Walk Boldly With Jesus

Because Somebody Prayed1 John 5:14–15 “And this is the boldness we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him.”I love this verse because God is reminding us that we can trust Him. He reminds us that if we ask anything according to his will, He hears us, and if we know that he hears us, then we know we have obtained the request made of him. I don’t know about you, but I can get caught up in the part that says, according to his will. I have asked the Lord for many things, and I don’t think that he has given them to me. I get frustrated when I am praying for someone, and I remember that God said if we ask in Jesus’ name, then anything we ask for will be given to us.I know that God’s ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts greater than our thoughts, and yet it is still frustrating when we can’t understand what is going on. It is frustrating when we think we know exactly what we need or what we want and we ask the Lord, we beg the Lord and it just seems like He is not listening. If you have struggled with this, let me share with you what has helped me understand it a little better.Have your kids, your nieces/nephews, or your friends' kids ever asked for something that seemed really important to them? They asked for something that they really want, and to them, it is something that they have to have. They have given it thought, and they know it is the best thing for them. Yet, you know it is not good for them at all. You only know this because you have been where they are and things didn’t end well. You have seen where this thing will take them, and it isn’t anywhere good.For instance, your child, or a child you are close to, wants to drop out of school. They have given it thought, and they will get a job at the local grocery store or fast food restaurant. They are tired of all the work they need to do at school and don’t want to do it anymore. However, you can see that it is not the best choice for them. You can see how that one choice will limit so many other choices about their future. They are begging you to let them drop out, and yet you know it is not really best for them.This is what I think of when I think of God answering our prayers. Good thing He doesn’t give us everything we ask for because sometimes, just like our kids, we ask for some things that are not good for us. We ask for things that we think we want, but God knows we don’t really want them. For instance, we might think we want a new job, but then we find out the new job has a lot of travel, or the boss isn’t a nice person. God shields us from so many things that we aren’t even aware of because he is shielding us from them. He does this because He is a good Father.I heard a song on the way to adoration his morning, and you know how much I love songs. I wanted to share the lyrics of this one with you today because it talks about how important prayer is. The song is titled “Somebody Prayed,” and it is sung by Crowder. The song begins:Every night there by your bedYou fold your hands and bow your headThrowing out another prayer in faithWhen you're wondering if He's hearing youLook at me, I'm living proofI'm only right where I am todayBecause somebody prayedThese lyrics remind us that when we pray and do not see results, we can look at those around us and be confident that if God answers their prayers, He will answer ours, too. I think it is vital to remember that the answers to our prayers may not look like we want them to and may not come in the timing we want them to. I like how Crowder can realize that the reason he is where he is today is because his mom prayed for him a lot. So I hit my knees 'cause I'veSeen all Heaven move (don't matter if you hit rock bottomMy God pick you up when you call Him.)I pray, "Father, please" 'cause I'veSeen what He can do (don't matter if the storm cloud comingMy God come through when you call Him)I love this verse too because it says that it doesn’t matter if you hit rock bottom because God will pick you up when you call Him. This reminds us that we are never too far down for God to pick us back up again. It also says it doesn’t matter if the storm cloud is coming because God will come through when we call Him. Crowder says he has seen all heaven move, and he has seen what our heavenly Father can do.You might be in a storm right now, or you might be at your lowest point yet. Either way, you can rest assured that when you call on the Lord, He is going to answer that call. He is going to lift you up out of that pit or get you safely through that storm. That is just who He is. If you wonder if this is true, look around you at all the people you know who are struggling, or the ones who were struggling and have made it through to the other side. They were not alone. God helped them, and if he helped them, he can help you too!These hands have no powerThere ain't an hour He don

