avoiding this responsibility. Running from our problems don’t make them go away. Jonah still had to go to Ninevah and preach repentance but he ended up first having to get thrown into the sea and spend a really long time all alone in the belly of a giant fish. Sometimes we are called to do things we don’t want to do. You may feel that you have a completely logical reason for not wanting to do it. Maybe you feel you aren’t qualified for the task or maybe you are afraid, whatever the reason is you don’t want to do it. Running from this task or avoiding it is only prolonging the inevitable. I think what this first story teaches us is that we should just do the task God is asking us to do. We may not think we are capable or qualified to do it but God wouldn’t ask us to do it if he wasn’t going to equip us for the task. If we are doing what the Lord is asking us to do, we can’t fail. He won’t let us.The second story teaches us that we should trust in the Lord. Jesus was on the boat with them. He is the son of God. They could have just asked him to calm the waves and He would have. They could have prayed to

Today’s witness is from a news clip I saw on YouTube. It was a segment that aired on CBN. This witness is about a man who got a diagnosis that seemed like it was a life sentence. The doctors said there was nothing they could do to help this man. The family knew even if the doctors couldn’t do anything, God could. When you listen to this witness I hope you don’t treat it like a nice story. I pray that you hear it and you recognize the power of God working in this story and that you know in your heart that God can do the same in your impossible story story!!When you're going to the doctor and you hear nothing encouraging, that's when your faith is going to have to stand. In November 2020, Gerilyn Baker's husband David started having constant nosebleeds. Doctors removed a polyp from his sinus cavity, but soon after, things got worse.When his face began to swell, his wife thought he had an infection, and she told him they needed to contact the doctor quickly. The results of a CT scan shocked the family. David's brother-in-law, Chuck Denny, was there.They told him he had stage four nasal cavity melanoma. The options they gave him, they said surgery wasn't an option because the facial disfigurement would be too massive. They told us that there was really nothing that they could do.Chemo wasn't for that type that he had. I'd never seen anybody healed of cancer. Every time I heard the word cancer, it was a death sentence.And I felt like unless God moved, David wasn't going to make it. My first thought was that, from my teaching, we need to move into a fast and seek God and see God heal him. David's face rapidly swelled to the point where he couldn't eat or see out of his right eye. Pastor Mark Gilbert remembers the many prayers from multiple church locations and beyond. Both church families were praying for David, and there was a multitude of other people. It wasn't just our churches.David used to be a pastor himself, so there are a lot of people that he knows that was praying for him in different areas of the country, just believing God for the turnaround in his life. Several times a day, we would pray together, and there were times when you felt like you were just lost for words. You felt like you were only repeating yourself because you were worn out.He was worn down from this sickness. His condition just kept getting worse, but the prayers at that point we didn't see much. This was swelling inside of his mouth as fast as it was on the outside, and he couldn't hardly eat.It was just terrible, and we knew that we were facing a horrible storm in life. On Easter morning, Dr. Tom Renfro and his wife Sid were visiting their church for a special prayer service. Remembering her husband's own miraculous healing from cancer, Sid was moved with compassion to pray for David.When I prayed for David, I don't touch people's head. I normally just touch their shoulders, but I did touch his face because I wanted to be very specific and very direct. The wife remembers standing there, and she thought, it's going to come off in her hand because you could feel such a presence of God's Spirit.Sid prayed a prayer that her dad had prayed. By this time tomorrow, this side of your face will look like this side of your face, because that prayer had worked for her dad. The day after Easter, something amazing happened. David said, There's a change in my face. Do you see it? His wife said, I've already seen it. He looked at his wife and I said, I see a change in my face.She said, I do too, but I was afraid to say anything. So they decided to go eat with their family again. They said, well, let's just see what they have to say.And they all saw him, and they said, that thing's shrinking. And it was just a matter of days, it was gone. David's tumor vanished, and doctors later confirmed he is now cancer-free.The Bakers are forever thankful to God for answering their prayers. The wife said, “There are many people who have a diagnosis like David, and I feel like they saw death. Maybe they prepared for death. But I'd say, don't give up. I'd say, take His Word into your spirit, and I'd say, believe it with everything you've got because that's what we've done.His brother said, “When I witnessed David up close and personal with him, I mean, it just boosted my faith. I mean, I know that God can do anything, big, little. It don't matter.”Sid said, “God can move in anything. I felt jubilant when I saw the picture, and the tumor was gone, and he had a normal face.”Someone else said, “When I see David now, I think about the benevolence of God, the mercy of God, that God in this state of David's life, in his older years, that God has proven His faithfulness to him.Well, I'm thankful that, you know, what happened, that God healed me. I'm thankful for that. I've never doubted what God was capable of doing. I've always believed that He's the healer, that He can heal cancer, He can heal heart attacks, He can heal anything that's affected man. He can take care o

I Will Be Joyful In God My SaviorHabakkuk 3:17-19 "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.”The theme for mentoring this month is Finding Joy in the Struggle. I was looking through some scripture verses that had to do with finding joy in the struggle this morning, and this verse came up. This verse is a favorite of mine because there is a lot going wrong for the people in this verse, and yet they chose to find joy in the Lord anyway. The things mentioned here are not small things. It might not seem like a big deal to us, as how many of us eat figs anyway? However, it was a big deal at the time. The people who wrote this depended on those crops not just for food, but also for their livelihood. If they did not have figs, grapes, or olives, what would they sell at the market to get the other things they needed? The verse says the fields produced no food. What could they eat if they had no fruits or vegetables? Normally, I would say at least they have animals to eat. However, the verse also says, no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls. I can’t even imagine what I would do if I were in their circumstances. This verse is basically saying that they had nothing. They had no food, they had no animals, and if they didn’t have any of that, then they didn’t have anything to trade with to get the other things that they needed. I know that we often think our situation can’t really get any worse; however, for these guys, I would say that it really couldn’t get much worse. How did they react to these dire circumstances? Did they yell and scream at God? Did they question Him and ask Him how dare He take it all away? Did they turn away from God? No, they didn’t do any of those things. In that very same sentence, they said, “Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”Wow, that is incredible. Don’t you wish you had their strength? Don’t you wish you felt the same way on your worst days? I will rejoice in the Lord. Not, I will trust the Lord, not I will be ok with the Lord, I will rejoice in the Lord. What did they have to rejoice about? Then it goes on to say I will be joyful in God my Savior. I was about to ask you what they had to be joyful about, and then the words “in God my Savior” rattled around in my head. They weren’t joyful because of their circumstances; they were joyful because of God, their Savior. They knew God was going to save them. They didn’t know when and they didn’t know how, but they relied on the fact that God was their savior and if He saved them before, He would do it again. Why is it so hard for us to remember this? What came to mind was, maybe we haven’t seen Him save us before. What if we have never needed saving before, and so we don’t know that He will save us this time. If this is what you are thinking, rest assured that whatever God has done to those who have come before us, He will do to us. If He has saved His people in the Bible, then He will save us. Those are our people. Remember Hebrews 13:8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” Because Jesus saved His people in the Bible over and over again, we know He will save us. We also know that because of His promise in Jeremiah 29:11, which says, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” God will use all things for our good. The problem is, we don’t want to wait for it. We want things to happen when we are ready, or when we think we are ready. When are we going to come around to the fact that God’s timing is perfect? If things are going wrong for us, God’s got a plan. He might not have planned for you to get yourself into this trouble, but as soon as He saw you headed there, He came up with a plan to fix it. That is what He does. We mess up, and He fixes it. I truly hope He doesn’t get tired of doing that. We would be lost without Him. Let’s say that we are able to come to grips with our situation. We acknowledge that God is doing His thing, and although we don’t know how it will work out, we know it will work out. Then what do we do? We still need to figure out a way to lessen our pain so we can live to make it through to the other side. The people in this verse decided that, although these terrible things were happening, they were going to rejoice in the Lord. Do you think you could persevere in this difficult time? Do you think you could not only keep hope in the Lord, but also rejoice in the Lord?I am currently reading a new book titled Built Through Courage by Dave Hollis. In this book, Dave talked about something that I thought was a really cool idea to help us get through some really difficult times. I know some of you are either really struggling, or you have loved ones

Discipline Yourselves 1 Peter 1:13-16 “Therefore, prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed. Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance. Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”I really like the first line of the verse. It says to prepare our minds for action. This can be hard for some of us. We can have a lot of ideas, but then we get stuck wanting them to be perfect, and so we spend a lot of time thinking about them and how we should do them, but then we don’t do them because we aren’t quite sure how. Does this sound familiar? I know I can’t be the only person who does this. I can’t be the only one who wants to do things perfectly, and so I get stuck and don’t end up doing as much as I know I could be doing.I want to follow the Lord’s will and I want to follow His commandments, and yet sometimes I don’t do something because I am not sure exactly how He wants me to do it. The thing is, most of the time, I don’t think He cares how we do it, as long as we are doing it with the right frame of mind and with our heart. If we let the Holy Spirit guide us, then we can’t go wrong. Why do we worry so much, then? I think it is because we love the Lord so much that we want to be perfect for Him. I think it is because we struggle to believe that He truly loves us just as we are. We are used to human love, which is fallible and conditional at times. We feel as though we must earn the Lord’s love, and so we want to do things perfectly for Him. I don’t think we even realize we are doing this. I know I wasn’t aware. I was talking to my spiritual advisor about how I felt like I needed to do all these things, and she pointed out that I was feeling like I needed to earn God’s love. We don’t need to earn God’s love! He loves us more than anything, and He has loved us long before we were born, and He will love us long after we die. I know I have probably said this a lot, and I will keep saying it because we struggle to believe it. We do not have to earn God’s love; He gives it freely and abundantly.The next two words are words that we don’t always like: discipline yourselves. This is not easy. This is one thing that we get to work on during Lent. We get a chance to discipline ourselves by fasting from things that are important to us, or doing things that we don’t normally do. During Lent, we get to step outside of our comfort zone and stretch ourselves in the area of discipline. I remember watching a YouTube video of Father Mike talking about why we fast during Lent. He explained it in a way that made me enjoy fasting a little more. He discussed how fasting is a way of demonstrating our love for. Fasting is an act of love. It’s kind of like that question, what do you get the guy that has everything? Well, God has everything; He doesn’t need anything. He loves us completely, and one way to show Him our love is to fast, or give something up, or start doing something we normally don’t do. The thing is, it isn’t really an act of love if we complain and grumble the whole time. If we go through the motions and we do it just because we have to, then that is showing obedience, but it is not showing love. How can you show God your love? What can you fast from? What can you start doing? The next line says, “set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed.” To be honest, I almost skipped over this line. I was not really sure what it meant or how to explain it. Then I figured if I didn’t know, maybe you don’t either. Also, the point of this podcast is for us to grow on the journey and for us to understand scripture a little more and figure out how we can apply it to our lives, so I looked up the meaning of this line to see if anyone else had already explained it. The consensus seems to be that we are to hope in the grace that Jesus will bring us, instead of hoping in things of this world, like money, material objects, or even people. I think we have a tendency to hope in the things of this world instead of looking towards Jesus. I found an article titled, Two Ways to Fix Your Hope on Future Grace by Jen Wilkin. (Click Here for Article) It is definitely worth reading. She talks about how we need to place our hope in the day that Christ is coming because the days we are currently in may be filled with trial and sorrow. The two ways she talks about in the article to fix our hope on future grace are to prepare our minds and be sober-minded. It is a very good article, and I would do it a disservice to try to summarize it for you in a few short lines. I recommend you take a look at the article if you wish to get a better understanding of this verse and how you can put it into practice in your own life.The next line says, “Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the d

The Peace of GodPhilippians 4:6-7 "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”The other night was very hard. I knew it was going to be a long night, and so I decided, while it was quiet, I would write a devotional. I only got as far as asking the Lord for a scripture verse that would get me through the night. One that was just what I needed for the situation I was in. When I have done this before, I have had my Bible with me, and I would ask the Lord a question, then ask Him to show me the answer in His Word. Then I would randomly open the Bible and read the pages until I found my answer.Tonight I didn’t have my Bible. I mean, I could have gone upstairs to get it, but honestly, I didn’t really have the energy to move. So, I wondered how I could randomly search an online Bible, as I did have my computer. I decided to type into the search bar “A scripture verse to help me make it through the night.” And I told the Lord that He knew my exact circumstances, and I asked if He could give me the verse I needed to read or hear.Today's verse is the one that appeared in the search results. "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” I laughed at first because I thought that was a pretty tall order. Not to be anxious in this situation was definitely difficult, as one of my sons was making poor choices, and there wasn't much we could do about it. However, when I really thought about it, I realized I wasn’t anxious. I was mad and I was sad, but I wasn’t anxious.This reminded me of a conversation I was having with a friend the day before. When I told her all that was happening, she asked how I was dealing with it all. She asked how I was getting out of bed in the morning. I stopped and thought about it, and the answer was through the grace of God. This is not just something I was saying because I didn’t know what else to say. I truly mean it. I can look at the situation and know that God’s grace is helping me through it. I can see His hands all over this situation and that makes it easier for me to turn it over to Him.I could absolutely be worrying about my son all day, every day. I could be trying to fix it and trying to make sure all goes smoothly, and I may be doing that more than I need to. I could let this get to me so much that I stay in bed with fear of what might happen or sadness of what has already happened. Yet I am not, and I know that is because God prepared me for this moment. He prepared me for difficult times. There have been so many really hard things that have happened in the last 21 years, and I know that they were all preparation for this moment.I know God will get me through this hard time because He has gotten me through so many other hard times.I know that this addiction will not destroy my son because God has promised me that it won’t, and I can trust in His promises. I can wait for God’s timing on this because I have waited a really long time for things in the past, and although the wait was never easy, it was always worth it in the end. I always say that I don’t know how I developed a deep trust in the Lord. I don’t know why I am not more worried about my son. I think this is because we all expect it to be complicated. We expect some difficult formula to show us how to trust in the Lord. I think it is actually so simple that we don’t want to believe it. Kind of like the story of Naaman in 2 Kings 5.Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the Lord had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy. He found out about a prophet in Samaria who could cure him. Long story short Naaman came to Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.” But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, “I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy! Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?” He turned and went away in a rage. But his servants approached and said to him, “Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, ‘Wash, and be clean’?” So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.We think it m

Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website, popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose a few testimonies from the Addictions and Deliverance Category. 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, also. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your situation, He can help. I hope you enjoy these testimonies. 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

God's Heart is Not Hesitant—It's JoyfulLuke 15:10 “There is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”We are closing out out month on Repentance in mentoring and I think this verse is an important one for us all to know about. God's Heart is Not Hesitant—It's JoyfulWhen we think about coming back to God after failure or sin, we often imagine Him standing at a distance—arms crossed, disappointed, waiting for us to prove we’re really sorry. But that is not the God of the Bible. God doesn’t forgive reluctantly. He doesn’t roll His eyes when we repent. He rejoices. He celebrates. He runs to meet us.Repentance isn’t just about our sorrow. It’s about God’s joy.1. Heaven Celebrates When We ReturnLuke 15:7 “I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”This verse is from the parable of the lost sheep, part of a trio of parables Jesus tells in Luke 15: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son (or prodigal son). In each story, something precious is lost, then found—and each time, there's celebration. Jesus wants us to know that repentance isn’t the end of joy—it’s the beginning of it. God is not waiting to shame us. He’s waiting to rejoice over us. He loves us and wants us to come home. He is so happy when we come home. He is not thinking about what we did when we went away, He is happy that we made the decision to turn back to Him and to come home.2. The Father Doesn’t Just Accept the Prodigal—He RunsLuke 15:20 “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.”In the culture Jesus was speaking to, fathers didn’t run. Running was undignified. But here, the father represents God Himself, and He breaks cultural norms to embrace His child who is coming home. The verse says that while he was still a long way off…God doesn't wait for us to do all the hard work and then come to us. He sees us trying and making the effort, even if that effort is very small, and He comes running!! He sees us turn to Him, even if it is just the slightest turn, and He comes running. The father doesn’t wait for the son to finish his apology speech. He sees his heart, and that’s enough.We might think we must explain ourselves and jump through hoops to be accepted back into the family. We, like the prodigal, don’t even think we are worthy to be let back into the family. So we come up with a whole justification of why we are asking for forgiveness and explaining why it is ok if we aren’t fully forgiven. It is ok if our loved ones want to keep us at a distant.eGod’s joy is not based on how perfect your repentance is, but on your desire to return. He knows the moment your heart turns toward Him—and He moves first.3. God's Joy is Greater Than Your GuiltMany people struggle to believe God can be happy to see them after what they’ve done. They may think: “Sure, He’ll forgive me—but He won’t be happy about it.”But Scripture paints a different picture.Zephaniah 3:17 “The Lord your God is with you… He will take great delight in you; in His love He will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”God delights in you. He doesn’t just tolerate you. He doesn’t forgive you because He has to—He does it because He wants to. His joy is rooted in love. And repentance restores that relationship, which is cause for celebration.4. God’s Kindness is What Draws Us to RepentRomans 2:4 “Do you show contempt for the riches of His kindness, forbearance, and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?”God’s mercy is not weakness—it’s a strategy of love. He’s not trying to trap you in guilt. He’s trying to lead you back with compassion, knowing His joy will become your healing.5. Joy Is Mutual: God Rejoices, and So Do WeWhen we repent, God rejoices—but we’re invited into joy, too.Psalm 51:12 “Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.”True repentance leads to freedom, not fear. The weight of sin is lifted. Relationship is restored. Joy is revived. God’s joy becomes your joy.What Does This Mean for Us Today?If you’ve wandered, God is not angry—He’s waiting with joy.If you feel ashamed, know that God’s delight is greater than your past.If someone else is returning to God, don’t question their worthiness—celebrate with heaven.If you’re leading others, reflect God’s posture: compassion, welcome, and joy over repentance.Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless each one of us today. Lord, we want to believe that you rejoice when we repent. Please help us. Please soften our hearts towards you and allow us to see you as the loving father instead of the angry judge. Help us to turn to you when we mess up. Help us come back to you every time. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in