Today’s witnesses come to you from the Global Awakening Website. If you are not aware of Randy Clark or Global Awakening, let me read you the description from their website. For all believers everywhere, we present an opportunity to receive power from God. We offer ourselves as evidence that God uses the unqualified when we’re willing to take a risk. We strengthen each other through community & theology, and we call out to all those who feel ill-equipped, isolated, and hungry, saying: you belong. To the sick, we offer a community of faith that will believe in your healing. To the skeptic, we offer our stories and our lives as fruit of Jesus’ work. Come receive from God what you need, come learn how to take risks in your faith, and come join us as we each fulfill God’s dream for us. We are a global community of believers empowered to awaken the world. On their website, they have various types of testimonials. Today, I chose to bring to you the physical healing testimonies. They also have Impartation, Emotional Healing, Activation, and Prophecy. I will share the others with you another day. Today, you will get to hear about physical healing. I pray that when you hear these testimonies, it builds your faith to know that you can be healed, too!First we have – Gineff | Woodbridge, VA – “I took a step of faith and came to the conference being released from the Hospital on the previous Friday. I was radically healed at VOA. My tribe(VOA attendees) were encouraging me and praying over me. I received multiple healings. The first was the ability to walk(Bookstore Bob was there), inner healing with the Agape Freedom Fighter team, and the word of knowledge from Dr. Clark about lower left abdominal pain(this specifically was for me, as I had left the hospital with a drain tube in my lower left abdomen). I will tell you that I was in shock when He said my condition. My niece and those around me were like That’s you. When Dr. Clark called up those to share their testimonies, I ran up to the stage. While I was on stage, something amazing happened. I felt like I was being straightened and felt this rod on the right side of my body, it was amazing!!! I left there healed and I write this looking forward to my appointment tomorrow when I get to see the doctor's face!!” Next is – Michael | Richmond, VA “I stood after Randy had a word of knowledge that God was healing hearts. I had been treated for afib for over 14 years and on medication. I believe God has healed my heart. I am 72 years old and am no longer on any heart medication. My heart rate is normal, I go to the gym regularly and have no problems doing yard work or any other activity. God is Good!Next is – Beverly | Birmingham, AL “I was healed of a voice infirmity known as spasmodic dysphonia (SD), identified by a Word of Knowledge as a sharp twisting of the muscles around the larynx. I knew the Word was for me because the disorder is very rare. I actually experienced a creative miracle. The nerve from the brain to my larynx was regenerated. It grew back!!!! SD is a neurological condition in which the nerves affecting the muscles around the larynx deteriorate and stop working. Loss of the nerve stops the muscle flexibility of the laryngeal muscles, thereby preventing ordinary identifiable speech/language sounds. The voice quivers and has spasms. I had reached a point in my life where I was ashamed to even talk. People could not understand my speech. I happen to be a preacher and trainer… so, needless to say, I became so discouraged that I stopped preaching and became afraid to teach. SO PRAISE BE TO GOD for the healing. I had been experiencing progressive deterioration for 14 years!”Last, but not least, we have – Darenda | Harrisburg, PA “I sat next to a blind man on the plane on the way over who was also going to the conference. He was called out by Bob Hazlett and prophesied over in his main session. Then on the way back, I was again seated next to the same man, still blind. Have you ever been seated next to the same person twice on two different airplane trips? Well, I never have. So I prayed for him to receive his sight, and progressively over the two hours, he did. He has been completely blind for 4 years (diabetic retinopathy) in his right eye and has some light shadows in his left. Before deboarding, he could see his hands, some things in front of him, my eyes, and my hair. He mostly wants to see his 4-year-old grandson’s face, whom he’s never been able to see. In a follow-up text this week, he said his grandson’s face is getting clearer and clearer. Praise God for this wonderful, creative miracle, so amazing to witness.”Weren’t those testimonies amazing! Thank you to all who have been brave enough to share your testimony. It is because of people like you that other people’s faith is built up. It is not always easy to be vulnerable and share your testimony. It is not always easy to put into words what the Lord has done for you. Yet, when you can, it helps so many

John 17:11-12 “And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled.”I love this passage because it is Jesus talking to God. It is Jesus talking to His Father and our heavenly Father. I love how Jesus is asking God to protect us. He is also letting His dad know that things went well while He was here on earth. At the beginning of this chapter in the Gospel of John, Jesus told his Dad how we heard what He was telling us, and we believed Him. He is telling God about how we believe where He came from and the messages He gave us.Jesus also lets His Dad know that He did a good job protecting His disciples and that He didn’t lose a single one, except for Judas, who was destined to be lost, so that scripture may be fulfilled. I love that Jesus is talking to His dad just like we might talk to our dad. He is letting Him know He did what He was supposed to and did a good job with all He was supposed to do.Jesus was going to be with God up in heaven, but we needed to stay here on earth. The disciples couldn’t join Jesus in heaven; they had a mission here on earth, and so do we. Their mission was to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth, to