What’s Your Story?Psalm 28:7 “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him.”The Lord is my strength and my shield. This is something that I am not sure we always realize. I think most of the time, we know that the Lord is our strength. Or, at least we know that we can ask Him for strength and He will give it to us. I think when we think of the Lord, we most often think of Him as our strength vs. our shield. But, did you know that He is your shield as well. This is the part of the job that probably goes most unseen and most unrecognized. If we are weak and God gives us strength, we can usually tell. We are usually aware that He is helping us. But, what about the times when He shields us from things that we didn’t even know about? This is when we don’t know how to thank Him because we didn’t even know that He did anything. I think about this when I get stuck in traffic or hit a red light when I am running late. I wonder what God is protecting me from. I wonder what would have happened if I had left 5 minutes earlier that day. I’m not saying that every time you get stuck in traffic, God is shielding you from something, but sometimes He might be. Have you ever had a morning when no matter what you did, you could not leave the house on time? Have you ever had a series of strange things happen that caused you to switch up your routine?These could be times when God is shielding you from something. The next time that you have an experience where everything seems to be going wrong and you don’t know why, try thanking God for it. I know that may sound weird, but you will be surprised how much better you feel. Having a day or even just part of a day when everything is going wrong is very frustrating. We can get into a really bad mood, dwelling on the fact that nothing is going right for us. Our mood can start to spiral downward quickly. However, if you view this terrible start to the day as a gift from God, your mood will change. Instead of thinking that everything is going wrong and the world is conspiring against you, you can thank God for protecting you from something worse happening.You probably will never know whether God was protecting you from something or not. However, the mindset change will be great. Most of the time, our mindset is based on our view of things. There is a saying that we view things not as they are, but as we are. This means that we view everything through our own lens. This lens is made up of our past experiences. Everything that you have been through up until this point is what makes up how you view the world. Two people with different experiences in life can go through the same experience and yet view it very differently. My husband and I often encounter that. We have different views on life and different experiences. We can both be experiencing something at the same time, and yet we feel very differently towards it. For instance, we can both be in the same car, stuck in traffic. He can be angry and frustrated, and I can be happy and grateful, same situation, different mindset. Also, we can both be sitting at the same football game, and he can be happy and cheerful, and I can be bored and frustrated. What we are feeling in any given situation is based on the thoughts that we are telling ourselves about that situation. I am not sure what you think of all of this. Maybe it makes sense to you, and maybe it doesn’t. I know when I learned about it, I was slow to believe it. However, the more I read about it, the more it made sense. Also, the more I read, the more I paid attention to my feelings and my thoughts. I played around with my thoughts and observed whether they affected my feelings or not. How about you give it a try and see what you think. Think about a circumstance where you recently got upset. Think about why you were upset. What were the thoughts in your head when you were upset? Can you remember the story you were telling yourself? Let’s use the example of traffic for me to try to explain what I would like you to do. I would think about the last time I was upset. It would be when I was stuck in traffic. I was upset because I was going to be late for work. The thoughts in my head were: I should have left earlier. I shouldn’t have taken that extra-long shower. My boss is going to be so mad at me. How stupid I am for leaving late for work. I might get fired for being late. I think you can get the gist of my thoughts. The story I was telling myself was that I was wrong for taking a long shower, and now I was going to lose my job. Can you tell how this story was driving my feelings? Can you see how these thoughts would inevitably lead to upset feelings?Now, what about if I changed my thoughts? What if, when I saw traffic, I told myself a different story? What if I told myself that this was the perfect time to get caught up on that podcast I loved? What if I told myself that the traffic was a small p

Today's witness is from the Encounter Ministries Website. Patrick Reis and Father Mathias Thelen of the Diocese of Lansing, Michigan, founded Encounter Ministries (www.encounterministries.us). They say the ministry’s purpose is “to unleash the transforming power of the Holy Spirit in the world through teaching, equipping, and activating disciples to demonstrate the love of God through the power of the Holy Spirit.” Its work has been endorsed by many bishops in the U.S. and elsewhere. The ministry offers a two-year training program, the Encounter School of Ministry (www.encounterschool.org). I graduated from this program in May of 2024. It was an amazing 2 years of life. The people teaching my class and my classmates were amazing. I learned so much in two years and have been able to put what I learned into practice. That is one of the most amazing things about the Encounter School of Ministry: they teach you something new each week, but then you immediately put it into practice with something they call activations.Encounter Ministries' healing services are like nothing I have ever been to before. They start with praise and worship for a good hour before the service. Then they have a Gospel teaching about healing and give some real-life examples. Next, they have the team come up and give words of knowledge. This means that the team asks the Lord for what He wants to heal that night, and anyone who hears something goes up and shares it. Oftentimes, people are healed just by the word of knowledge. They hear that God wants to heal them, and they are healed. It can be that simple. Next, they do corporate healing. This means that the leader names a part of the body, and anyone suffering from that raises their hand. Those sitting around this person pray over the person. The leader tells them what to say, and the whole audience repeats it. There are so many healings that occur during this section of the healing service, which is amazing because it is just regular, everyday people praying over them. It is not people with special training, it is not people who are super holy and pray all the time. It is just whoever happened to sit next to that person for the service. It is such a good reminder that we are not the ones doing the healing; the Lord is. It is also a good reminder that God can use anyone.The healing services usually end with individual prayer for those who were not healed earlier in the service. These healing services are so powerful, and they even host them on Zoom sometimes. The witness for today, Gabriella, is from their website. Gabby suffered from Lupus, Endometriosis, and Ulcerative Colitis. She happened to be attending an Encounter Conference online when she heard Father call out the words of knowledge for her particular body parts that she was struggling with, and she knew she would be cured. Here is her story. I will put a link to the original testimony in the show notes. Click Here to watch the orignial video of Gabby's testimony. 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

The Lord Rejoices When You Repent!Luke 15:7 “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”The topic for tonight’s mentoring session is God’s joy over repentance. This verse is an excellent example of how much God loves us and how happy He is when we repent. Many of us think God is just waiting for us to mess up so he can say, “I told you so,” and then punish us. The truth is that God is waiting there for us with open arms, just waiting for us to repent. When we do, He rejoices.The verse says there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. I think it is essential to know this because we tend to put righteous people on a pedestal. We look at people who seem to be doing it all right and think that God likes them more than us. We believe they are highly favored, and we are not. We could never compare to them, so why bother trying to be as good as they are?This verse is telling us that this is not true. It tells us that God rejoices more over us sinners who repent and turn back to Him than He does over the 99 that didn’t need to repent. God loves you in the middle of all of your mess. He loves you even when you mess up. He loves you even when you don’t feel lovable. He loves you even when you are sure you finally did it this time. You finally did something that is so bad, He will never be able to forgive you. He loves you even then and is just waiting for you to repent so he can forgive you, pick you up in His arms, and give you a big hug. God loves all of his children, even those of us who mess up and sin. Even if we mess up and sin a lot, He still loves us.This is such an important thing for us all to know. Actually, not just know, but to fully embrace. The enemy loves to take up space in our heads. Did you know another name for the devil is the accuser? Revelations 12:10 says, “Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night.” Satan is constantly telling God how bad we are and accusing us of all the things he thinks are so terrible that God shouldn’t forgive us. Even satan doesn’t understand the Lord. He doesn’t understand why the Lord would forgive us. It makes no sense to him. And I kinda get it. I mean, we can be pretty awful to the Lord sometimes. We can say and do some pretty mean things, especially when we are mad.I mean, think about how we feel when our kids do unkind things to us. My sister and I were just talking yesterday about how we don’t understand how kids can go from being so sweet one minute to saying the most cruel things the next. This can be us with God sometimes. When things aren’t going our way, when we are stressed out, when we are frustrated, or when we feel like we are at the bottom of a deep, dark pit, we may lash out at the Lord and say very unkind things. We don’t usually mean them, but in that moment, we say them anyway.We can also hurt the Lord when things are going well. We do this by taking credit for all the good in our lives. We do this by thinking we can do things by ourselves and that we don’t need God. We only call upon him when we need him and forget about Him when things are going good. I am sure this is also painful to the Lord. I know it is painful to me when my kids only come to me when they need something. He wants to be there celebrating with us in the good times, too. He wants to give us a revelation about how we got to where we are, but we need to go to seek Him. We need to look back at where we were and where we are and see all that God has done to get us where we are today.God is so good and so faithful. He patiently waits for us to see the error of our ways and repent and turn back to Him. And when we do, he rejoices, and so does the rest of heaven!Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening today. Lord, we are grateful that you love us and that you forgive us. We are sorry that we offend you so often and are grateful that you never give up on us. We are grateful you keep patiently waiting for us to get it together and repent and turn back to you. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November / December 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email [email protected]. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am here with my joy, my children. Come and have your fill. Let the rhythm of my joy spread to one and all. Announce to the world that the Lord has come.” www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE TO DONATECLICK HERE to sign u

There is Light, Even In The Darkness!Isaiah 9:2 “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined.”This verse was received at my prayer group on Thursday. I thought it would be a good one because several of you have felt like you are in the dark lately. You feel like the waves keep coming, and you can’t seem to get your head above water. I know many of you are suffering from illness and are waiting on the Lord to fix them. You have done all you can do, and now it is up to the Lord. You know He is capable of healing you, and so you are trying to hold on to the hope that He will. Yet, each day that goes by without the healing, you find it harder and harder to hold onto that hope.I know some of you listening are struggling financially. You are praying that you will be able to pay your bills at the end of the month. You are worried because someone is coming out to repossess your car any day now. I am sure that is a really scary feeling and one that you don’t want to have anymore. I know growing up, my parents struggled financially. I remember my mom calling the water company and the electric company and letting them know that she wanted to pay her bills, but she just didn't have the money. The best she could do was send them $20 now and pay the rest at a later date. I am sure there were times when my mom felt like she was in the dark because they went so long without having any money.Others are not struggling financially or medically, but you have loved ones who are, and that is really tough too. This is where I am at right now. One of my sons is really struggling, and I am working hard to figure out how to help him without enabling him. I am trying to find my boundaries and still be there for him with all that he needs. You may be taking care of a spouse, a child, or a parent. Caring for aging parents can be really tough. I wish I knew what to say to you to make your situation easier. I wish I knew what to say to heal you or your loved one. I wish I could say some magic words and you would instantly have all the provisions and money you needed for the month. I do not know what to say. However, I do know what this verse says and what it promises us. The verse for today says, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined.” You may be walking in darkness, but you have a light shining on you. God is shining a light on you. You may feel like it is too dark to see that light, but it is there. God is always right there with you, trying to light your way. We just need to be looking for His light.This light doesn’t have to literally be a bright shining light, although for some it might be. I have a friend, Bruce, who has gone blind slowly over the last 10 years. He had a conversation with the Lord back in August. He cried out to God and told Gold that he was so tired of being in the dark all the time. He just couldn't take it anymore. Guess what God did next? He did not heal him of his blindness, but he did provide him with a light in that darkness. It was truly remarkable. If you have some time, you can go back and listen to his testimony on episode #836. You won’t be sorry you listened. It is a great witness to how good our God is and shows what can happen if we are brave enough to ask.For some of you, the bright light might be feeling good enough to get out of bed today. It might be getting a chance to sit outside and feel the sun on your face. It might be feeling good enough to eat something or to sit up and watch TV. Your bright light might be different than my bright light. However, the verse says that the people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light. So, what does your great light look like? Where can you see light in your darkness? If you don’t know what that great light is, that is ok. You are not alone. There are many of us who can only see the dark, especially if we have been in it for a long time.One way to start to see some light is to look for things you can be grateful for each day. It’s ok to just start with one thing. If all you see is the bad stuff all around you, then try to take a moment each day to intentionally find something good around you. It doesn't have to be something good about your situation, it could just be that you are grateful for the sun shining, for a good cup of coffee or tea. You could be grateful for a nice text message from a friend or the perfect song coming on the radio when you needed it the most. Gratitude is a great way to start to bring a little light into your situation.The verse also says, “those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined.” If you are feeling like you are living in the land of deep darkness, the verse says that a light has shone on you, too. There is light in every situation. God is light, and He never leaves your side. No matter how dark you feel your situation

Find The Gold In PeopleRomans 2:1-4 “You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?”We spent a lot of time in class discussing this topic of judging others and calling out other people's sins last night, and it was such a great conversation. I wanted to share the idea with all of you as well. We all know we shouldn’t judge others. Did you know the extent to which you judge others is the extent to which God will judge you? For me, finding that our, taking a minute to let that sink in, was a game changer for me. If I expect perfection from others and don’t cut anyone any slack, will God do the same? I don’t know if that is precisely how it works, but that was enough for me to double down on my efforts not to judge. I know I am not perfect. I know I have many flaws. I know I need God to be very gracious with me, which means I must be gracious with others. To me, that seems like a small trade-off. If I am gracious with others here on earth, how does that hurt me? It may be inconvenient. I may have to be nice to those I don’t like, and I may have to put up with annoyances. I may have to watch them make bad choices and not judge them for it. However, if you compare that to the alternative, it doesn’t compare. If you compare those inconveniences to what might happen if God judged me the way I was judging others, I would suffer a lot more than inconveniences after I leave Earth. I want to spend eternity with my heavenly father. Our time in this world is limited when we compare it to eternity. Romans 8:18 says, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” Is it hard not to judge others? Yes. It is worth it in the end, absolutely. When I talk about judging others, most of you are probably thinking about how we judge strangers. How we judge those we see on the streets, or in the grocery stores, maybe even those at work. Those we judge when there is really no reason to judge. We might judge someone’s outfit or their decisions, but they don’t affect us. Our judgment does not really affect them. However, what about when we view our judgment as necessary? For instance, we all want our children, siblings, or family members to be successful. We want them to have a good life. When we worry they are headed down the wrong path, we feel it is our job to correct their course. We are only trying to help them be more responsible, be healthier, be whatever it is we think they should be. Sometimes, if our children, our loved ones, or our friends are doing something that we know is a sin, we feel as though it is our duty to tell them. We feel we are helping them to their salvation if we call out their sin. We are only trying to help. I get it, and yet, are we really helping?In class, we took a look at how Jesus dealt with sin in the Bible. Sometimes, he did call it out, but only if needed and only with love. For instance, the woman at the well, He let her know that she was living with a man who was not her husband, but he never once made her feel ashamed for it. He was letting her know that He saw her, He knew her, all of her, and yet still loved her. The woman caught in adultery, he didn’t scold her, he didn’t tell her she needed to get her life together, he didn’t lecture her on why what she was doing was wrong. He showed her kindness, He saved her life, and he told her to sin no more. What about Luke 19:1-10? Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector who wanted to see Jesus. Jesus called out to Zacchaeus and said, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” The scripture says others around were muttering that the Lord would dare to eat with a sinner. Jesus never called out all Zacchaaeus’ sins. He called him by his name, showing that He knew him, and then He showed love for Zacchaeus by going to his house for lunch. Then in Luke 19:8 it says, “But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, 'Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” Why did Zacchaeus have a change of heart? Why did he change his ways? Why did the woman at the well change her ways? Both of them had a renewal of the mind through an encounter with the love of Jesus. Our goal in life, all of us, should be to lead people to encounter the transforming love of God. I know we worry about our families and friends. I know we love them, and we just want what is best for them. I also k

Are You Living Up To Your Potential?Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”The Lord has planned out your life. Before you were even formed, He had a plan for your life. Isn’t that crazy to think about? His plans for your life are good plans. He tells us directly, we don’t even have to guess, “Plans to prosper you and not to harm you.” If we know that God has plans for us to prosper, then why do we sometimes run away from these plans? God’s plans are to give us hope and a future, so why do we question these plans? Why is it so hard for us to believe that God has plans for us?I have been doing a lot of personal development, and I am in a Christian mentoring group called Big Life Mentoring. In all of the personal development books, as well as the mentoring, they talk about how we have a God-given potential. They talk about how we were all created to live an exceptional life. God wants nothing but the best for us. Does this mean that we will never have challenges? Nope. It does mean that He will be with us in those challenges and He will use those challenges for our good, not for our harm. I have talked with numerous people over the last several years about my belief that God created us all to live a big life. It is usually met with some opposition. I have been told that some people were created for a big, amazing life, and some people were not. Some people were created to have an “ok” life. Where they just go about their day, and nothing special happens. They were not created to do great things.I disagree with this. I do not think that God created any of us to just go through our days, day in and day out, just existing. I do not believe He wants that for any of us. I am also not saying that every person was created to be a movie star or make some huge impact on the whole world. I do think that we all have the same potential for doing great things with our lives. How we use that potential could look very different for everyone. Someone could use that potential to be a movie star, a priest, a mom, a lawyer, a doctor, anything you desire. I don’t think it’s the career you choose or the role you play that defines you. I think it is more about how you are showing up in that career/role. You do not have to go on a mission trip to another country to change people’s lives. If you are a parent, you are impacting lives every day with your parenting. People are always watching you, and you could be changing lives in the grocery store when someone watches you handle a complaint respectfully. There are many ways that you could have a positive impact on the world. The opposite of this is true as well. If you are walking through life angry and taking it out on all that you see, this will also be observed by others and could be changing lives, but not for the better. If that is you, that is not the life that God has planned for you. I wonder sometimes how many of us are actually living up to our potential. Are you living up to the potential that God has placed within you? A lot of people that I talk to are settling for mediocrity. They are not truly happy with their life, and they think that is just how life is. They don’t seek to change anything because they don’t feel they deserve more, or maybe they don’t think there is anything better out there, or perhaps they don’t feel they’re capable of having more. I want to tell you right now that if you are unhappy with where you are in life, there is more. God has more planned for you. Where you are now does not have to be a final destination. It could be a resting place until you are ready for the more that God has planned for you. What is it that you really want to do? What is it that makes your heart light up when you talk about it? This could be something big, like start a non-profit, write a book, change careers, or it could also be as simple as seeing my grandkids more, being in nature, going to daily mass, or spending more time in prayer. Whatever it is deep inside that you’re longing for, go get it. God has given you the potential to achieve all your dreams. Are you living up to your potential? Is there more you could be doing? You may be listening to this and thinking that I am wrong, that not everyone was made for an extraordinary life. That you were made for an ordinary life and nothing more. I would argue that your outlook might be the difference between an ordinary life and an extraordinary life. Two people may have very similar lives, as far as marriage, kids, career, income, etc. Yet one may be living an extraordinary life, and one may be living an ordinary life. What is the difference? The one living an extraordinary life has a positive outlook on their life. They are on the lookout for the miracles that occur every day and are willing to acknowledge them. They are also looking for ways that they can excel in the roles that they have. They are looking f

Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website, called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose three testimonies from the God Stories Category. 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. Hearing how God worked in their situation gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray that when you hear this testimony, 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 situation, He can help. I hope you enjoy these testimonies.First is Diane: I run a Christian camp for people who have developmental and physical disabilities, or as I like to say, “diversabilities.” Because isn’t that who we all are? We experienced great tragedy in September of 2020 when we lost many of our physical buildings, including our activity spaces, bunkhouses, and gymnasium, in a fire. Many of which had been built in the 1940s.Our campers were devastated. Many have been coming to camp for over 40 years, but without indoor facilities and bunkhouses to serve and host our campers, the future looked bleak. That said, we dutifully signed up for FEMA support to rebuild and began the process of determining eligibility in early 2021.After much prayer and consideration, we made a commitment to continue serving campers someway, somehow. And we were overwhelmed by the blessing of grants, private donations and many volunteers. We cleared our 18-acre property of fire debris, established and activity meadow, purchased 18 beautiful bell tents and opened our gates to 10 campers a week for 6 weeks. We had only a few doors left after the fires and that first year, all activities and meals were outside. Before the fires and COVID we were serving 25 campers a week, but we promised we would do what we could, and God provided everything we needed!Fast forward 4 ½ years and here we are, still providing camp with temporary facilities. We continue to work with FEMA and have only just begun to receive money to begin the process of rebuilding.We were gifted a master plan through the assistance of the Christian Camp and Conference Association (CCCA) in 2021, and now we are working with an incredible architecture and design firm of which 90% is being paid for through FEMA funds. For us 10% is a significant funding gap, but we trust our Father in heaven to pave a way for us to continue moving forward with rebuilding. If all goes well, we anticipate breaking ground on our new buildings later this year.And finally, to the reason for this long explanation. Our campers love those VBS songs you mention in some of your devos, and I like to re-introduce a few of them every year, so when I read your post this morning, I knew it was time to bring this old chestnut back to our campfire songs, “This little light of mine.” As we rebuild Upward Bound Camp we stand on the firm foundation of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, sharing and rejoicing in His love for all of us!Second is Heather: My story is about meeting my husband at the warehouse we where we worked, marrying him and then losing him to cancer after twelve life changing years of marriage and seven kids later.He came to me one day asking, “is this a pimple?” I said,” No love, you should get that checked.” He wasted no time, and the test came back as Melanoma. Within a year of that diagnosis, he went to be with Jesus.He fought really hard and had a heart of gold the whole way through. He said these words to me towards the end” I am at peace with this.”Those words will stay in my heart always. He loved Jesus so much and trusted him. I believed before I met Doug, but I honestly believe that he was put on this earth to prepare me and the kids spiritually for what was ahead. For things we did not know were going to happen.He served God in many ways, but if not for him I believe our lives would have taken a much different path. With him rooting me in the Catholic faith and me coming to truly believe it, allowed me to have the strength to carry on and keep the kids rooted in their faith.He was an amazing man. I thank you God for blessing us with him if even for a short time. We love you Daddy/ Douglas.Third is Roy: Last night, my family and I were at your concert here in Lincoln. What a beautiful evening of worship! Seeing my family laugh, sing, and worship together was a powerful reminder of God’s faithfulness and goodness.Matthew, we met about 15 years ago at a Parenting Simulcast. I was the parenting manager running point that day. It was such a joy to work with you during that event, and I still treasure the memories of that experience.I’m reaching out to tell you how dee

Evidence of True RepentanceMatthew 3:8 “ Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.”Repentance is the theme for mentoring this month. This week, we are focusing on Evidence of true repentance. When researching this, I came across this verse. I dismissed it as a very short verse, and I didn’t think it said too much. However, it kept coming up, so I sat with it and asked the Lord what He wanted to share with you about this verse. Repentance is not about just saying sorry. It is about truly being sorry, returning to the Lord, and changing our ways. If we go to confession one day and then return to living our lives the same way we had before, then is that really repentance?I know there are some sins we struggle with, sins we might confess week after week or month after month. We can be genuinely sorry for something and yet struggle to change it. However, we do need to be trying to change it. God is very patient, and He knows our hearts. He will help change our hearts, habits, or whatever we need to change, as long as we invite him into that struggle.The verse above says to produce fruit in keeping with repentance. Matthew 17:15-20 says, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore, by their fruits you will know them.” It says twice in these verses, you will know them by their fruit. What does your fruit look like?Is everything going wrong in your life right now? Is it one bad day after another? Do you feel a lot of anger, unforgiveness, and anxiety? Have you repented lately? Have you turned away from sin and back to God? God does not cause bad things to happen in our lives. I am not saying that God is causing these bad things because you have not repented. What I am saying is that our choices can definitely cause bad things to happen in our lives. Our choices can make us miserable, and sometimes we can end up blaming God for the bad results of our choices instead of taking responsibility for them and examining our lives to see where we might need to repent and turn back to the Lord.We ask the Lord why we are so unhappy, and then we decide to drink all night because we are so sad. Then we wake up the next day feeling like crap and so we are unhappy that day too. This cycle repeats over and over again until we stop, repent, and turn back to the Lord. We ask the Lord why our family is falling apart, yet we choose to watch TV and numb our feelings instead of hitting our knees and praying about the situation. We are turning everywhere for answers except for God, who has all the answers.One of the people in mentoring gave an example last week of a sin she had been struggling with. She repeatedly confessed this sin each week during confession. She desperately wanted to get rid of this sin in her life, and yet she continued to struggle with it. She felt so embarrassed and so ashamed every time she had to go and confess this same sin, week after week. However, she continued to bring it to the Lord and confess it. Because she continued to repent of this sin and tried to change it, and invited God in to help her change it, she no longer suffers from this sin. He has healed her of it. God changed her heart and her mind. He is so good. He can do this for you, too! But first, you have to bring it to Him. First, you need to repent and invite Him into it.If things are particularly hard in your life right now, take some time, sit with the Lord, and ask Him if there is any unrepented sin in your life. Ask God to show you where you might need repentance. This can be hard to do, as we might be afraid God might tell us to change something we don’t want to change. God has our best interests at heart. He knows what is best for us, even when we can’t see it. He knows the whole picture, even the things we can’t see.Think about all you did when you were a kid. Did you always know what was best for you? Did you always do what was best for you? I am sure in the moment you thought you were doing what was best, but really, you were doing what felt best. What feels good in the moment isn’t always what is best for you. I am struggling with this with my boys. They think some of the things they are doing are not that bad. Everyone does them, and it’s no big deal. What they can’t see is the long-term effects or the long-term damage. Yes, smoking probably feels really good in the moment, yet how good do you think lung cancer will feel when you are older? They can’t see the future, but God can.The same is true for us. We can’t see the results of everything we are doing now. Just because something feels good in the moment doesn’t mean that it is good for us in the l

Submit Yourselves to God (Replay)James 4:7-8 “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”This is another one of those things that sounds much easier to do than it actually is. Submit ourselves to God. That doesn’t sound too hard, right? It doesn’t sound hard, but have you tried it? It is not easy to submit to God. What does it even mean to submit ourselves to God? Google's dictionary defines submission as "the action or fact of accepting or yielding to a superior force or to the will or authority of another person.” I think there are two parts to this. First, the action of accepting or yielding to a superior force. This means that we would accept that God is in control. We would do as He tells us to do because He is our superior force. He created all things, and He gives us a set of rules to live by, so we must live by them. The second part of this definition is accepting or yielding to the will or authority of another person. Submitting to God would be accepting His will as our will. It would mean that we accept His will for our lives. There are times when this is very easy. When we get the job we really want, it is easy to accept it as God’s will. When we meet the love of our life, we can accept that it is God’s will for us to be with this person. However, what about when things aren’t going our way? What about when God’s will differs from our will? What about if we don’t get a job because He has something better in mind for us? Can you think of a time when you really wanted something to happen and it didn’t? What about when you didn’t want something to happen and it did? How easy was it for you to submit to the Lord’s will? This verse tells us to submit ourselves to God. If we want to do this, we need to figure out where we are struggling and then ask God for help. We can ask Him to help us submit. He will always help when we ask. If we are struggling to see how God wants us to submit to Him, then we can always just ask Him. My spiritual director told me one time to model St. Teresa of Lisieux and explain to God that I am just a little child and I need Him to show me the way. I need Him to show me or tell me what He wants me to do. I want to follow His will, I just need directions, just as a child would. This really spoke to me. I sometimes, oftentimes, if I am being honest, I think I need to know what God wants from me. I think I am just supposed to know. It seems like everyone else knows, but why don’t I know? So, I try to guess, I try to listen, and I try to do all the things just in case that is what He was wanting. However, what I try to do now is to ask the Lord to help me understand. I ask Him to explain it to me as though I were a child. I ask Him to make it clear to me and to give me the courage and strength for whatever He wants me to do. We are all just little children in the eyes of the Lord. In Matthew 18:3, Jesus said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” God wants us to become like children. I think he wants us to be like children because there is something so pure about a child’s faith. Children don’t get caught up in understanding every little detail. They don’t ask all the questions. Miracles are miracles because there is no explanation. If there were an explanation as to exactly how it happened, it wouldn’t be a miracle. Adults don’t really like to believe in things that they can’t see. Children, on the other hand, love to play make-believe. They have no problem believing in things they can’t see. If you are struggling to submit to God, ask Him to show you how. He has assured us that if we ask, He will answer, so let’s ask. The next part of this verse says to resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Again, something that sounds so easy and yet is so difficult. I would love to say I resist the devil. The problem is, the devil is always disguised as something else. For instance, he will be disguised as temptation. You know that you should spend time in prayer or in silence, and suddenly your favorite TV show is having a marathon and showing episodes all day. You decide to give up sweets for Lent, and someone drops cookies off at your house. You decide you are going to start running, and it rains for a week straight. Do you see how it is hard to resist the devil in these circumstances because you don’t know it is the enemy attacking you? Another way the enemy might show up is through distractions. You decide you want to spend more time with your children, and suddenly everyone in the family has something else to do, or your work suddenly gets really busy. You may want to spend more time with your parents, but something comes up to prevent you from spending more time with them. We find it hard to resist the other things that are getting in our way, and so f

The Holy Spirit Lives In YouActs 2:38 “Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins. And you will receive the Holy Spirit.”I think when most of us read this, we focus on the repent and be baptized part of this verse. Repentance is so important, and it is something that we can read about all throughout the Bible. God is always calling His people to repentance, and sometimes they repented and other times they did not. In the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, they were a wicked people and they refused to repent. God sent fire down to destroy the towns. However, when God sent Jonah to Ninevah to tell them they needed to repent, they did, and God saved them. Did you know that Jonah was angry at God for saving Nineveh? We read in Jonah 4:1-2, “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is it not this what I have said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.” Jonah ran from the Lord when the Lord asked him to go to Ninevah. I had always thought he ran from the Lord because he was afraid of the people in Ninevah. However, this verse says that he ran because he knew God would have mercy on them, and he didn’t want them to be saved.This is a somewhat common thing for us to do. Maybe not running from the Lord, but definitely wishing people get what they deserve. Have you ever wished that someone got what they deserved? Have you ever seen a car speed by you, or weave in and out of traffic, and think to yourself, “I hope there is a cop ahead.” Or do you see someone cut in line and hope that someone notices and that they get kicked out of the line? Why do we do this? Why do we wish ill on other people? Maybe you are thinking that you are justified in thinking that you want the driver to get pulled over because you want them to learn their lesson and drive better. But, what if they did get pulled over and they just got a warning, would you be ok with that?Sometimes we can do this with our kids as well. Jonah felt that these people needed to be punished, and he knew that God would have mercy on them. Sometimes we can default to the thinking that when our children do something wrong, they need to be punished, and maybe that is true sometimes. But do we take the time to think about the situation first? Do we even consider giving them mercy? Sometimes our children need our mercy. Sometimes they messed up, did something they weren’t supposed to do, and they know it was wrong. They are truly sorry, and they learned a lesson from it. Times like these are times when we should consider mercy. Sometimes we think our kids will only learn if we punish them; however, I think they can learn a lot from mercy as well.As I said earlier, we tend to focus on the first part of this verse, Repent and be baptized. However, I wonder how many of you also think of the ending of the verse? How many of you truly know what it means? The verse ends with “and you will receive the Holy Spirit.” I am not sure that everyone, or even most people, knows how powerful a statement that is. Did you know that the power of the Holy Spirit is what raised Jesus from the dead? Did you know that the same power resides in you? Romans 8:11 "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.”When you are baptized, you are baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. This means that when you are baptized, you receive the Holy Spirit. If you are Catholic, then you receive the Holy Spirit again when you are confirmed. This is all amazing to me. The power that raised Jesus from the dead lives in me. I just can’t get over that. I think if we all knew the power that we had through the Holy Spirit, and then used that power for good, the world wouldn’t know what was going on. Jesus said in John 14:12-14, “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.”Did you catch that? Jesus said we will do greater works than He if we believe. This is only possible because of the Holy Spirit. We have the Holy Spirit inside of us; we just need to call on Him. We need to believe in Jesus and believe when He tells us that He sent us the Holy Spirit to guide us. The Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead. That same spirit lives in you. What are you going to do with it? Are you going to just sit around and let all that power pass you by, or are you going to use your newfound power for good? Who do you know that could use some extra blessings? I am su

You Are Loved By JesusJohn 13:23 “One of his disciples, the one whom Jesus loved,* was reclining at Jesus’ side.”This scripture verse was given at my prayer group, and the following words of prophecy were given: “You are also the one whom Jesus loves. So, your place is to be listening to his heartbeat when you pray. So, put your head on his chest and listen to his heartbeat. Say I love you and be at peace.” Is there anything more calming than putting your head on someone’s chest and listening to their heartbeat? I pictured when I was little and if I was scared and I went to lie with my parents. Just putting my head on their chest and listening to their heartbeat would make me feel better. It seemed so rhythmic and soothing.“You are also the one whom Jesus loves.” How many of you believe this? Like truly in the depths of your heart believe this? You are also the one whom Jesus loves. Sometimes, it is easy to say that Jesus is love. It is easy to say that Jesus loves everyone. And yet, even as we are saying it, we are discounting ourselves from that love. We know He loves everyone and yet we don’t believe that he loves us? We don’t feel that love or even understand why He would love us. Who are we to be loved by Jesus?You are the son or daughter of the one true king. That is who you are. You were made in the likeness and image of God. You are deeply loved by Him. Why do you discount yourself from that love? Or maybe you put a lot of pressure on yourself to be worthy enough of God’s love. Maybe you think if you just do things perfectly, then God will love you. If you attend weekly mass and volunteer for every fundraiser, you will be worthy of God’s love. Are you constantly feeling like you are not good enough for God’s love?Guess what? None of us are. None of us are worthy of God’s love, yet he lavishes it freely anyway. You do not have to do anything to earn God’s love. Well, as I wrote that, what came to mind was we do have to accept it. God can tell us all day long that he loves us, but if we don’t accept it, then it doesn’t matter. Yesterday, I talked about abiding in God’s love and how abiding means acceptance. Can you accept God’s love? Can you accept that he loves you just as you are, with no strings attached?This is a new kind of love for so many. Some people have never had someone in their lives who loved them completely, with no strings attached. Unconditional love is not a thing they even new. If you are struggling to believe that Jesus loves you, just as you are, think about your childhood and your past relationships. What do you think of when you think about love? Did you have to earn love growing up? What did you feel you had to do to be loved? For instance, did you have to get good grades, be a certain weight, be quieter, etc? Did you feel like your parents' love was conditional on your behavior? If so, don’t worry. You are not alone. We live in a broken world and don’t know how to love each other unconditionally like our heavenly father does. I think everyone is doing the best they can. We can only love others to the extent that we are loved. If your parents do not know unconditional love, they can’t pass it on to you. The good news is, that you can learn to let Jesus’s love in. The good news is that Jesus does love us unconditionally. If we can learn to accept Jesus’s love, then we can learn to pass this love on to others, even if that is not the love we were raised with.If you struggle with accepting God’s love, I would love to give you some practical tips for how to begin to accept God’s love. I went online to see if others had already written about his subject. I found an article written by Kara J. Lovett called “5 Keys to Accepting God’s Love.” I would highly suggest you read this article. I will put a link for it in the description of this episode, but you can easily find it by googling 5 Keys to Accepting God’s Love. https://karajlovett.com/5-keys-to-accepting-gods-love/ In the article she goes into what God says about love and then a section on understanding God’s love. Her article mentions five was you can accept God’s love. They are as follows: Accepting God’s love with scripture, prayer, grace, and quietness & in unexpected places. Kara says in her article that “by digging deep into Scripture and spending time with God in prayer, I realized that I need to stop striving for love and instead strive to accept God’s love, which He has already graciously bestowed on me.” As I mentioned yesterday, reading the bible is a great way to get to know God’s love. You can see all sorts of examples of God’s love in the bible. 1 John 4:7-10 is a great example of love. It says, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not th