make sure that the whole world knew about Jesus and his love and forgiveness. Our mission is the same, and yet we don’t have to travel to the ends of the earth. We can start here in our own families with our siblings, spouses, and children. We can start with our friends, neighbors, and those around us.You would think that in the day and age we live in, everyone would already know about Jesus. With the access to technology that people have in this country, we might think that everyone has already heard all we have to say about Jesus. However, this is not the case. Many people have been hurt or offended by the church, and so they no longer go. Many times, instead of just quitting the Church, they walk away from Jesus and God, too. This often means they don’t pass down anything they know about God to their children. My friend was raised by two parents who both went to Catholic School. They didn’t like it, so they decided not to teach their children anything about God.This is more common than you think. In this day and age, we can not assume that anyone knows about God or Jesus. Even if they know something about them, we can’t be sure that what they know is true. My kids tell me all the time they are not Catholic because they don’t believe this or that. However, what they say they don’t believe isn’t something I believe either. There is a lot of confusion as to what the Catholic Church actually teaches. I think a lot of people who have a problem with the Catholic Church aren’t actually upset with something we do; they are upset with something they think we do. For instance, many are upset that Catholics worship Mary. However, we don’t worship Mary; we only worship the one true God.What we really need to share with everyone we know and everyone we meet is that God loves them. Jesus loves them too! God is love. He loves each one of us so much, and I don’t think people realize this. I don’t think people believe this. There is such a lack of love in this world, and if people knew how unconditionally God loved them, I truly think this world would start changing. I think people feel a void in their lives and try to fill it with all the wrong things. The only thing that can fill that hole is God.We cannot show people how much God loves them just with our words, though. We will have to be an example of that love to them. We will have to love like Jesus loved, and then they will feel that love. They will see that love and know it is possible to be loved in our messiness. It is possible for someone to love us even when we feel unlovable. This is not the kind of love that we are used to finding in the world. The world is full of broken people, so we love in broken ways because that is all we know. However, if we pray for God to give us the ability to love others with His love, we can begin to change the world one person at a time.Back to today’s verse. Jesus is asking God to protect us. If we look at all the apostles had to go through to spread the word of God, we could see why Jesus would be praying for their protection. Most of the apostles of that time were killed in some way for their beliefs and for passing on the Word of God. They needed God’s protection. However, we still need God’s protection today as well.We are fortunate in our country that it is not illegal to talk about God, at least not yet. However, it is illegal in many parts of the world. According to Asia News, a Vatican-affiliated news agency that reports on Christian communities, more than 800 p

Fearless ConfidenceActs 4:29-31 “And now they’re at it again! Take care of their threats and give your servants fearless confidence in preaching your Message, as you stretch out your hand to us in healings and miracles and wonders done in the name of your holy servant Jesus.” While they were praying, the place where they were meeting trembled and shook. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak God’s Word with fearless confidence.”I love how this verse ends, “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak God’s Word with fearless confidence. How great would it be to speak God’s work with fearless confidence? How great would it be to just say what you wanted to say without feeling like you had to censor it for the world? How many times have you thought something and then not said it because you weren’t sure what others would think? How many times have you not mentioned God because you didn’t want to be different or because you didn’t want to be ridiculed? I love how the disciples weren’t afraid. The stakes were high for them, and yet they couldn’t be silenced. For them, it wasn’t a case of worrying if someone would be angry. They were threatened and told they could not speak about Jesus to anyone. They were thrown in jail, and they were beaten. One of Jesus’ disciples, Stephen, was stoned to death for his preaching. I was drawn to this passage for two main reasons. The first is because I love that they prayed for fearless confidence. I pray for a holy boldness a lot, and now I can pray for this too! The second reason is because of something Father Mike pointed out that I didn’t really notice. Does that ever happen to you? Something is right there in front of you, and yet you don’t realize it until someone points it out? Father Mike was talking about how remarkable it was that these disciples asked God for fearless confidence instead of asking God to take away the danger. As I mentioned earlier, at this time in the early church, it was really difficult to preach about God. There were rules and laws against it. People were told that if they talked about Christ Jesus, they would go to jail. They were beaten, they were put in jail, they were stoned to death. They did not have the religious freedoms many of us have today. They could have prayed for the threat to their safety to be removed. They could have asked God to protect them from all dangers. They could have asked him to change the situation they were in. They could have asked God for anything, and instead, they asked God for fearless confidence in preaching His message. Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could all make this our prayer? Wouldn’t it be great if instead of praying that God changes our circumstances, we ask God to change us? We can ask God to give us more strength, more courage, more love, more patience, more whatever it is we need to make it through our current circumstance, instead of asking God to change that circumstance. Tony was talking to his friend once when I was pregnant with one of our boys. We didn’t find out the gender of our baby until they were born. We wanted to be surprised. Tony was telling his friend that he didn’t care if it was a boy or girl, he just prayed our baby was healthy. Tony said he will never forget what his friend replied, “I used to pray for a healthy baby, now I pray for the strength to take care of whatever baby God gives me.”Tony was moved by this statement. He thought it was great that his friend was bold enough to pray a prayer like that. When we are able to pray something like Tony’s friend prayed, or like the apostles prayed, we are truly trusting in the will of God. We are trusting in the sovereign power of God. We are asking God to equip us for whatever circumstances He has laid out before us. A lot of times, we want to take the easy way out. Sometimes everything in life is so overwhelming that we can’t help but ask God to take it away, and that is ok. It’s not bad to ask God to remove your heavy burdens. Turning your worries and cares over to God should be the first thing we all do. I think asking God to take away your struggles is a good thing. I think praying for God to change you, instead of asking Him to change your circumstances, is a deeper level in your relationship with the Lord. I long for that close of a relationship with my heavenly dad. I long for the type of relationship where I have complete trust in God and His plans. I long for a relationship with Him where my will and His will line up perfectly. How awesome would that be?Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing. Please help us desire for you to transform us instead of us asking you to take away our circumstances. Help us to be open to your will, Lord. Please give us the words to say when we pray. We love you, Lord, you are the almighty one and the Lord of all. We are so grateful, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and i

Live Unoffended By GodMatthew 11:6 “And blessed is he who takes no offense at me.” This is a tiny sentence in a great big bible. You may have heard it many times before and not even noticed it because it is so small. Also, you may have heard and it not understood what it meant. This had definitely happened to me before. I have read something and for one reason or another I did not understand what it meant. Sometimes I will look at the footnotes and will get a better understanding of what the statement meant. To be honest, I am not sure if I heard this verse before or not. I know that I definitely did not understand what it meant or take any notice of it. That is, until I read about it in that book I keep talking about The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson. You really must read that book, it is so good! Anyway, as soon as I heard about what this verse meant, I knew I wanted to share it with people because I had never thought of it before and I know it is something that we can all do. In the book Mark talks about this couple he knows that are prayer warriors or prayer giants. You know the kind of people I am talking about, right? The people who seem to have a direct line to God. All of their prayers seem to get answered. My mom and dad are prayer warriors. They have had so many answered prayers and witnessed numerous miracles. If you know my parents, they are the first people you call when you are in need of prayers. Mark talked about how the couple’s prayers for others were often answered, however, prayers for their own lives went unanswered. He said they took a leap of faith and went into the world of filmmaking and they lost their life savings because the financial backing promised to them never came through. They lost their home in a fire. The lost three out of four parents in four years. And a rare genetic condition has taken a toll physically, emotionally and financially. It seemed like God was answering everyone else’s prayers, except their own. Have you ever felt this way? Have you ever felt like God was answering the prayers of everyone around you, but yours were going unheard for some reason? This couple said there had been moments when they have been tempted to throw in the towel, but the promise above has kept them going. “And Blessed is he who takes no offense to me. Here is the context of that promises as Mark Batterson explains it in his book The Circle Maker:Jesus is doing miracles right and left. He is healing diseases driving out demons and restoring sight to the blind, but John the Baptist misses the miracle train. It seems