Today’s witness is from my friend Bruce. Bruce reached out to me randomly back in November. He found my podcast and wanted to send in his testimony for witness wednesday. His testimony was about how he went to a healing service and regained his sight and then lost it again when he woke up. I offered to pray with Him, and he agreed. We have prayed together three times now. Bruce has not regained his sight, but something amazing happened each time we prayed together. You can find the testimony from the last two times we prayed together on the Witness Wednesday playlist on YouTube. You can also find them on whatever podcast app you are listening to right now. Today’s witness is about when Bruce and his lovely wife Alice came from Canada to visit Gloucester, MA, and my friend and I got to pray with them in person instead of over the phone. It was a great time, and I am so grateful the Lord brought Bruce, Alice, and me together. I know you will enjoy this witness as much as I enjoyed it. God is working in such miraculous ways!Dear Catherine,It is two months from today that we met with you and Nancy in Rockport. In the meantime, you have been to Scotland and back and I have had a new experience which I will tell you about. You may use it in your Witness Wednesday if you would like to. On July 23rd, my wife Alice and I had the pleasure of meeting with Catherine and her friend Nancy for lunch. This vacation had been planned well in advance before we met Catherine. It turned out that Nancy's home was just down the road from where we were staying. Sitting outside by the ocean, the four of us chatted and also prayed together for healing. There was no major change in my eyesight at that time, but I realized that the floaters and shifting debris that I normally saw, were gone. It felt like I had more life in my eyes - just a feeling. This visit was a real blessing and encouragement for us before heading for home a couple of days later.For some time I had been without any sight in my left eye and was able to see light and shadows in my right eye. After this recent change my right eye went completely dark but the movement of floaters was gone. I couldn't tell the difference between day or night. I couldn't see if there were any lights on in the house. Things were the same whether my eyes were open or shut. I had to make an adjustment to this. I found the darkness heavy and depressing. I also felt spiritually let down and more isolated. I heard someone talking about God's light of the world and I thought, we often ask the Lord to shine His face upon us in the Benediction. It was a Monday in August and I told the Lord how I felt. I wanted to somehow have more communication with Him. I didn't want to be in the dark anymore, and would He please shine His light upon me. The next day, Tuesday, I listened to Catherine's podcast which was about Jesus the Light of the world. This felt like my prayer was going somewhere and I became vigilant. That night I went to bed about 1:00 a.m. I was laying on my back in the dark. A small white light appeared in my head space. It seemed to sparkle and it began moving. It became brighter and larger and closer, shining with the brightness of lightning. I felt the light overtake me and I put my face in the pillow. The light was still there and I realized it was within me. It was beautiful and exciting. I began thanking and praising the Lord for this joyful experience. This light would move and pulse brighter then lower going on for an hour and a half until I fell asleep. I wanted to wake Alice but I didn't want to interrupt her sleep or the light. When I awoke in the morning, the light was gone. I figured this was a one time experience. Later that morning, I began telling Alice about it. I stopped and said, It's happening again right now. There was an arch of brilliant white light before me. Beautiful as ever. It stayed with me for a couple of hours, coming and going into the night. This continued daily much to my joy. I noticed whenever I sat at the table it would appear. Whenever I listen to my audio Bible or even thought about the Lord or spiritual matters, it would appear. I found myself talking with the Lord in this light. If I was praying it would appear. It was always with me when I went to sleep. I soon realized I could call on it by asking it to appear. I was quite amazed by the way this all happened, by the communication which took place , and the overwhelming feeling of God's love. There was nothing to do but simply enjoy the moment with the Lord and His light. As I write this, the Lord still shines his light upon me, every day and every night. This has been an unexpected and thrilling blessing for me, far better than I hoped for. I can't help but feel this is leading me somewhere good. My hope and faith has never been more confident than it is now. It is so easy for me to trust the Lord to love me and walk me where He wants to take me. He really is my guiding light. I have in the past

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 is it that we need the Lord to lift us up, especially over this last year? It is so great to know that the Lord lifts us up when we pray to Him and ask Him too. When we are bowed down to the Lord is when we are praying and worshipping Him. When we spend this time with Him He is able to lift us up.“The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time.” This one is hard one for many of us. We do not want to wait for the proper time. We want things to happen on our time line, or maybe we think our time line is the proper time. Then we struggle when God does not agree. My dad told me a story one time that demonstrates how God will give those that look to him food at the proper time. My mom & dad have 11 children. They also had a friend that 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 7 more mouths to feed. So, they did what they always did in these situations, they turned their eyes to God and asked for 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 that the neighbors father had to move in with him 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 him 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 freeze and still they had no room for this left over meet. 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.“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 heart. 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 certain 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 stated in this verse, God wants to satisfy the desire 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 higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” God has a plan for our lives and His plan is better than our plan. I know this can be frustrating because God does not always let us in on His plan for our lives. Sometimes we can be left wondering what is His plan and when am I going to understand it? If you have been thinking these things I want you to know that you are not alone. Many of us do not understand God’s plan, and do not understand why the things we have been praying for have not happened yet.It can be easy to lose hope when are prayers aren’t answered immediately. It can be frustrating when we are praying for something, and we don’t seem to get any answers. I found this definition of hope online and I really like it. In the Bible hope is the confident expectation of what God has promised and its strength is in His faithfulness. We know God is faithful to His children. We know He keeps His promises. Therefore we can confidently expect that He will answer our prayers. It says in Hebrews 13:8 it says, ”Jesus Christ is the same y

God’s Mercy & ForgivenessPsalm 51:10-12 “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.”These verses come within a series of verses addressing God. The person talking to God in this psalm is David. This psalm takes place after David had been visited by the prophet Nathan. Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba. This psalm includes a lot of David asking God to forgive him for his sins. One thing I love about David is that he is so good at realizing he did something wrong and then turning back to the Lord. He messed up pretty badly sometimes. It was not as if he was anointed, and so he always followed the Lord and never strayed. He broke some pretty big commandments. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, thou shalt not commit adultery, and thou shalt not kill, being a few of them.No matter how big the sin was, David never seemed to feel too ashamed to turn back to the Lord. This is so great. This shows such a deep level of understanding or trust, or both. I think he was never afraid to turn back because he knew how much he was loved by God. I wish we all knew and could trust God’s love like David did. How great would it be to know with every fiber of our body that no matter what we did, God would still love us and welcome us back?Have you ever done something and then not turned back to the Lord because you didn’t think you deserved forgiveness? Have you ever thought that you did something so bad that there was no way that God would forgive you? I think that most people have probably thought this at one time or another. I wonder if we would still think it if we remembered in that moment all the things that God has forgiven over the years? David saw a woman bathing on the roof of another house in his town and called for her to be brought to him. Then he had relations with her. I doubt she had much to say about it, as that was not really the culture back then. After he did this, she was pregnant, and he was worried her husband would find out what he had done. He tried to trick her husband, and when that didn’t work, he sent him to the front lines to be killed in the war. Then he took Bathsheba for his wife.Take a moment and think of the thing that you have been trying to hide from God because you think there is no way he will forgive it. Is it worse than what David did? If God could forgive David, He will forgive you. What if it is worse than what David did? What do you do then? Is it worse than what Saul did when he was going around stoning to death those who believed in Jesus? Was it worse than what the soldiers did when they whipped Jesus and hung Him on a cross? Because if Jesus can forgive them, He will forgive you.Why is it that we worry so much about God forgiving us? We know He loves us, and yet we don’t want to turn to Him when we mess up because… why? Maybe we are ashamed and we don’t want Him to see that we messed up? Guess what, he has already seen your mess-ups and already loved you through them. Maybe we don’t want to bother Him with our mess-ups because we feel we should have known better in the first place. Guess what? He loves it when we turn to Him and ask Him for help to clean up our messes. Maybe we don’t feel like we are good enough to turn back to the Lord. Guess what? He is your Heavenly Father, and He made you in His likeness and image. You are better than good enough; you are perfect just as you are.In the verse, David asks the Lord to create a pure heart in him. He knows what he did was wrong, and he wants to do what is right. I think we all want to do what is right. I don’t think that any of us walk around all day wondering how we can sin against God. I don’t believe it is our intent to damage our relationship with God in any way. If we want to do what is right in the eyes of the Lord, we can all pray for the Lord to create a pure heart in us. God knows what is in our hearts. As much as we may try to purify our own hearts, God is the one who can help us with this.It goes on to say, “Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.” I think this statement can be an example of David’s humility. It shows us that even though David was brave enough and trusted God enough to turn back to the Lord, even after David did some pretty awful things, David was humble enough not to assume God would forgive him. In this verse, David is asking the Lord to please not cast him away or take the Holy Spirit from him. God loves humility. It says in James 4:10, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” This is what David was doing. He was humbling himself and asking the Lord not to depart from him.After David asks the Lord not to abandon him, he goes on to say, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.” David know

A Conversation With The Lord About Mercy (replay)Isaiah 55:6-7 “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”Today I have something a little different for you. Yesterday at prayer group, my good friend Louise did a teaching on God’s mercy and Justice. She talked about something she had heard in a sermon years ago. The priest said something his spiritual director told him, “God’s Justice is God’s mercy.” After the Lord brought the sermon back to her mind, they had a little back-and-forth conversation, and I am going to share that conversation with you as I feel God was giving us a glimpse into how He thinks and who He is. God’s ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts. So, when He gives us a glimpse into his ways, I feel we should all pay attention. Here is what she shared with us.“I am merciful. I pour out mercy and forgiveness in torrents upon all of you, my children. I rain down mercy on every one of my children with no exceptions.” At that point, I found myself getting an image and looking at torrential rain. We've all seen torrential rain, and when it comes down, it comes down in buckets. It is heavy, and the Earth doesn't really have time to soak it all in. What can happen if it's a lasting rain is that things will accumulate, and it can create a little river and start really moving with a swift current. That is what I was picturing when the Lord said to me, “My children who love and praise me, honor me by their lives of holiness, know how to flow with the swift current. By the power of the Holy Spirit, they abandon their attempts to fight this current. And flow freely with it. Its power and speed may seem frightening, but they remain afloat by practicing the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The Isaiah gifts can be found in Isaiah 11:2-4a. “The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.” and the charismatic gifts can be found in 1 Corinthians 12:4-11, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.”Those who don't know me or refuse to accept my existence. Those who no longer have faith in me, those who believe worldly philosophies are the way to live, and those deeply embedded in sinfulness struggle in this river. They fear they will drown. They fight the current of mercy and forgiveness, trying by their own strength and power to stay afloat. I need you to help them, my children. So I asked the Lord how do we do this? What are you asking of us? And he gave me two things. First, he said, "be an example of them of how to float in this current. Show them lives abandoned to God and his love and power, especially in your interactions with them." Then second thing he said to me was, and this I found way more challenging was, "Reach out your hand to them as they pass by you in this current. Help them to stop struggling in this current of mercy and forgiveness. Help to steady them by companioning to them as you float together to the large lake of my calming love that is the river's end.Wasn't that powerful? There is more I want to say about listening to the Lord’s voice, but I don’t want to detract from His message on Mercy, so I will talk about hearing the Lord’s voice on Monday. Today and this weekend, I hope you re-listen or re-read the Lord’s word and really let it sink in. There is a transcript of the message in the show notes, so you can read through it slowly and really absorb what God is telling us about His mercy.Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless each and every person listening to this episode today. Lord, I thank you so much for the blessing Louise is to me personally, to our prayer community, and to all who know her. I thank you for her faithfulness, not only in listening to your word and writing it down but also in sharin

Confess & Be Forgiven (Yes, it is that simple!)1 John 1:9 " If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”This week, we have been talking about repentance. On Monday, we talked about how God is calling us to repent and turn back to him. The verse said, “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out.” The verse tells us that if we repent and turn back to the Lord, our sins will be wiped out. God literally forgets about your sins when you repent of them. I feel as though if everyone knew this, we would be more likely to repent of our sins.Today’s verse tells us that God will forgive and purify us if we confess our sins. I think these are two very important things, so I will address them individually. First, the verse says if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins. That is something to pause and really take in. If you confess, you will be forgiven. Can you hear that? Can you believe that? I mean, really believe that? If you confess, you will be forgiven.This goes against what we tend to believe. This definitely goes against what the enemy tells us. We are accustomed to thinking that our sins are too bad to be forgiven. The enemy tells us that although it is true that God does forgive sins, He won’t forgive our sins because they are too bad, or they are too many in number. This we can believe. The world is always telling us how bad we are and how perfect God wants us to be. There are impossible standards set, and so we fail them time and time again. All this so-called failure makes us give up on trying to be good. We figure we will never make it, so what is the point?We know we have messed up. We know that even if we confess our sins, we will just mess up again, so why bother even trying? This is all the enemy talking. He is trying to convince us that God wants us to be perfect, and if we stray from that, then we might as well give up because God won’t forgive us. We are not worthy of forgiveness. We keep messing up, and we aren’t changing. We will always be the same person who did that bad thing. We will keep doing the same things forever. Does any of this sound familiar? Do you find these thoughts going through your head? Yeah, me too.The good news is that we don’t have to listen to them. We know that God does forgive us because it says it right here in this verse, and we can believe all we read in the Bible because it is the Truth. It is not even complicated. It doesn’t say that if we jump through three hoops, stand on one foot, hop up and down, and then run around the building twice, we will be forgiven. It doesn’t say if we promise God we will never do it again, and then we are perfect from now on, we will be forgiven. It doesn’t say that you will be forgiven as long as you are a first-time offender. The only condition put on our forgiveness is that we confess our sins.I know it can be hard to confess our sins. The enemy makes us feel so much shame about things we have done. Then there is also our pride, which tries to convince us that we don’t have to admit what we have done, God saw it, He already knows, and if He wants to forgive us, He doesn’t need us to do anything. The enemy is good at using half-truths to confuse us and to take our focus off God. Yes, it is true that God already knows what we have done. However, that doesn’t mean we don’t have to ask for forgiveness. If we ask, God forgives us. It is that simple. However, we do need to ask. We do need to be sorry for what we have done. But that is it. That is the extent of the conditions put on our forgiveness. If you ask me, that is a small price to pay for my sins to be forgiven. I just have to tell God, that’s it? That seems pretty simple.However, depending on what we did, it could be hard for us to confess. God is patient with us, and He will wait until we are ready. If we need His help, He will help us. We can ask the Lord to come in and help us confess our sins. We can ask Him to help us know and see our sins, as we might not even know all the ways we have offended Him or others. This is a big one. Sometimes we might do or say something to someone, and we have no idea the effect it has on them. We have no idea what is going on in their own life that may cause them to take offense at something you did, even though you didn’t mean it. It is good to check in with the Lord sometimes and ask Him if there is anything you need to confess.The verse next says that God will purify us from all unrighteousness. How great would it be to be purified? Imagine if all your sinful or wicked ways were purified. I would love to be free of my wicked and sinful ways. Those ways that get me stuck in sin. Those ways that get me stuck in choosing the wrong thing. Being purified sounds pretty nice to me. Again, this verse says God will do this if we confess our sins. Even though it may be hard, it seems like the good far outweighs the bad. So,

Today’s witnesses are from the Encounter Ministries Healing page on their website. Encounter Ministries has healing services that are different than all the other healing services that I have been to. I love them, and I am so honored that I was able to attend the Boston Campus for two years to become equipped and activated in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I invite you to go to the Encounter Ministries website and check out some of the testimonies. They will often have people try to do something they couldn’t do before. It is incredible. Today, I have several of their healing testimonies for you. However, they have so many more! The testimonies below are from several different videos they have on their site.There was a man who went to the Encounter Conference in a wheelchair and then, after being prayed over, could walk out of the conference without his wheelchair. They asked him who Jesus was, and he said, “Jesus is the Saviour!”Next are testimonies from a healing service in Akron City. There was a woman who was in an accident 25 years ago. She had her back that had been hurting this whole time and was progressively getting worse. She had been going to the chiropractor but did not get relief. She went to the healing service with a knot in her neck. She said the condition is 80% healed after prayer, and the knot is gone! The next woman, Rose, fractured her humerus and cracked the ball of her shoulder. It didn’t ever heal right, and she couldn’t raise her arm high, and she couldn’t put it behind her back. But after prayer, she could do both. Also, the tendons and ligaments were always sore, but after prayer, she couldn’t feel them at all. Next is Matt, and he had a pinched nerve in his hand a few months ago. The doctor said it would get better, but it hasn’t. The team prayed over him several times, and it improved. Then Father Mathias came over and asked what was wrong, and prayed over him again, and it was completely healed. Next is a woman named Janice who walked up to the microphone holding her right hearing aid. She said she could hear without it, and she couldn’t believe it because she had been wearing it for a long time. Then Patrick prayed over her left ear and asked her to take her left hearing aide out and he whispered into her ear and she could hear him and she could hear the crowd cheering for her.Victoria was in a car that spun for half a mile going 80 miles per hour. She was then flying through the air. She prayed to God, and he appeared in her car next to her. She landed and hit a pine tree. Her body aches with pain, but I don’t want to take medicine all the time. My pain level is always about an eight, and I am pain-free after the prayer. Ellen has had a stiff neck for 4 years. Sometimes it is really bad, and sometimes it is better. I have right hip and back pain. I have been praying that she could see him work and heal. She has relief from all the aches, and the pain is almost all gone. Michael has been having pain in his heel for weeks. Right now, the pain is gone, and he can not make it work. Victoria, Ellen & Michael were all healed before they even did individual prayer. They hadn’t even touched anyone yet, they were healed just through worship & the Gospel teaching.Lyme disease causes constant pain from head to toe. It comes and it goes. I was sitting here thinking I wouldn’t make it through the rest of the healing service because I had so much joint pain. While I was sitting there, it felt like every joint was filled with the Lord. He filled me from head to toe. Then all the joint pain was gone. Another woman had something wrong with her shoulder. When she would move her arm, she would hear a bunch of cracks and noises. However, now she only has one little tiny click. She also has had a headache for as long as she can remember, and now she no longer has a headache. She couldn’t bend down and touch her toes before without doing it really slowly and being in pain. However, she demonstrated reaching down and touching her toes without any issue. She was in zero pain. Another woman lost my sense of smell 6 months ago. One time, the gas on the stove was on, and she didn’t know it because she couldn’t smell it. Luckily, her son came in and let her know. After prayer, now she can smell!Next was a man who had a problem with his lungs; every time he breathed, it hurt. He also had trouble with his knees. He had bad pains, and when he sat down, they were stiff. The pain is all gone. There is no pain in my knees. I can walk straight with no pain and no issue. I can breathe again with no pain. Then a woman talked about how her arm was so painful she couldn’t even move it, and then she raised her hand above her head with no pain!Thank you so much for sharing your testimonies. Your stories will help build the faith of others. Thank you to Encounter Ministries for continuing to hold these healing services and for helping people discover the love of Jesus! www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE TO DON

How Do I Repent?Ezekiel 18:30 " Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, all of you according to your ways, says the Lord God. Repent and turn from all your transgressions; otherwise, iniquity will be your ruin.”This first sentence is letting us know that we will be judged based on our own actions. At one time, it was believed that we would be judged based on the actions of our ancestors. This verse corrects this thought. When I looked up this verse on the Enduring Word Commentary, it said, “The error in believing in communal or family salvation or damnation is so serious and dangerous that God unmistakably emphasized the individual’s responsibility before God.“It may be true that in my physical being I have inherited tendencies to some forms of evil from my father, but in the fact of my essential relation to God, there are forces available to me more and mightier than all these tendencies. Neither righteousness nor evil is hereditary.” (Morgan)This is important for each of us to understand. We are not bad because our parents were bad. We are not good because our parents are good. We are responsible for our own actions. This is good news. This means we don’t have anyone to blame but ourselves. This also means all the responsibility falls on our own shoulders. I want to take a minute to look at one line in particular in the Enduring Word Commentary. It said, “In the fact of my essential relation to God, there are forces available to me more and mightier than all those tendencies we might have inherited.” In other words, we don’t have to do this on our own. Even though we will be judged on our actions, we don’t have to have the strength to make the right choices all on our own.Because we are children of God, we can call on Him to give us strength and to help us make the right choices. The second part of the verse above says to repent and turn from all your transgressions. The verse I discussed in yesterday’s episode told us to repent and return to the Lord. Today’s verse is telling us to repent and turn away from our transgressions. When I was trying to think about what to talk about in this episode it dawned on me that we might not all know how to repent. Repent is one of those words that we all kinda know what it means but we don’t necessarily know how to define it or how to do it. Repentance is more than just saying “I’m sorry.” It’s a heartfelt turning away from sin and turning toward God. Here’s a biblical and practical step-by-step understanding of how one repents:1. Recognize the SinRepentance begins with awareness. We often live unaware of how our choices, attitudes, or habits go against God’s will.Ask God for clarity. Sin can be obvious (like lying or cheating) or subtle (like pride, bitterness, or fear that blocks faith). Ask the Holy Spirit to search your heart.Listen with humility. Sometimes God uses other people, Scripture, or conviction during prayer to expose what needs to change.Psalm 139:23-24 “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.”Reflection prompt: Where in my life am I resisting God’s way? What attitudes, habits, or relationships might be leading me away from Him?2. Feel Godly Sorrow (Not Just Guilt)This isn’t about shame. It’s about recognizing how our sin hurts our relationship with God and others, and it grieves us deeply—not just because of consequences, but because of love.Worldly sorrow says, “I’m sorry I got caught or hurt someone.”Godly sorrow says, “I’ve grieved the heart of the One who loves me most. I want to be changed.”2 Corinthians 7:10 “ For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death.”Reflection prompt: Do I feel sorrow because of what my sin cost, or just because it was exposed?3. Confess the Sin to GodConfession is honest communication with God. It’s naming the sin and agreeing with Him about its seriousness, without hiding or blaming.Openly admit your sin to God in prayer. Be specific and honest. No excuses or blaming.“God, I’ve been dishonest in my work,” or “I’ve held unforgiveness toward ___."Confession is not groveling—it's returning to a loving Father who already knows and still welcomes you.1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”Reflection prompt: What do I need to confess out loud to God today, trusting in His mercy?4. Turn Away from the Sin (Change Direction)This is the literal meaning of repentance: to turn. It means letting go of the old and moving toward a new way of living.Make a conscious decision to change direction.You may need to delete contacts, change your routine, stop certain conversations, or set up boundaries. This part is hard—but repentance without change is just regret.Acts 3:19 “Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out,”Reflection prompt: What do I need t

Repent & Have Your Sins Wiped AwayActs 3:19 "Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out”Peter is preaching repentance in this verse. He is not the first to preach about repenting and turning back to the Lord. There were many prophets in the Old Testament who preached about repentance. The one that comes to my mind first is Jonah. He knew the power of repentance, and he was asked to go and preach this message to Ninevah. However, Jonah didn’t want to preach this message to Ninevah because he didn’t think they were worthy of God’s mercy. He didn’t want God to save them. He thought they were too far gone for God to save.Have you ever felt like this? Have you ever felt like you were too far gone for God to save? Maybe you have felt like someone else was too far gone for God to save. Jonah knew how great God was. He knew if they repented and turned back to the Lord that He would save them. Yet, he decided that they didn’t deserve this. He decided they were terrible people and they deserved what they had coming to them, so he fled this calling. He tried to run from the Lord. As much as I would love to judge Jonah and say how wrong he is, I think we can all relate to him.I think we have all had times when someone has done something and we don’t think they deserve forgiveness or mercy. We almost don’t want them to say sorry because we don’t want to have to forgive them. I think we have all also been in a place where we feel God is calling us to do something, and we don’t want to do it, so we try to run from that calling. We might try to hide from that calling. We know on some level that we can’t really hide from God, but on another level, we really don’t want to do what we are feeling called to do, so we try to hide anyway.Hiding from God won’t get us anywhere we want to be. When Jonah tried to run away from his calling and hide from the Lord, he was thrown overboard from the ship he was on, swallowed up by a huge fish, and stayed in the belly of that fish for three days before he was spit out onto shore. I don’t think the same would happen to us, but as you can see, nothing good will happen, that is for sure. A better idea is to talk with the Lord. Explain to Him why you don’t feel you can do what He is calling you to do, and then listen to what He tells you. God is smarter than we are. He sees everything, and we only see a small fraction of things. If he is calling us to do something, there is a very good reason, and who are we to judge it? Who are we to question it?Let me get back to the verse, “"Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out” There are three things this verse is pointing out to us. The first is to repent. What does this even mean? According to the Oxford language, Repent means to feel or express sincere regret or remorse about one's wrongdoing or sin. The word repentance in the Bible literally means “the act of changing one’s mind.” True biblical repentance goes beyond remorse, regret, or feeling bad about one’s sin. It involves more than merely turning away from sin. Eerdmans Bible Dictionary includes this definition of repentance: “In its fullest sense it is a term for a complete change of orientation involving a judgment upon the past and a deliberate redirection for the future.”As you can see, when Peter is talking about Repentance, he is not just talking about saying I’m sorry for my sin. He is talking about changing our minds. He is talking about realizing that what we did was wrong and then changing our behavior so we don’t do it again. It doesn’t do us any good if we apologize to God for our sin and then go back to doing the same thing. It also doesn’t do any good if we say sorry, but we don’t actually think we have done anything wrong.I feel a prompting from the Holy Spirit to take a quick moment to talk about what happens when we feel the Church has rules that we don’t believe in. Maybe you don’t agree with all of the Church’s teachings. You do your best to follow most of their rules, but some you don’t understand or don’t agree with, so you ignore those. You don’t bring them up in confession because you don’t feel you are sinning, because you don’t agree with that rule or that teaching. At my retreat in April, we had a speaker who was in this boat. She was a devout Catholic and followed all the rules and teachings. However, she did not agree with the teaching on contraceptives. She felt that the church had no right to tell her what she could do with her body.If you want to hear her talk, you can find it on her website, pattyschneier. It is called Prove it God… and He did. I put a link to it in the show notes. Click Here. I don’t have time to recount her whole talk to you, although I really encourage you to listen because it was so good! Even if that is not the thing you don’t agree with, her talk gives you a way to talk to God about the things you don’t agree with and let him teach you. Patty was set in her ways and was convinced of her stanc

A Place Of AbundancePsalm 66:10-12 “For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried. You brought us into the net; you laid a crushing burden on our backs; you let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance.”This month in mentoring, we have been talking about what to do when we have to wait a long time for the answers to our prayers. I know a lot of people who have been sick for a long time, and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. I know others who have been struggling for a long time, and there is no deliverance from that suffering in sight. Yesterday’s podcast addressed this, and I feel as though the Lord gave me a deeper understanding as to why sometimes our prayers aren’t answered immediately.Then I saw this verse this morning, and I thought it was a good one because of the imagery and because of the message. It begins with, “For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried.” The first thing that comes to mind is that not everything is a test from God. You are not sick because God is testing you. You did not get divorced because God is testing you. God does not create bad things in our lives so that He can test us. This is important to remember. Just like if you have children and they are going through hard times, you may let them struggle a bit so they can learn from the situation, but you did not cause the situation.God is for you; He is not against you. This is an important fact that can be easy to forget when all seems to be going wrong in our lives. If you are struggling to believe this, I urge you to write it down on a piece of paper or a sticky note and place it somewhere where you will see it multiple times a day. It is the truth. God is FOR you, He is NOT against you. He does not create illness, He is not the author of bad things happening in your life.All of that being said, God does allow us to go through illness; he allows us to go through hard times because He knows we will be stronger on the other side. He knows we will become different people in that struggle. Who we become in the struggle is up to us. We have to make a choice, or many choices, throughout our struggle to become who we want to be. Going through a really difficult season can help us rely on the Lord more. It can help us become more compassionate to others who are struggling. It can teach us patience and resilience. It can teach us to slow down and to pray more. A lot of good can come out of having to struggle. We have to choose that, though.Going through a really difficult season can also have the opposite effect. Some people turn away from the Lord when they are struggling. They are angry, they don’t understand why it is happening, and instead of leaning in, they turn away. It can also harden people’s hearts and make them angry and bitter. It can make them resentful because they are suffering and others aren’t. They might be frustrated that they can’t do all the things they want to do and they take it out on others.As I said, if you want to come out better on the other side, you have to make a choice. Actually, you will need to make a lot of choices throughout the difficult season. All day, every day, you will be faced with choices to lean into God or to turn away. You will be faced with choices of developing more compassion towards others or hardening your heart towards others. You can search for things to be grateful for, or you can find reasons to be jealous of those more fortunate. You can be bitter or you can be joyful.I want you to know that I am not saying any of this will be easy. It is not easy to choose to believe in God when you feel like He is taking everything away from you, or you feel as though He made you sick. It is not easy to be joyful when you are stuck in bed and are in so much pain, and you have been this way for months with no end in sight. It is not easy to find joy in the pain. It is not easy to be grateful when you feel like your whole life is falling apart. I know this, I have been in really difficult seasons when I had to make these choices too.Do you know what, though, it is also not easy to be miserable. It is not easy to be bitter and resentful. It is not easy to have everyone avoid you because you can’t seem to be kind to anyone. It’s not easy to have everyone avoiding you because you are so negative, and all you do is complain. It is not easy to turn away from the Lord and block all the healing, strength, and love He has for you. Life is not easy. No matter what choices you are making, life is not easy. You just have to decide if you are going to make the hard choices that will benefit you or the hard choices that will hurt you. What will you choose?The ending of the verse today is the part that I wanted you to hear the most. It says, “You brought us into the net; you laid a crushing burden on our backs; you let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and through wat

What Is Expectant Faith?Galatians 6:9 “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”I heard this verse on the Elevation Podcast this morning. It was not this week’s sermon; it was from May 4, 2025. The episode was titled, “All You’ve Got To Do Is Don’t.” It was a really great sermon, and I invite you to check it out. There were a lot of things that he covered today, but one of them, especially this verse, spoke to my heart and answered a question that I had just been talking to God about while I was at Eucharistic Adoration. I was sitting there talking to the Lord about my disappointment when prayers aren’t answered when I think they should be. This is something I think we all deal with. Yet, I am not sure we all know it is ok to be disappointed.I am going to share my struggle with you this morning in case anyone else has been struggling with a similar issue. I have spent a long time getting to know God and learning about all of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I have spent a long time trying to understand what it means to have the Holy Spirit living inside of me. Trying to understand how to use the power that God sent to us with the Holy Spirit. I have been learning about the gifts of the Holy Spirit and how to use them for at least 7 years now in the Charismatic Renewal. I have just spent 2 years becoming equipped and activated to use those gifts through the Encounter School of Ministry, Boston Campus.I tell you all of this to say that I have come to know God well over the last 8 years. I have come to know how much He loves us and how he wants us all whole and healed. He doesn’t want any of His children to suffer. He doesn’t want a single one of us to be lost or separated from Him. I know all of this, and so when I pray with someone for healing or for something else, and I don’t see results, I get confused. This may seem prideful, and this may seem like I am trying to take credit for the healing. I am not sure what this says about me. I am just being honest with you and letting you know how I feel.Here is what I wrote in my journal this morning when I was coming to the Lord for answers. “Lord, why do I get so upset waiting for your timing? Why do some people have to wait so long for relief? Why does my friend still need to have nightmares, and why is my other friend still blind? Why lord? What am I missing? I feel we do believe. I feel we are coming to you in expectant faith. We are asking in Jesus' name. So why the delayed answers? Why isn't everyone healed? Am I doing something wrong? Am I not doing something I should be? Is something else getting in the way? Please help me to understand.”Here is what I felt like the Lord said back to me. "My dearest daughter, it is not you. You are not the one healing. I am. I can heal through imperfect people. I can heal even if you don't say or do the right thing. I can use you even though you weren't perfect.”I replied in my journal, “What about when Jesus ' apostles couldn't get the demon out of that man's son, and Jesus said Oh, faithless generation, how long will I be with you? This is confusing to me because it does seem like it was the disciples' fault, almost. It seems like Jesus was saying that they didn't have enough faith or they didn't pray enough. What am I missing, Lord? Please help me to understand this better.” I also wrote down two verses from this section. Mark 9:23 “Jesus said to him, ‘If I can! Everything is possible to one who has faith.’” and Mark 9:24 “The boy's father said, ‘I do believe, help my unbelief.”This is when my hour of adoration ended, and I needed to get home to wake Ryan up for school. I figured I would talk to the Lord about this later, as I was still not sure what I was missing. Then I heard this verse on my way home; I felt like the Lord was speaking it directly to me. Here is the verse again, “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” The words that the Lord highlighted for me were IN DUE SEASON. I felt like the Lord was telling me that only He knows when it is the right time for something to happen. I know his timing is best. I know He knows all, and that He can do all. I know all of this, and yet when I am praying for someone, I am expecting immediate results because I know God wants everyone healed. I know He doesn’t want to see His children suffer.I know all of this, and that is why I get so confused. I don’t understand why He won’t just take this from them. I know He can use it for good, and yet I also know He can do anything, so He could teach them what He wants to teach them in a different way. I just don't want to see people suffering. I want God to take this from them. I feel the Holy Spirit putting on my heart that this is the same in my own life. I want to take the suffering away from my kids or my loved ones, and yet sometimes that is not what they need. Sometimes they need to go through it to get to the other side.

Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose two testimonies from the Salvation Category. 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 when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation, also. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your situation, He can help. I hope you enjoy these testimonies.Denice: My grandson, Elijah (age 19), was an unbeliever his entire life. I’ve been praying that he would find God. He was invited to a Bible study that 2 of his good friends started. He was resistant at first, but his friends never stopped inviting him. And finally, he gave in and went. I wept with joy.A few months into this study, Elijah asked me if he could host the study at my house. I couldn’t say “Yes!!” fast enough! 25 kids, aged 15 to 29, showed up that Wednesday night and filled my entire living room. I was so proud of this group telling them they are disciples on the ground – that we are living the year of the Lord’s favor today. I told them the Gospel is still moving, and they are a part of it. They are no different that the 12 disciples they are reading about in the Bible. Discipleship is still happening through you and me, and the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. The Kingdom will spread in you and through you. The Gospel works because of who Jesus is; not because of us. I am proud to be a seed.These young people take turns leading the study and I have had the pleasure to sit in on several of their studies. It blows my mind. My oldest grandson, Justus (age 29) has also joined this group and has never missed a Wednesday night. I can see the changes in both of them. God is so good… And to witness this is powerful. These young people, dedicated to the Lord, are now getting together on Thursday as well!They were studying sin, and I reminded them that the Living God does not hate sin because you broke a rule. He hates sin because it breaks you. Sin weakens you. And that sometimes we pray for our circumstances to change when maybe God wants YOU to change in the circumstance.I am so proud of this group of young people. It has become a great opportunity to share my faith and to watch God move in their lives.This is what prayer can do…. So don’t stop praying! Next is Brad:Hello West Family,I would like to share with you my testimony of opening my heart to Jesus Christ and how He completely changed my life.My mom left my father when I was around one year old. She soon remarried my stepfather, who she is still married to today. He had two daughters and one son. His son stayed with us more often than the daughters did, so I instantly gained a brother who I grew up with. He became like a blood brother to me.We were raised going to church, but as time went on, we attended less and less due to constant fighting between my mother and stepfather. My biological father was barely in my life and lived in California, while I lived in Kansas. As we stopped going to church, it felt like my mom and stepfather became increasingly strict with us, and discipline became harsh—belts and paddles, being slapped in the face, soap shoved down our throats, etc.Time passed, and we went through the typical phases—Boy Scouts, sports, family activities—and while at times it seemed harsh, there were good times as well. I was diagnosed with depression in my early teens and was quickly put on medication, as that seemed to be the only solution at the time.As we got older, my brother moved out after graduating from high school. For his 21st birthday, he invited me to the lake with his friends. But at the last minute, he told me they weren’t going to the lake anymore and that I couldn’t hang out with them, probably because they planned on going to bars and drinking. That hurt me deeply.So, on the night of my brother’s birthday, I ended up staying at a friend’s house. Strangely, I couldn’t sleep at all. I felt as if something wasn’t right. As I was tossing and turning, I heard my friend’s phone ringing in the middle of the night, which struck me as odd. His mom called downstairs to me, saying the phone was for me. I answered, and it was my mom. She told me something had happened, but she couldn’t talk and handed the phone to my sister. I was told that my brother Jason had been in an automobile accident and didn’t make it. My brother and his friend had both decided to leave an Applebee’s restaurant after drinking heavily and get into my brother’s friend’s brand-