like Jesus is rescuing everybody except His most faithful follower, who is in prison. And John is his cousin, nonetheless. It seems like Jesus could have, and maybe should have, organized a rescue operation and busted him out before he was beheaded. Instead He sent a message via John's disciples. He tells them to tell John about all the miracles He is doing, and then He asks them to relay this promise: "Blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”I had never thought of this before. I had never thought about how John the Baptist might have felt seeing his cousin performing miracles all around him and yet he was stuck in jail. I wonder if he did feel offended? My first instinct is to say that he didn’t because he seemed like he was so close to God and I think we tend to put anyone who we think is that close to God on a pedestal. We think that because they were devoted to God that they have it all together and that that following God and His ways comes easy to them. When I start to think like this, I need to remind myself that they are human and we all struggle with our thoughts and actions. I don’t know if John the Baptist felt offended by Christ or not. I do know that this is a completely normal human response.If you are feeling offended because God is answering the prayers of all those around you and not yours please know that this is completely normal and understandable. We can be happy for others and sad for ourselves at the same time. I know I may keep mentioning that you can feel two things at the same time, but that is because I keep talking to so many people that are feeling guilty for being upset about something because they should be feeling grateful. Or, they feel guilty because they should be feeling happy that their friend just got pregnant, but they feel sad that they have not gotten pregnant yet. You don’t have to feel guilty about your feelings. It is ok to have two competing emotions at the same time. It is not just ok, it is completely normal. I wanted to share this verse because I know some people that have been feeling offended by God lately. They are wondering why everyone else seems to be more favored or more deserving. If this is you, I hope you take comfort in this passage. “Blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” God does not favor others more than you. God is a mystery. We don’t know why He does what He does. We know He has a plan for our li

With God All Things Are Possible! (Replay)Revelations 7:17 “For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”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 the springs of the water of life, but we keep wanting to do our own thing. We don’t want to follow in his footsteps. 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 who 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 what they did was right, or ok. Forgiveness is telling 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 is 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 will forgive us to the same extent that we forgive 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 cannot forgive. This is okay; we don’t have to do it 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 last October 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 reminds 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 the whole world. How beautiful is that? How great is it that God not only wants to use his grace to heal our hearts, 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 he has provided 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 others, and not even talk to someone who 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 who believed as he believed. He didn’t find all the people who were getting it right in life. He came for those who were struggling. He came for those who needed Him. When he met these people, he did not meet them with judgment and unforgiveness. He met them with love and forgiveness. He accepted them as they were, 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 the Holy Spirit inside

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, too. I pray you know that God wants to be there with you, and if you invite Him into your family issues, He can help.My name is Becky, and I want those struggling to know there is hope where there is faith, even if it’s a small flicker of faith. I always believed in God, but didn’t go to church. When my son was in his teens, he was in an accident and injured his back. Fast forward to his late 20s, he was given pain medication and eventually progressed to stronger pain medications, leading him to addiction. His addiction became my addiction in the fact that I kept trying to help, but was only enabling him. He went through several treatment programs only to relapse, but I was always there for him, good or bad, and there was a lot of bad. He was my son, and I loved him unconditionally, just as God loves us unconditionally.I remember picking him up one time, and I was afraid to be in the car with him, so when we stopped for gas and he was done pumping, I drove off and left him there. I will never forget the look on his face when I looked in the rearview mirror and drove away. What kind of mother does this? I drove straight to the church by our house and just went to sit inside and talk with God. A pastor came up to me, and I broke down. He sat with me and prayed. I was a complete wreck. On the way home, I heard Matthew West’s “Truth Be Told,” and I couldn’t stop crying. This was me, saying