Oh Death, You Are Dead To Me!Isaiah 25:7-8 "On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples,the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove his people’s disgrace from all the earth. The Lord has spoken.”This morning, I was thinking about using a song that I have heard a lot lately, which I thought would be really good and go with the theme of mentoring for this month. Then, while I was driving my son to school, this other song came on the radio, and I felt like it was a song we all needed to hear. The song is called “Oh Death” and is sung by MercyMe. I will go into the song in a bit, but first, let’s talk about this verse.It begins by saying, “On this mountain He will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers the nations.” It was believed that there was a veil of sorts over the whole land that prevented people from seeing and following the Lord and living the way He wants us to live. I would say this is still true today. The enemy tries to put a veil in front of us so that we don’t want to live the way God wants us to live. He tries to separate us from the Lord.Before Jesus died on the cross, there was a veil separating us from the Lord that was put there by God. After Adam and Eve ate from the tree, they could no longer have free access to God. From then on, only certain people could see God and talk with the Lord. However, once Jesus died on that cross, that veil was torn in two, literally. (Matthew 27:51). Now we have free access to the Lord. There is nothing separating us from talking with him. He did not want that separation anymore.However, the enemy likes to put up walls and make us believe that the Lord is too busy for us or that God is too great and we are not worthy to talk with Him. There is definitely some sort of veil over the world that tries to dim God’s light and separate us from Him. The enemy wants us to feel separate from God because when we feel apart from Him, fear can creep in and try to turn us away from God. This verse is reminding us that God will destroy that veil just as he did the other one.The next line is the one that reminds me of the song. It says that the Lord will swallow up death forever. I know so many people who are afraid to die. And that makes sense because we don’t want to leave our loved ones and our friends. We aren’t ready to say goodbye yet, or maybe we aren’t sure our loved ones are ready. Will they be ok without us? Will they be ok on their own? These are all questions that go through our minds when we think about death.We also might be worried about death because no one knows for sure what it is all about. No one knows quite what to expect. We hope that we will be in heaven with God, but then we have the enemy whispering in our ear, telling us we won’t be. He reminds us of all that we have done wrong and tells us there is no way that we will get to be with God, not with what we have done. The enemy is a liar! Don’t believe him. Yes, you may have done some pretty bad things, we all have. Yet, Jesus took all of that to the cross with Him, so don’t let the enemy pile it onto your shoulders again.The verse above also says, “The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove his people’s disgrace from all the earth.” God is so gentle and caring that He wipes away the tears from our faces. He not only takes away our pain, but he wipes our tears too! He also removes all disgrace that we have. The devil wants us to keep our disgrace and our shame. He reminds us of it so often that it seems like we will never forget. However, verses like this remind us that God does not hold onto the things we have done after we repent for them. So, if God isn’t holding on to it, why are we?I wanted to share this song with you today because I know a lot of people who are pretty sick. Several people listening to this podcast are chronically in pain. There are several who are listening who worry about loved ones who are sick. What I love most about this song is the upbeat music and the lyrics. When you feel down, or when you feel like you might be scared of death, or scared that the enemy might be winning the fight, listen to the lyric video of this song and sing along with it. I bet your fear will disappear. The song begins:You said my fate was sealed, you said my days were numberedCase closed with no appeal, my future six feet underMessin' with my head in ghost fashionMy heart was holdin' its breath (holdin' its breath)Terrified of takin' my last oneOh death, you scared me to deathThis is what the enemy does. He whispers all these lies in our ears and he does it so often that we start to believe them. This is why it is so important to spend more time reading the scriptures, and surrounding ourselves with people who speak light and truth into our lives. If we hear the lies more often then we hear the truth, of course we are

God Never Forgets Us!Psalm 10:12&14 “Arise, Lord! Lift up your hand, O God. Do not forget the helpless. But you, God, see the trouble of the afflicted; you consider their grief and take it in hand. The victims commit themselves to you; you are the helper of the fatherless.”I like these verses because they remind us that God does not forget us. He sees the trouble we are in. He considers our grief, and He knows how to help us. It reminds us that we need to commit ourselves to the Lord, that He is our helper. It can seem like God forgets us because the enemy makes us feel alone. It can also seem like God forgets us when we have been asking for the same thing for a really long time, and yet it seems like our prayers are going unanswered.There is a song that came on the radio the other day, and I knew I wanted to share it with you. It is what reminds us that God doesn’t leave our side. It reminds us that He always hears our prayers and He is always working for our good. God is for us, not against us. This can be something that is hard for us to remember for some reason. When we look at this broken world that we live in, it can be easy to believe the lie that God is working against us. He is punishing us for something. He is ignoring us. This is easy to believe at times because that is how we treat each other. That is not how God treats us. He treats us way better than we deserve. The song I am talking about is titled “Never” by Tasha Layton. Here are the words.When this broken world is breaking me downWhen my tears and knees both fall to the groundWhen my questions make me doubt You more than everYou remind me that Your answer is always neverWhen I first heard this song, I had no idea what she meant. We usually hear that God is a yes God. We usually hear that God will give us what we need, and a lot of the time, He gives us what we want as well. So, when I heard that God’s answer is always never, I was confused. Then I kept listening.Never forgotten, never forsaken.Never abandoned, not for a secondI am safe in Your hands always and foreverYou're never not working, my heart is the proofThere's not a broken, too broken for YouWill there ever come a day when You're not holding me together?You say never (oh-oh, oh-oh)After hearing this chorus, it all made sense! We are never forgotten and we are never forsaken. God is always with us. He never leaves our side. God does not just walk away and leave us up to our own devices. He does not throw His hands up and say that there is nothing He can do here. God is always working on our behalf. We might not see it because he might be arranging things in a way that takes time. But He is never not working. I love the line, “There’s not a broken, too broken for you.”We can definitely forget this fact all the time. Or, maybe we aren’t forgetting it, perhaps we aren’t believing it. Do you think that you are too broken for God? Do you believe He can fix a lot of things, but He can’t fix you? If you feel this, you are not alone. Many people think that they are too broken for the Lord to fix. We ask why he would want to fix us. Why would he bother when there are so many other worthy people in the world? We think we are a lost cause, and He should spend His time on other people who aren’t as far gone as we are. God created the entire universe with his words. If he can do that, why would we think we are too far gone for Him? Nothing is impossible for the Lord!I like the next line too. It says, “Will there ever come a day when you’re holding me together? You say never!” You are not going to wake up one day to find out that God has moved on. Maybe you have had that experience with people, but god is not a person. He is not going to leave you and there will never be a day when He is not holding you together. He will always be there with you. Even when you feel like you are broken into a million pieces, He will hold all of those pieces together for you. He is that good!!Next the song says,Every single time I look back, I seeThere's never been a promise You didn't keepYou don't waste the wounds, You use them for the betterWhen it comes to You, Your answer is always neverThat first line in this section is some good advice. When we feel like God might be abandoning us or leaving us, we can look back over our lives and ask ourselves if He was there. Was there a time when he had abandoned us or left us to our own devices? I am not saying that you can always feel God’s presence, but can you look back and see all the ways he arranged things for you in the past? Can you look back and see that even though it felt like God wasn’t there, He actually was there working in all those situations, too? If you can, this will help you have hope that He is there for you now, too!The rest of the song repeats the verses above, so I won’t read them all to you. I do think this concept is something that we really need to remember. I will just leave you with the chorus today. If this is something you struggle to be

MY 1,000TH EPISODE!!!Good Morning! Today’s Witness is about me and my journey with this podcast. Today is my 1,000th episode. I can hardly believe it! Back in 2019, I decided I wanted to change my career. I had my undergraduate degree in psychology and my Master’s degree in Special Education. I was a teacher at a DoD school in Turkey for 2 years when our son Sam was born. Tony and I had both decided before having kids that I would stay home with them when we did have them. So, from Turkey we moved to New Jersey, where we stayed for 5 years, and we had two more boys, Noah & Ryan. I stayed home with the boys through our stay in New Jersey, our move to Germany, and our move to England. When we moved back to Massachusetts, our boys were in 6th grade, 4th grade, and 2nd grade. I decided to try to go back to work.I was a licensed teacher in NJ, but needed to take the tests in MA to get my license. While I studied for the tests, I decided to substitute teach. Once I got my license, I applied for a few jobs, but all of my teaching experience was now at least 10 years old. I also realized that although our boys were in school they were struggling with things and I couldn’t really get a traditional teaching job because I never knew when I would have to go to school to pick our son up from school, or when one of our kids would refuse to go to school and I would need to stay home to watch him.I started trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I had done a lot of personal development stuff in the years from 2015, when we moved back to the states, to 2019, when I decided what I wanted to do besides being a wife and mother. I had been talking to a lot of people who were unhappy with some aspects of their lives, and yet they felt stuck. They felt like there was nothing they could do about it. I knew this wasn’t true. I knew there was always something you could do to either change the situation you are in or change who you are in the situation. I decided to become a life coach so I could help people get unstuck. I wanted to help them overcome their challenges so they could live a happy and fulfilling life.I looked through several programs. One day, I found the Life Purpose Institute. They had a program where you could become a life coach and a spiritual coach. This was perfect for me as my heart really lies in the spiritual coaching, but I also still wanted to help people who were stuck with life issues as well. The program consisted of 60 hours of training. I took the 5-day intensive with four follow-up classes. After doing peer coaching, practice coaching, and taking a final exam, I was finally certified in December of 2019. I made my marketing plan and I was all set to go out and do workshops at local churches and local libraries. I was all set to build this business, and then three months later Covid happened and we were all stuck inside. No workshops, not speaking engagements, my marketing plan went out the window.It was also difficult because as I was learning how to have my own business and work from home, I also had my husband and three kids at home with me. I figured it out, I got some clients, and I was on my way. In June of 2020, I started a blog. Each week, I would write an article, sometimes about life coaching, but they mostly turned out to be Spiritual in content. I found out that writing about Jesus and my faith came pretty easily to me, much to my surprise. I say I was surprised because just a few years earlier, I was asking the Lord why I was the only person in my family who couldn’t write. My siblings are all great writers. I have two siblings who have published books. My younger siblings are all really good at writing poems. It was just me who felt like I couldn’t write. Either God changed that, or I just hadn’t found what I liked to write about yet.In 2020, in the month of May, I decided to go on Facebook Live every day. I thought if I can’t go out and get the word out about my business, maybe I could do it on Facebook. At this time, my brother Danny reached out to me and said if I wanted to speak in Public, I should join the Toastmasters Club, which teaches people how to do public speaking and also gives you lots of opportunities to practice. I was nervous, but I decided to give it a try and found out I really liked it. I even won awards in their annual speech contest three years in a row.For Christmas in 2020, my brother Danny and his wife Jess gave me a Blue Snowball iCE microphone so that I could have it if I wanted to go online or if I wanted to do a podcast. I was so excited. I spent the next few months trying to figure out what to call my podcast, what type of podcast it would be, and so on. My friend Kim helped me come up with the logo for it. I was so excited to see that it was actually happening. At this point, I have been listening to the Big Life Podcast with Pamela Crim for over 3 years now. She does a daily devotional podcast, and it is amazing. You should definitely check it out. I decid

There Is Still Good Ahead1 Kings 19:3-9 ““Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it, and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep. All at once, an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again. The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. There he went into a cave and spent the night.”I heard an episode of the Big Life Podcast last week, and it reminded me of the story about the prophet Elijah that I just read to you. As soon as I heard it, I felt the Holy Spirit wanted me to share it with all of you this week.What came to mind when I heard this verse is that it might be helpful to know that Elijah wanted to give up. In case you don’t know who Elijah is, let me summarize who he was. Elijah was a prophet of God in the Old Testament, known for his bold faith, miraculous acts, and deep emotional struggles. He lived during the reign of King Ahab in 9th century B.C. Israel, a time when the nation had turned away from God to worship false gods like Baal. Here are some Key Highlights of Elijah’s Life:Confronted King Ahab and JezebelElijah boldly declared a drought as God’s judgment (1 Kings 17:1) and later challenged the corrupt leadership promoting idolatry.Miracles by God’s PowerMultiplied flour and oil for a widow (1 Kings 17:14–16)Raised her son from the dead (1 Kings 17:22)Called down fire from heaven to prove God’s power on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:36–38)Ran for His Life and Struggled with DespairAfter his great victory, Queen Jezebel threatened his life. Elijah fled, became discouraged, and asked God to take his life (1 Kings 19:4).God met him in a gentle whisper, showing that God’s presence isn’t always dramatic—it’s personal and close (1 Kings 19:11–13).Taken to HeavenElijah never died—God took him to heaven in a chariot of fire (2 Kings 2:11), making him one of only two people in the Bible (with Enoch) who didn’t experience death.Symbol of the ProphetsElijah later appears with Moses during Jesus' Transfiguration (Matthew 17:3), representing the prophets alongside the law (Moses).Elijah did a lot for the Lord. He was close to the Lord, and the Lord used him to do amazing things! He knew how mighty the Lord was, yet he felt he wanted to die. He felt like what the Lord asked him to do was too great. Sometimes, when we feel like giving up, we feel weak. We feel like we have failed or let the Lord down because He trusted us, yet we feel we can’t go on anymore. If you feel this, I want you to know that you are not alone. There are several people in the Bible—deeply faithful, even heroic people—who reached a breaking point and felt like they couldn’t go on. Some even asked God to take their lives. These moments show that God isn’t afraid of our despair—He meets us in it, and He restores. Here are some of those people and where you can find their stories in the Bible in case you want to look them up and read more about them.Throughout Scripture, we see that even God’s most faithful servants reached moments where they felt like they couldn’t go on. Elijah,1 Kings 19:4 “He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. ‘I have had enough, Lord,’ he said. ‘Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.’” Elijah, after boldly confronting false prophets, fled in fear and isolation, collapsing under a tree and begging God to take his life. He felt completely alone—yet God met him not with punishment, but with rest, nourishment, and a quiet whisper of presence. Like Elijah, when we are drained and overwhelmed, God offers compassion, not condemnation.Moses, Numbers 11:14–15 “I cannot carry all these people by myself; the burden is too heavy for me. If this is how you are going to treat me, please go ahead and kill me…” Moses, exhausted by the emotional and logistical burden of leading a complaining people through the wilderness, cried out to God, saying he’d rather die than continue carrying the weight alone. God didn’t take his life—He sent help. For us, this reminds us that we don’t have to carry everything ourselves; God provides support in community.Job, Job 3:11 “Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb?”Job, who lost everything—his children, health, and livelihood—wished he’d never been born. He poured out bitter questions and deep grief. And yet, God patiently listened, answered with presence and power, and ultimately restored him. Li

A Personal Relationship With GodPsalm 91:4 “He will cover you with his feathers. He will shelter you with his wings. His faithful promises are your armor and protection.”I love this image. I picture the Lord as a giant eagle and He puts his wing over us like we would put our arm around a child. When I think of this I am filled up with a sense of love that I just can’t explain. Sometimes I think we think of the Lord as this all mighty being that is so magnificent and is so busy that He doesn’t really have time for us. I guess I don’t really mean that he doesn’t have time for us. I think that we all know that He is listening to our prayers. I think we know that He spends lots of time on us. I guess what I mean is that we don’t really think that He knows us personally, if that makes sense. I don’t know, maybe I am wrong. Take a minute and think about your impression of God. What comes to mind when you try to picture Him. Do you think of a loving father, do you think of an almighty God that is kind of intimidating, do you think of someone that answers your prayers, but does not know you personally? How do you picture God? I think the reason I am asking this is because I think that many of us think of God as someone that is unapproachable. Yes, we can pray to Him and He will answer our prayers, but that is the extent of the relationship. I wonder how many of us know that God longs to have a personal relationship with each and every one of us. Yes, even you. God wants to have a personal relationship with you. When I first heard this, I thought, what does that even mean? How does one have a personal relationship with someone that they can’t see, hear, touch, talk to, etc. This is when I began my journey to have a personal relationship with our Heavenly Father. (Actually with all three members of the Trinity) So, how does one begin something when they have no idea how to do it? Lots of ways I guess. What I did was try to learn what it means to have a personal relationship with God. I read some books and talked to lots of people. Here is what I have learned so far. Although I am still very much in the learning phase.First, you can talk to Him. You can talk to God anytime you want to. He is always willing to listen. You can talk to Him about anything. Sometimes I think we feel as though God is busy and so we come to Him when we really need Him, but we don’t want to bother Him with our day to day stuff. Or at least that’s how I felt. God has time for you whenever you want. He is not bound by the same limits we are when it comest to time or attention. He can be there for each of us all of the time. He is not only willing to listen, but He wants to listen. He loves to hear about your day. If you are a parent, think about how happy you are when your children, no matter what age they are, take the time to tell you about their day. This is how God feels when you take the time to just sit and talk with Him about whatever is on your mind. Second, get to know who God is. If you are trying to develop a personal relationship with someone one you would learn as much about that person as you can. The same is true with God. The best way you can learn more about God is to read the Bible. Reading scripture and spending time in God’s word is a great way to feel closer to Him. The more you read about and learn about our Heavenly Father, the more you will begin to see Him in a different light. You will begin to see how much He truly loves His people. How much He has done and continues to do for us, even when we don’t deserve it. Reading scripture will help you to get to see several different sides of God. You will get to learn so many different things about Him. Yes, God is all mighty and He is also very compassionate. Trust me, if you want to feel closer to the Lord, spend time daily in scripture. Another way you can develop a personal relationship with God is to listen to what He has to say. Once you start to talk with God and tell Him all about your day, then you can also spend some quiet time just listening to what He has to say. You will most likely not get an audible voice that you can hear, however, some people have had this extraordinary gift. What I hear about most often is that you get a sense or a thought that comes to mind. For instance you are sitting there quietly and you tell God that you are available and listening. Then sometimes you will get a thought in your head from God. A sentence, a statement, some people get visions. It could be whatever you are open to. God is not going to force this on you. He will talk with you if you want to listen but only when you are open to it. I have had words of prophecy come to me in this way occasionally. How I usually listen to God is that I write Him a letter in my journal and then I tell Him that am listening and then I write down any thought that comes to my mind. I do not sensor it, I do not ask myself if this is really God talking, I just trust that I have told Him I am listeni