I was fine and I wasn’t. Things were definitely out of control. I believe God spoke to me through this song. I played the song for my husband, then I spilled my faults and all the things I had done to try to get our son sober to my husband. Later, even though God heard me with my husband, I confessed the same to God privately, and then some.I was broken and ashamed. I read scriptures, started going to church, and created a Christian playlist. My son got to a point where he did get sober, went to church, and Bible study with his daughter. He was baptized as a baby, but chose to be baptized as an adult, making a conscious effort to follow God’s plan in April 2021. On June 7, 2021, I left for work, hugged him, told him I loved him, and was glad he was my son, not realizing this would be the last time. He relapsed that day with an accidental overdose that turned out to be 100% fentanyl. We had to make the decision to remove him from life support on June 12, 2021. In the beginning, I questioned why God would allow this, but I know in my heart God knew that if my son had survived, he would have been back suffering again, and that was not His plan. My son always said if anything ever happened, not to blame myself, that everything I had done, both good and bad, had kept him alive longer than he had anticipated. I was planning his 40th birthday, but he never made it. I gained some comfort that he was able to donate his kidneys- one to a 70-year-old grandmother and one to an 18-year-old named Luke, who wrote the most beautiful letter explaining his gratitude and sympathy for our loss. My depression spiraled the remainder of 2021, and the only thing that kept me going was the songs from Matthew West and my fumbled prayers with God. I am not perfect, I make mistakes, I fall down, but I get back up. I tell God I am not perfect, I neglect to pray some days, but I try to be sincere and get back on track. I recognize when God puts people in my life to share my story and experience. To this day, the words of “Truth Be Told” remind me of where I started and how far I have come on my journey. I am forever grateful.I just listened to your song “Untold” and was greatly moved by emotion. As a young girl, I was raped at 18 by the boy I was dating (whom I met at church). I was so naive, I didn’t even know what was happening to me at the time. It took me four months and a few trips to the library to figure out I was pregnant. My greatest fear was having to tell my parents. When I did, my father refused to speak to me for weeks. I never told anyone the circumstances of the pregnancy, and my father never let me forget how I shamed the family.Si

God Has A Watering Can (Flowers)Psalm 5:1-3 “Give ear to my words, O Lord; give heed to my sighing. Listen to the sound of my cry, my King and my God, for to you I pray. O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I plead my case to you, and watch.This was another verse from my prayer group. I picked it today because I know so many who are struggling with what feels like unanswered prayers. Although they trust God will answer those prayers, they find it harder and harder to trust. They want to believe that God has a good plan for them. They want to believe God is going to put an end to this suffering on this side of heaven. Yet they haven’t seen it yet. They still have to suffer with the pain every day, or the heartache every day.Last night, I went to an Encounter Ministries Alumni event at the Boston Campus, and my friend Hugh and I were praying over another friend of ours. She has been struggling with something for over 30 years, and it has been daily for over 10 years. I was telling them that I don’t understand this. I don’t understand why someone would have to go through something like that for so long. She has prayed for God to take it away. She has had lots of people pray over her for God to take it away, and although he has made the problem less severe, He has not taken it away from her.She is coming to Him each day with expectant faith also. I feel like she has checked all the boxes of what God has told us to do, and if we do, He will answer our prayer, yet they seem to go unanswered. Why is that? Do you feel like this, too? Like you have done all you can do, and yet your prayers still haven’t been answered? You aren’t alone. I wish I could say that I had the answer for you. I talked to the Lord about it this morning, and He put this song on my heart. I believe He is trying to help me understand His ways more with this song. I pray that this song and the words He gives me today to share with you will give you the strength you need to keep asking God for whatever answer you have been waiting for. He hears you, keep asking!!"Flowers" by Samantha Ebert was written during a period of intense physical and emotional pain caused by Lyme disease. Ebert, bedridden and feeling like her hope was fading, found inspiration in the "get well soon" flowers on her nightstand, realizing that beautiful things can grow in the darkest places. The song became a reflection on faith, gratitude, and the idea that God can turn even the hardest parts of life into something beautiful. Here are the words to the song:Well, blue skies and hillsides feel so far awayAnd I wrote in my notebook that I've seen better daysThan the ones as of lateI can't bear the weightThe rain won't stop pouring out my windowpaneAnd I haven't left my bedroom in 76 daysI wish something would change'Cause I'm losing faithI think many of us have been in a situation