What If I Don’t Want To Forgive?Matthew 19:26 “Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’”Jesus is our guide. He came down to earth to show us how we should be acting. He came down to teach us that the Lord our God is love. He is trying to guide us to springs of the water of life, but we keep wanting to do our own thing. We don’t want to follow in his foot steps. Why don’t we? Because it is hard. Jesus said to love everyone, even our enemies. Is this even possible? Jesus wants us to forgive, but aren’t there some people that just can’t be forgiven? Shouldn’t be forgiven? I wonder if we all realize what forgiveness is? Forgiveness is not telling the other person that what they did was right, or ok. It was not ok what they did. It is not forgetting what happened or excusing it in anyway. Forgiveness is admitting to yourself that this terrible thing did happen, that you can’t change it, so you are releasing any hold that it has over you. I know forgiveness is hard. In some cases it seems impossible. However, it is so necessary. God tells us right in the Our Father Prayer, Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. God is going to forgive us to the same extent that we forgave others. Think about the things or the people that you are unable to forgive. Do you really want the inability to forgive them to get in the way of God forgiving you? There are some things that no matter how hard we try, we can not forgive. This is ok, we don’t have to do this on our own. God can step in and help us forgive. The only thing we must do is to ask him. To give Him permission to work in your heart to forgive. We had a word or prophecy given at our prayer group that I feel is so important to share.“I ask you to forgive my children. I know that is a difficult command and at times may seem very impossible for you to do. But I remind you that I am with you always, and with me nothing is impossible. Bring your inability to me. Allow me to work with my grace through you, so that you can be my forgiving heart for all the world.”In this word, the Lord is asking us to forgive. He is reminding us that even though we feel it is impossible, nothing is impossible in Him. In Matthew 19:26 Jesus said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” It also says in Philippians 4:13 “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” We are not in this alone. We have God on our side and with that we can do anything. I love how God always shows up to remind us of things when we forget. I like how God is reminding us that He is always with us and then asking us to bring our inability to him. He is asking us to allow Him to work with His grace through us, so that we can bring His forgiving heart to all the world. How beautiful is that? How great is it that God not only wants to use his grace to heal our heart, but he wants us to be His forgiving heart for all the world. God gave us free will. Can you imagine how frustrating it must be for Him to sit by and watch us squander all that he has provided for us? He would love nothing more than to rain down graces on us and yet we can’t be bothered to let him. God is not going to step in if we do not ask Him. He does not want to force us to love Him. The only way to ensure it is true love is to give us the choice to love him or not. Every day we have a choice to make. Are we going to choose God or are we going to choose something else? God has so much grace and so much mercy to give. He does not leave us alone to make these decisions. He is there for us every step of the way.But we do need to make that choice. Once we do make that choice, He will be there to help us overcome all of the obstacles. And there will be obstacles. The life that God is asking us to live is not an easy life. Especially in this world right now. Forgiveness and love are two things that we are being called to do that are not the norm in society today. We live in a culture that does not want to forgive. We want to stay angry, blame other, and not even talk to someone that doesn’t think as we think. This is not what Jesus wants for us. Jesus did not come to earth to be with people just like Him. He did not just hang around with those that believed like he believed. He didn’t find all the people that were getting it right in life. He came for those that were struggling. He came for those that needed Him. When he met these people, he did not meet them with judgement and unforgiveness. He met them with love and forgiveness. He accepted them as they were and encouraged them and helped them to become better. How great would it be if we could do the same. If we could greet everyone we meet with the same love and acceptance that Jesus had. You may be thinking that you are different. Jesus could do that because he was man and God, so he had the Holy Spirit inside him to help him make the right choice. Guess what? So do you. You have

Jesus Came To Seek & Save The Lost!Luke 19:10 “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”I felt led to share with you this morning a quote from our new Pope. It was one week ago today that the Holy Spirit chose a new Pope. Tony was asking me last week about the Pope. What do we know about him and his beliefs? What kind of Pope will he be, etc. I explained he had only been Pope for a few hours, and we should maybe let him get settled in a bit before we start trying to decide what kind of Pope he will be. The other day, I read this quote on Facebook, and I fell in love with it. This is exactly the message I feel the Lord wants to get out there. This is the message I think He wants us all to share. One that many may not like. Here is what Pope Leo XIV. said:" Brothers, sisters…I speak to you, especially to those who no longer believe, no longer hope, no longer pray, because they think God has left.To those who are fed up with scandals, with misused power, with the silence of a Church that sometimes seems more like a palace than a home.I, too, was angry with God.I, too, saw good people die, children suffer, grandparents cry without medicine.And yes… there were days when I prayed and only felt an echo.But then I discovered something:God doesn't shout. God whispers.And sometimes He whispers from the mud, from pain, from a grandmother who feeds you without having anything.I don't come to offer you perfect faith.I come to tell you that faith is a walk with stones, puddles, and unexpected hugs.I'm not asking you to believe in everything.I'm asking you not to close the door. Give a chance to the God who waits for you without judgment.I'm just a priest who saw God in the smile of a woman who lost her son... and yet she cooked for others.That changed me.So if you're broken, if you don't believe, if you're tired of the lies...come anyway. With your anger, your doubt, your dirty backpack.No one here will ask you for a VIP card.Because this Church, as long as I breathe, will be a home for the homeless, and a rest for the weary.God doesn't need soldiers.He needs brothers.And you, yes, you...are one of them."Robert Prevost (Leo XIV)I felt like the Lord wanted me to read this to you today as a reminder that God is merciful. His mercies never end. God wants us to call back His children. He wants them to know His love. He wants them to know how special they are. He wants them to know how much they are wanted. We live in a culture that always wants the newest and the best things. We live in a throw-away culture. We live in a world that thinks it is ok to sell people. Men, women, and children are stolen and sold into slavery. Marriages and families are under attack. Our children are sold drugs. Children at younger and younger ages are vaping nicotine. Before they are even out of middle school, they are addicted to Nicotine, and they don’t even want to stop because they are in love with the flavors, cotton candy, and sour apple.The world is searching for God. They just don’t know that He is the answer. The world is searching for love, and yet they can’t seem to find it. We need to show them the love they are searching for. We need to show them the unconditional love that God shows us. The love that does not judge. The love that accepts them for who they are, right where they are. This is what we are called to. We are called to be the face of Christ to those we meet. Are we doing this? Are we letting those who are not perfect know that they are welcome at church? Are we letting those who are struggling know that God is with them through it all?Do we let others see our flaws? Are we real with people? Sometimes we don’t want others to see that we aren’t perfect. We put on a good front. We let others see only the very best of us. We never let others see that we struggle. We never let anyone know that we have questioned God, or that we wrestle with some of the teachings of the Church. We don’t let anyone know that there have been times when we have felt abandoned by God, or that He wasn’t hearing our prayers.Jesus didn’t have a perfect life. He didn’t have an easy life. Sometimes I think we can get caught up in thinking that we have to be a perfect example of a Catholic in order to be an example of Christ. We have to show everyone how much we pray and how much we go to church and how religious we are, so that they can see we love Jesus. People don’t need to see our perfect lives to know we love Jesus. They need to see that we can still love Jesus when things are hard. They need to see that we can turn back to Jesus when we mess up, when we fall away, when we do things we are not proud of.People need to know the church is not full of perfect people, but that it is filled with people who are trying to be better. People who get back up when life knocks them down, not because they are strong but because God lives inside of them and He is their strength. They need to see that even the priests struggle with trusting the Lord, or

Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website, called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose two testimonies from the Marriage/Family Category. Satan is attacking our families, and I think it can help us to see that God is looking out for us. Satan wants to destroy families, but God wants to preserve them. 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, also. I pray you know that God wants to be there with you, and if you invite Him into your family issues, He can help.Zachary: 2016 started out as one of the most exciting years for me and my wife, Amanda. We were living in Calcutta, India; working at Calcutta School of Music and starting our own company to support local artists and musicians in the city. Amanda was expecting our first baby, Chloe West Ray, and she was due to arrive at the beginning of December. Amanda was in her third trimester when she became very sick one night. We admitted her into the hospital in Calcutta, India on a Monday night. Tuesday morning Amanda was feeling better and Chloe seemed to be doing ok too. Wednesday morning, before we were about to leave the hospital, we went in for one more ultra sound. I can still hear the doctor say, “We can’t find a heart beat” as if it was today. We found ourselves sitting in that hospital room broken and confused, with no idea of what the next steps would be.There were very few words of comfort that helped. Although people were praying and offering their words of comfort, it felt like a season of being abandoned by God. The dreams of holding our little girl were stolen and shattered. Grief is a funny thing. The initial sting and pain becomes dull over time, but the memories and dull ache continues. I don’t think our hearts are created for this world to overcome “grief” from tragedies or loss of loved ones; it becomes a part of our story, our life. We become a different person. The beautiful thing is that God stays the same and meets us where we are. I can honestly say God tangibly became my refuge in one of the darkest times in my life. He brought a healing into my soul like no earthly person could. We may never be the way we were before, but He shapes us into a new and often stronger person. I don’t think we get over grief until we leave this world.We found out the following year that we were expecting another baby. Due to the loss of Chloe, it was difficult to not allow our fear and worry to overwhelm our joy. We simultaneously jumped for joy, and breathed a sigh of relief when our son was born. Karina: When I think of my story, I think of pain, grief, overwhelming sadness, hurt, and betrayal. Then I think of hope, redemption, love, grace, miracles, and my salvation in Jesus.Five years ago, my entire world turned upside down. I experienced betrayal in my marriage after 12 years. I was in so much pain. My life seemed to have been one episode after the next of unfortunate events.I was so broken and so alone. I was in severe depression and taking depression and anxiety meds and using alcohol with it. I was doing anything I could to dull the pain I was in.I’m so thankful that God loved me so much that He pursued me in ways I’d never experienced before. I was blessed to become a part of a church. At a time when I was deeply hurting, I was shown the love of Christ over and over again. My pastor would say during his messages (and he still does) that I MATTERED to GOD. Honestly, I didn’t even know that I did. God never left my side and He revealed Himself and His love to me. I had never known love like this before and he poured it out on me in waves and waves. He walked with me through the trials and the storms and he saved me and restored me. Then God led me to become a part of a women’s group that has encouraged me, prayed with me and laughed with me. These women have become my sisters. We’ve shared a bond stronger than any blood relationship I’ve ever had. Words can’t describe the love in my heart that I have for each of them. God has healed me in ways I couldn’t see possible five years ago or even three years ago. He resurrected my dead marriage which is a miracle in a way because there was no way I could see this being restored or if reconciliation was even an option. That’s the God I serve. He is full of compassion, LOVE, mercy, and GRACE… He pursues us even when we turn our backs on Him. He loved me even when I didn’t love myself; He showed me I was His, that I was never forsaken; that

Catch Me When I FallPsalm 13:4-5 “How long, Lord? Will you utterly forget me? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I carry sorrow in my soul, grief in my heart day after day? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look upon me, answer me, Lord, my God! Give light to my eyes lest I sleep in death, Lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed,” lest my foes rejoice at my downfall. But I trust in your mercy. Grant my heart joy in your salvation, I will sing to the Lord, for he has dealt bountifully with me!”The theme for mentoring this month is “How Long, Lord?” I chose this title because I know so many people who are suffering right now and who have been for quite some time. They have been sick for so long, and they can’t see an end in sight. Some have been going through struggles with their family, and they can’t see a resolution. It feels like things might always be like this. Many I know are struggling with a prodigal child, and they are waiting for them to come home, but feel like it may never happen.In today’s verse, David addresses this same sentiment. It begins with “How Long, Lord? Will you utterly forget me? How long will you hide your face from me? How much I carry in my soul, grief in my heart day after day? How long will my enemy triumph over me?” I am sure that is exactly what my friends who are suffering are asking the Lord. I am sure they are struggling to understand why they are still suffering, what the purpose is, and when they will be through it. In mentoring this month, each week, I am going to examine a song that deals with these exact feelings. I really like music; it speaks right to my soul. I also like to use songs because you can always go back to them and listen to them and hopefully they will bring you comfort."When I Fall" by Katy Nichole is a song written out of desperation, reflecting a time when Nichole felt mentally, spiritually, and physically drained. She describes the song as a desperate prayer, expressing her exhaustion with trying to be "okay" and her desire to be honest with God. I think this is great. We should all be honest with God. I don’t know why we think we can hide things from Him. He is all-knowing. That thing you are too afraid to tell Him about, He already knows. That thing you don’t want to bother Him with, He already knows. There isn’t anything we can hide from God. Here are the lyrics for the song:Lord, I can't find You right nowAnd everything is crashin' downI'm losin' faith and fallin' into my doubtsHow long will I have to fightJust for me to stay alive?This is a true and honest song. This is something that I know those who suffer with chronic pain are asking the Lord. I am sure at times we all wonder where God is. We wonder why He is letting us go through the things we are going through, and when He is going to pull us out of it. It is hard to keep having faith and fighting, not to let our doubts get the best of us when we are so tired from all the fighting we have already done.I know You're there, God, pleaseJust meet me here tonightMy God, I'm tired of tryna be okayI've prayed all the prayers I have to prayPlease don't leave me lonelyMy God, I need You to hold meThis is the desperate plea of so many of us. We know God is there. We just need Him to hold us, even if it’s just for a minute. We are all tired of trying to be okay. We are tired of having to pretend to everyone that we are ok. One of my favorite sayings is, “It’s ok to not be ok.” I wish more people knew this. I wish more people would speak out and let others know they are not ok. I know so many people who seem so happy on the outside and yet are not ok on the inside. This world is a lonely place. Which may seem weird, as there are so many ways to keep in touch with friends and family. However, a lot of the relationships we have these days are superficial. We “like” or “love” people’s posts on social media, but we aren’t reaching out and having meaningful conversations. And, if we are being honest, we probably aren’t making posts that accurately reflect how we feel inside or what life is like on a day-to-day basis.My God, I'm losin' all the hope I gotI'm far beyond the point of bein' lostI've tried, but I can't let go'Cause God, You catch me when I fallYou catch me when I fallThis is like so many I know. They don’t want to lose their hope, but it is hard day after day when it feels like their prayers aren’t being answered. When you look around, and no matter how hard you try, you can’t seem to find God. What is really good is that she knows that God will be there to catch her when she falls. If she can let go of all that she thinks is supporting her and holding her up, and just fully surrender to God, then He will catch her. He will always be there to catch us when we fall.There's hardly air in my lungsWith all the damage that's been doneLord, please sustain me nowI know You are enoughMy God, I'm tired of tryna be okayI've prayed all the prayers I have to prayPlease don't leave me

He Will AnswerPsalm 20:6-7 “Now I know that the Lord will help his anointed; he will answer him from his holy heaven with mighty victories by his right hand. Some boast of chariots, and some of horses; but we boast of the name of the Lord our God.”I am increasingly realizing that this is hard for many of us. I know a lot of people who have lost loved ones lately. They prayed for their loved ones, they had expectant faith, they asked in Jesus’ name, and yet their loved one still died. Has this happened to you, too? I was telling a friend that I would pray for her, and she said that it didn’t work for her friend who died, so why would it work for her? She is not the only one who feels this way.I also had another friend who said she almost felt like she wanted to tell people to stop praying for her because she felt like things got worse every time someone prayed for her. She is not alone either. God is a mystery to us. We don’t understand why He does the things He does. We don’t understand why He allows the things He allows. There are some very specific things in the Bible that tell us how to pray and even what will happen when we do. For instance, John 14:12-14 says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; if you ask anything in my name, I will do it.”When I read this, I think that anything I ask, “In the name of Jesus,” will be done. Jesus healed people when He was on Earth. So, when I read this, and it says that I will do the works that Jesus did, and even greater works than that, I believe that if I ask in Jesus’ name, then God is going to heal the person I am praying for. Yet, sometimes that doesn’t happen. Sometimes the person I am praying with and praying for still dies. This can be hard to accept and hard to understand.I am very much a follow-the-rules, follow-the-recipe, follow-the-directions kind of person. I like to do things correctly, even if there isn’t one correct way. I don’t like it when my mom tells me to put a little of this or a little of that into the recipe. I want to know exactly how much to put into it. I didn’t like it in my Dance Club when they would tell us to improvise for these next eight beats. I wanted someone else to tell me what to do. Our God is so good, and He has been gently working on this with me. I do better now with adding new things into my recipes or adding a little of this and a little of that. The other day, I was at a “Paint & Sip” event where we were supposed to ask the Lord what to paint and then paint it. I got the words “Heart on Fire,” so I looked it up online and found a great image to paint. However, I couldn’t get it to come out the same. My painting does not look like the original, but I can see what I was trying to accomplish when I look at it.I love that the Bible tells us things like this verse from John 14, which says, “Whatever you ask in my name will be given to you.” I like it because it gives me a framework of how to ask for things. However, I also get stuck at times because when I ask for something in Jesus’ name and it doesn’t happen, I get so confused as to why. I did what you asked me to do, and it didn’t work. Why not? I did what I was supposed to do, but why didn’t God do what He said He would do?The truth is, I don’t know. The truth is, God is so much smarter than we are. Sometimes we ask for things that won’t be good for us, or won’t be good for our loved ones. God knows the bigger plan. He knows better than we do what we need and what our loved ones need. For instance, we might not be ready for our loved one to leave us, but maybe they are ready. Maybe they are tired of fighting this disease. Maybe there are worse things coming for them down the road, and God is preventing them from that suffering. Maybe they are just holding on for us.My grandfather had a stroke at a young age. He was bedridden for a long time. He was alive, but I don’t think he could even talk. On Valentine’s Day 1996, my grandmother told my grandfather how much she loved him. Then she told him that he didn’t have to hold on for her. She told him that she would be ok and that if he wanted to stop fighting, it was ok. My grandpa died that day.Today’s verse says, “Now I know that the Lord will help his anointed; he will answer him from his holy heaven with mighty victories by his right hand. Some boast of chariots, and some of horses; but we boast of the name of the Lord our God.” I think what the Lord wants to tell us today is that He does answer our prayers. He doesn’t always do it in the way we want him to, and so sometimes we can miss the fact that He has answered our prayers. When we wish someone to be healed and they die anyway, this doesn’t look like an answer to prayers. However, there is no illness in heaven. So, even though they were not healed this side of heaven,

Wake Up!Revelation 3:1b-3 “I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God. Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know when I will come to you.”Yesterday I started to read the book of Revelation. Over the last few months, I have heard people reference it, and I don’t remember ever reading it. I know I have at least listened to it because I have been through the Bible in A Year Podcast with Father Mike twice, and about 12 years ago, I did a study program with my friend called Read the Bible in 90 days. We read the Bible, I listened a lot as I bought the audio Bible, and then each week we would meet and watch a video explaining all about the part we had just read. Because of all this, I know I have heard Revelation before, and yet I had no idea what my friends were talking about when they mentioned things in Revelation. So I decided to check it out this week.A little side note here, if you have never done a Bible Study, can I invite you to give one a try? There are online ones, and I am sure there is a church in your area that also has one going on right now. Bible Studies are amazing for so many reasons. The Bible is complex, and it is deep. There are so many layers to everything you read in the Bible. It can also be confusing because of the language it uses and because of the difference in Biblical times vs now. I love learning about the Bible and what is actually being said in the various chapters. A lot of times, the people who are doing the Bible study will also tell you what the various words meant in Hebrew or Greek. It is fascinating!Back to today’s verse. I chose this verse because it scared me a little. The first line in today’s verse says, “You have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up!” This really hit me. I think it hit me because I think most people think they are pretty good people. I think if we asked most people if they thought they were going to heaven or hell, they would say heaven. I want to believe that most people are going to heaven. Yet, in the Bible, that is not what it says. Matthew 7:13-14 says, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate, broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate, and narrow is the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”I don’t think it would be good to constantly be thinking about whether we will be going to heaven or hell or not. I do think we should think of it from time to time and evaluate our lives. There are a lot of different opinions about what you need to do to get into heaven. Some believe you need to receive the Eucharist in order to go to heaven. Some believe you need to say out loud that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior. Some believe you need to be born again. These are all found in different parts of the Bible. There is so much found in the Bible, and I definitely am not an expert.All I know is what the Lord is putting on my heart. I feel the Lord wants me to tell you today to remember what Jesus said in Matthew 22:36-40, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Are we doing this? Are we loving God with our heart, mind, and soul?That question is much easier to answer than the second question. Are we loving our neighbor as we love ourselves? This is something to think about. We must remember that when Christ says love your neighbor, he doesn’t just mean the person who lives to the right and left of you. He means, do you love everyone else in the world? Do you love those in your town and your state? Do you love those who run the country? Do you love those who run the churches? Do you love those who are hard to love? Luke 6:32 says, ““If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them.”This verse made me sit up and take notice this morning because plenty of people in the past have had a reputation for being a good person, a holy person, and yet later it comes out that they were not. This could be all of us. Maybe we haven’t done some truly terrible things, but are we harboring unforgiveness in our hearts? Are we despising some people who live in this world? Do we struggle to love those who are hard to love? Struggling to follow the Lord’s word is ok. We can bring Him that struggle and He will help us with it. I think we run into trouble when we aren’t struggling with it because we have decided not to pay attention to it, or we have given ourselves permission not to follow certain

Do Not Quench the Spirit1 Thessalonians 5:19-22 "Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil.”I was looking through my prayer group notes this morning to see which Bible verses from the prayer group I had already used in a previous devotional. When I looked, I could see that I used 1 Thessalonians 5:18 in one episode and 5:21-22 in another. However, I have not used 19-20 before. When I looked at it, I saw that it said, “Do not quench the Spirit.” I figured I didn’t use it because I didn’t understand it. I tend to skip over things I don’t understand or avoid things I don’t know how to do. Do you ever do this? I am sure I am not the only one.However, when I started doing this podcast, I promised myself that I wouldn’t skip over Bible verses that I didn’t understand because if I don’t understand it, then other people probably don’t understand it either. This podcast isn’t about me telling you all the things I know about God, scripture, and everything else. It is about us learning about those things together and encouraging each other to keep walking boldly with Jesus.I was intimidated by this scripture verse because of the word "quench." The only context I have ever really heard or used that word in is when talking about thirst. We want to quench our thirst. It is a good thing. So, when I saw that the verse said, “Do not quench the Holy Spirit,” I was confused and skipped over it. Then I reminded myself that I don’t do that anymore. I pause and take a few minutes to look up the things I don’t understand online. There are plenty of people out there who have made it their life’s mission to study the Bible and to have a deeper understanding of what it says. Luckily for us, some of them have decided to share their findings online.There are many ways that technology is bad and not good for us. This is an exception. This is one of the fabulous things about technology. It took me less than a minute to understand what this verse was saying. And now that I know what it means, it makes so much sense. I guess I just didn’t stop and think about what that word meant. The word quench has two meanings. The first one, according to Oxford language, is to satisfy (one’s thirst) by drinking. This is the definition I was thinking of, and didn’t understand how that applied to the Holy Spirit. However, the second definition is to extinguish (a fire). This makes sense in the context of the verse above. Basically, it is telling us not to extinguish the fire of the Holy Spirit. Or another way you can look at it is to not stifle the works of the Holy Spirit.How can we stifle the works of the Holy Spirit? Was that your next question? I am such a rule follower. When I read something in the Bible that tells me not to do something, I instantly want to know how to avoid doing that thing. I think the answer to this question is found in the rest of the verse. The verse says, “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil.” If we want to make sure that we are not quenching the Holy Spirit, then we need to pay attention to what the prophets are saying. We can’t ignore what they are saying because we don’t like it or we don’t agree with it. We can’t ignore what they are saying because it might be hard.For instance, this morning I was reading the first two chapters of Revelation in the Bible. In these chapters the Lord is giving John a message for the 7 churches. He is praising them, but he is also telling them what they are doing that is wrong and calling them to repentance. Repentance and changing our ways can be hard. And yet if we don’t then we could stifle what the Holy Spirit wants to do in us and through us.In the verse, it says, “Do not despise the words of the prophets, but test everything.” This means that while believers should be open to receiving prophetic messages, they should also discern if those messages align with God's word and are edifying for the church. Paul is advocating for a balanced approach: respect for the Holy Spirit's guidance through prophecy, but also a discerning heart that evaluates the validity and authenticity of those messages. "Do not despise prophecies" (1 Thessalonians 5:20): This emphasizes the importance of valuing prophetic utterances, which are understood as words of instruction, exhortation, or warning from God. It cautions against dismissing prophecies as silly or unimportant. "Test all things" (1 Thessalonians 5:21): This instruction highlights the need for discernment. Believers are not to blindly accept all prophetic words, but rather to examine them carefully. Why test prophecies? There's a potential for false prophets or messages that are not aligned with God's will. Testing helps to ensure that the prophetic messages received are authentic and edifying to the church. How to test prophecies? Several ap

Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website, called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose two testimonies from the 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.Blair: Every story has a beginning. Even God’s Word says “In the beginning” Genesis 1:1. So here’s how my beginning led me to where I am now. I was born into a “Christian” home. We went to church, we went to Youth Group, and we participated in missionary activities at the church. But there was not a Bible to be seen in our whole house. I’m the first of three children, the Type A, do everything right, be the perfect kid. That’s great, but try being that way with a mother who was emotionally, psychologically, verbally, and sometimes, very rarely, physically abusive.I didn’t have a traditional mother-daughter relationship doing things together. I was a good student- no- I had to be a perfect student. When my brother was born, the last child, it was made very clear who the favorite child was. My sister and I were knocked out of place because we were girls. So, in the beginning, I was not the gender my mother wanted me to be. As the years went by, it was more of the same treatment with little in the way of any faith journey or building a relationship with Jesus. When I began having children, the stress of that sent me over the edge. The depression and anxiety were debilitating. I felt like I was in a valley and didn’t know how to climb out. My husband was a pastor and even then my faith was very shallow.Things continued to spiral out of control and I ended up in the psychiatric ward of the hospital three times. Sadly, some of those times were because of suicide attempts. The whole of 2011 I basically spent in bed. I felt hopeless, useless, exhausted, unworthy, scared, anxious, and I could go on. I finally got a doctor who tweaked my medication so that I could go about “normal” life. Two weeks after my last stay in the hospital, my husband of 18 years passed away at the age of 44 on Christmas Eve. My boys were 17,15, 11, and 9.This is where the story of my new life in Christ began. Just like there were medication changes, there were also church changes that led to soul changes. I could actually hear God. I wanted to learn everything about Him. The more I began leaning into Him, the more He leaned into me. I lost my dad two years before my husband and my mom three years after my husband. But I was as ok as ok could be given the circumstances life has, is, and will be. That’s life. I am so thankful for the valleys because then I was able to enjoy the mountain tops. God has a reason for me being here. Understand that my life still hasn’t been perfect. I’ve had many financial difficulties. I’ve had difficulties being a man to four boys not knowing what it means to be a dad. But I know 100% that all of these “tragedies” and “valleys” led me to “triumphs” and “mountain tops” because God has a plan that I can’t see. He is with me ALL the time. He puts people in my life that help me grow- friends, pastors, and family. He inspires me through music. The words hit me in just the right place and at just the right time. I’m thankful for the music of Matthew West, Chris Tomlin, Mercy Me, Toby Mac, Zach Williams and so many other talented musicians that bring God to me. I love music but I love my Savior even more. And so my story continues until God takes me home to live with Him in glory. My past doesn’t dictate my future and my past doesn’t change my relationship with Jesus Christ. I’m so very loved by a God who loves me unconditionally. Guess what? He loves you that much, too.Jenna: I grew up in a Christian family. We went to church every Sunday and Wednesday and were a part of almost everything; Awana, Elevate teen group, and even school there. Two and a half years ago, I lost someone who I was close to because she felt the need to commit suicide. I was heartbroken and I felt like I lost everything. 2022 was a challenging year for me. I had daily panic attacks and felt like I was worthless. My eating habits went down significantly, and I was stressed all the time. As exams neared, I was super stressed and ended up passing out.Months passed a

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.”This month’s theme for mentoring is “How Long, Lord?” The reason I feel the Lord gave me this theme is that I know a lot of people who have been waiting a very long time for their prayers to be answered. Some of them are in excruciating pain while they wait. I am really struggling to understand this. I am struggling to understand why they have to wait so long. I don’t think I am the only person who is struggling with the question and other questions like it. I asked ChatGPT what kids of questions people were asking when they are feeling like their prayers aren’t being answered and over this month in mentoring I will answer some of those questions. Today’s episode is about the first question I addressed. That questions is:Is God punishing me? I might not know the answers to all the questions that come up throughout this series, but I am 100% sure of the answer to one. The answer is No! God does not punish us. God is only good. If you want proof that God does not punish us, you can look at 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

Give Someone Else A ChanceActs 5:38-39a "So in the present case, I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone; because if this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them—in that case you may even be found fighting against God!”I read this verse in the daily readings today, and it reminded me of the time I spent at retreats at the Schoenstatt Retreat Center in Vallendar, Germany. Here is a bit of background on Schoenstatt. Schoenstatt is an apostolic Movement of renewal, born in the bosom of the Church. Its spiritual center is the Schoenstatt Shrine, where Mary shows herself in a special way as the Mother and Educator who gives birth to Christ in us, conforming us according to her image.The Schoenstatt Movement encompasses various communities that form the Schoenstatt "Family". As a renewal movement, it has a marked apostolic and lay character; its pedagogy and spirituality are particularly suitable for those who live in the world and must face an increasingly de-Christianized and materialistic environment. Its purpose is to form a new community based on a new person who overcomes the massification of our times and forges a new culture permeated by the spirit of Christ.The reason today’s verse reminds me of Schoenstatt is that this principle was applied to the founder. His name is Fr. Joseph Kentenich. He was exiled from the church for a while, and from what I was told, it was similar to the thinking of this verse above. From what I understand, the church wanted to see if the Schoenstatt movement was of God or not. They figured if they removed Father Kentenich from the head of the movement, and it was not of God, then the movement would dissolve and go away. However, if it was from God, then even though the leader was gone, the movement would still continue to grow and flourish. This is what happened: the movement started spreading to other countries. In 1965, Pope Paul VI restored him to leadership, just as the Second Vatican Council was drawing to a close.I am not sure why the Holy Spirit reminded me of this story today. I do know that this verse can apply to our individual lives as well as the Church as a whole. In our lives, we can look at the things we are doing and we can ask if they are from God or not. Is God in all that we do? We can use this verse as a good measure to see if the things we are doing are from God or not. Do you often over-commit yourself to helping out? Do you sign up for things you don’t really want to do because you think, or maybe you know, that if you don’t sign up, then no one will? If this is you, then this verse might be life-changing for you.If you struggle with over-scheduling, I want you to reread the verse above. “If this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them.” I know that you are worried that if you don’t sign up or if you don’t volunteer, then no one else will. If you don’t say yes, the project or the event will not happen. However, that is putting a lot of responsibility on your shoulders. It is not your job to ensure every event goes off without a hitch. If the plan or the undertaking is of God, then He will make sure to get the people needed to make sure it happens. If it is of God, then it will not fizzle out because of a lack of participation.Also, maybe our always saying yes is hindering someone else from saying yes. I had a project once, and we needed to have a leader. We were all just sort of looking at one another, and no one really said anything, so I said I would be the leader. I had zero desire to be the leader for this project, as the leader had to submit all the paperwork. However, I assumed no one else wanted to do it as no one else was speaking up. I then found out that someone else wanted to do it, but felt funny saying they would do it. To them, it felt like nominating themself, and they felt that was wrong. So luckily they mentioned it in a roundabout kind of way, and I didn’t have to lead the group, and they got to lead the group. I am sure this is happening more than we think.I think there are people who would volunteer more, but they don’t feel they have anything to offer. They need others to call out what they see in them. They need other people to reassure them they can do the job, especially if they are stay-at-home moms. Often, we, as stay-at-home moms, tend to forget that we did lots of stuff before we were moms. Since being a mom is our full-time job, we tend to see ourselves as “just moms.” When someone looks at us and personally invites us to volunteer in a position that they think we will be great at, that means a lot.Who do you know that you could be inviting to join you in your tasks? What job do you know you have to give up, but are afraid no one else will take it on? Trust that God has a plan. Trust that He has the perfect person in mind. Then ask God to highlight someone

God Made You On PurposePsalm 139:13 “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”God created everything about us. I like this verse, though, because it reminds us that He created even our inmost being. I like the visual of God knitting me together. One stitch at a time. I am not someone who knits, but I have family and friends that do. When you are knitting something you can make it look however you want to. If you are the person doing it, you get to pick the colors; you get to pick the pattern, and you even get to pick which stitch or combination of stitches you are going to use. You are the creator of whatever you are knitting. Now, imagine that God is knitting you together. He chose all the specifics about you. He got to choose what color hair you have and what color eyes you have. Do you ever take time to think about this, to think about the fact that God created everything about you? I was at a personal development conference this week, so that may be why it is on my mind more than usual. I love attending these conferences because it is so great to be gathered in a room with like-minded people. I don’t mean that we all think the same way or even believe the same things, but in this instance, we were all there because we knew God had a bigger plan for our lives, and we wanted to figure out what that plan was. It was an amazing weekend, and I learned so much. This happened to be a women’s conference, and there were so many women gathered together, all wanting to improve themselves in some way or another. This is a beautiful thing. One of the things that usually comes up when you have so many women gathered together is the idea of insecurities. Insecurities are something that I believe everyone has. We don’t all have them about the same things or to the same extent, but I do think we are all insecure about something. We all have that one thing, or some of us have more than one thing that we wish we could change about ourselves. That thing that we really don’t like about ourselves. Some of these things affect our lives in a big way, and some do not.When you look at yourself and your life, what are your insecurities? What are the things about you that you don’t like that may be getting in your way of living your best life? Maybe you are struggling because you are living the life that everyone around you wants you to live, but inside, you feel like it's not right for you. For instance, you have a really good job, and you are making good money, but in your heart, you really want to be doing something else. Maybe you have insecurities based on your appearance. This is a big one with women. We feel too tall, too short, too thin, too fat. Or we feel our hair is too long, too short, too light, too dark. It seems like no one is happy in their own skin these days. I wonder why this is. I wonder if people throughout the ages have always felt like this, or if this is new. I don’t think it is new that people don’t like something about themselves. I am sure that has always probably been a thing. However, I wonder if it was as widespread and commonplace as it is today. I am not sure if I know a single woman who is so happy with her appearance that she wouldn’t change anything if you asked. I wonder if all this unhappiness has to do with social media and marketing. Once upon a time, before TV, magazines, movies, etc., you didn’t have so much access to everything. You could compare yourself to those who lived around you, and maybe those in paintings or in books. However, you didn’t have the kind of access you have today. Today, you could spend five minutes online and you could scroll through hundreds of images of whatever you want to look at. Also, if you have social media, you can just scroll down your feed, and you will see plenty of posts from people. The internet can be a very dangerous place for those who have insecurities and are looking for proof that those insecurities are real. If you think you are too heavy and then you search for proof of that online, you will find it. That is how the internet works. You ask a question and it searches all the data and gives you an answer to the question that you just asked it. Your brain is the same. If you have an insecurity and you ask your brain to find proof of it, your brain will. The awesome thing about your brain is that the opposite is also true. If you ask your brain to prove to you that your insecurity is not true, it will do that as well. For instance, if you ask your brain why no one at work likes you, it will search all your memories and come up with reasons why your co-workers don’t like you. However, if you ask your brain to prove to you that people at your work do like you, your brain will come up with an answer to that question as well. If you do not like the answers you are coming up with then you need only ask better questions. The main speaker at the conference said something this weekend, and I think it would be great if every