where it went on for a lot longer than we wanted it to. I think we all have had a time when we felt like things would never change, never get better, never go away. We have felt like we would never be healed, we would never get out of that relationship, we would never find a job. Whatever you never were, we have all had one. It is easy to lose faith when it feels like God is ignoring your prayers. When we are tired and worn out, it is harder and harder to resist listening to the lies of the enemy. He is a liar, and yet he uses half-truths, so that they seem to make sense to us when we are tired and feel like we can’t fight the darkness anymore. When we feel like the weight of our problem is too great for us to bear any longer.Next, the song says:So I brought it up in a desperate prayerLord, why are you keeping me here?Then He said to me, "Child, I'm planting seedsI'm a good God and I have a good planSo trust that I'm holding a watering canAnd someday you'll see that flowers grow in the valley”I am sure we have all brought our situation up to the Lord in a desperate prayer. Probably many desperate prayers, however, this time she heard an answer from the Lord. I want to pause and reinforce this point. The Lord is talking to you. I know I say this all the time, and that is because I don’t think many of you believe me. You may believe He talks to people, but you don’t believe He is talking to you. I promise you, He is, you just have to listen. So, if you are in a desperate place, ask the Lord why. Ask the Lord what He wants you to do. Maybe he will just say Wait. But what if He tells you something you can do while you wait? God is talking to you, I promise you that!In the song, the person struggling cries out to the Lord. She asks why He is keeping her there, and He tells her. He answers her question. He will do the same for you. God said, "Child, I'm planting seeds. I’m a good God and I have a good plan. So trust that I'm holding a watering can. And someday you'll see that flowers grow in the valley.” Isn’t that amazing? This is not only true for her, but it is true for you too. Our G

In Parched PlacesIsaiah 58:11-12 “The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in."This scripture verse was given at a prayer group meeting recently. This morning, I was looking through my prayer group notes since we have finished the Be Bold Series, and I thought I would get back to using those verses for a bit. When I read today’s verse, I knew it was perfect because I know so many people who are struggling right now. I know so many people who have been praying for relief from physical ailments and feel as though their prayers have not been heard. Or maybe they have been heard, but they are not sure they have the strength to wait for God’s timing.This scripture verse tells us that God is continually guiding us and that He will satisfy our needs in parched places. How many of us feel like we are in parched places? How many of us feel as though we are in a desert and relief is nowhere around? We look out as far as we can see in all directions, and there is nothing. We are all alone with no end in sight. Sometimes we feel as though there is no hope in sight either. We want to be hopeful, we want to believe that God is going to heal us, and yet each day that goes by, we struggle more and more to believe it might happen.I have a friend who has a son who lost his job. We prayed for her son for a very long time. He struggled to pay his bills. He had to move out of his home. He had to give his dogs away because he had to move in with a friend and sleep on their couch. I am sure he struggled believing that a job was coming his way. I am sure he had moments when he doubted he would ever find a job again. I am sure he questioned where God was in all of this. He knows his mom was praying for him that whole time, so what was taking so long? Why wasn’t God answering the prayers that he knew people were praying for him?He now has a job and things are going well. God did answer his prayers and those of all who were praying for him. The thing that is hard for us all to understand is why it took so long. I am sure you have your own version of this story, too. Maybe you have many versions of this story. Why did the adoption process take so long? Why did it take so long to get pregnant? Why did I have to struggle so long with cancer? Why did I have to suffer in pain for so many years? Why, Why, Why?If you are asking God why for something right now, I want you to know that it is ok, and that you are not alone. None of us understands God’s ways. No one here on earth knows why He does what He does and why His timing is what it is. The one thing we do know is that he is all-knowing and all-powerful. We can be assured that He does have a plan. We don’t understand the plan because we don’t have all the facts. We don’t know what is to come. We know our story, but we don’t know anyone else’s story. We don’t know how God might use what we are going through to help someone else. We don’t know how God will use what we are going through to help us become the person we need to become.When we are confused, when we feel lost, we can turn to Scripture to find answers, to find promises. If it is in scripture, then you know you can rely on it. You can stand on it as truth. Today’s verse says that, “The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong.” How many of us needed to hear that today? How many of us needed to hear that even though we feel like we are in a desert, God is actually there with us, and we are not alone. God is not only there with us, but He is forever guiding us, and He will satisfy our needs. I know this verse was meant for me to use today, too, because the next line is oddly specific. He will make your bones strong. How many of us feel like that is exactly what we need today? I know several of you listening are struggling with your bodies. You are struggling with physical ailments, and you definitely need God to make your bones strong. Some of you feel you are fading fast and can’t fight anymore. If that is you, I hope you hear God talking to you specifically today. I hope you hear Him telling you that He will give you the strength you need, the nutrients you need, the healing you need. He will make your bones strong so you can continue to stand and fight whatever it is you are fighting. HE IS THERE WITH YOU!!Then it says, “you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.” I feel as though this is God reassuring us that even though we feel as though we have nothing left to give, we will never run out. He will give us exactly what we need for that one day, that one hour, that one minute. When you feel like you have

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 with it: “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 picture when I was little, and if I was scared, 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 that if you just do things perfectly, then God will love you. If you attend mass every week and volunteer for every fundraiser, then 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, and yet he lavishes it on us 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 abide means acceptance. Can you accept God’s love? Can you accept that he loves you just as you are, 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 knew. 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 we 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 did not know unconditional love, then they can’t pass it down 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 accepting God’s love is something you struggle with, I would love to give you some practical tips for how you can 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 ways you can accept God’s love. They are as follows: Accepting God’s love with scripture, prayer, grace, 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 through the bible is a great way to get to know what God’s love is like. You can see many 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 th

Be Bold & Say Yes!1 Timothy 1:12-16 “I am grateful to him who has strengthened me, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he considered me trustworthy in appointing me to the ministry. I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and an arrogant man, but I have been mercifully treated because I acted out of ignorance in my unbelief. Indeed, the grace of our Lord has been abundant, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Of these, I am the foremost. But for that reason, I was mercifully treated, so that in me, as the foremost, Christ Jesus might display all his patience as an example for those who would come to believe in him for everlasting life.”Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. This is something that the Pharisees and Sadducees could not understand. Actually, many people couldn’t understand this. Jesus was the savior. The Jewish people thought He was coming to save them from the Roman Army. They did not understand that He was coming to save them from something much more important. He was coming so that we would have eternal salvation. He came to walk among us so He could save us from ourselves. God had a perfect plan, and Adam and Eve, being human and imperfect, messed up that plan. God sent His son to us to set things right again. The beginning of this verse talks about “him who strengthened me.” This sounds an awful lot like Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” It is true that we get our strength through Jesus Christ. Paul is thankful in this verse because Jesus considered him trustworthy in appointing him to the ministry. He talks about how he was once a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an arrogant man. If you were designing this world, if you had to choose who would lead God’s people, would this be the type of man you would choose? Does Paul sound like the ideal candidate? He was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an arrogant man. He is not who I would pick. And yet He is exactly who God picked. Why do you think He does this? Why do you think God chooses to use less-than-perfect people for his ministry? I think He does it because of exactly what He says to us in Isaiah 55:8-9, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” God knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows that if he only uses perfect people, we won’t listen to them. It is hard to connect with someone you can’t relate to. Also, we tend to believe what we see more than what we hear. It is one thing to have someone who has never struggled with an addiction come and tell you that Jesus can heal your addictions. It is quite another to see someone who you know had an addiction problem and is now cured of it. Which would you rather, someone to tell you that Jesus can forgive your sins, or to see Jesus sitting with those who have sinned? We as people don’t like listening as much as we like seeing. Jesus took a man who was not a very good person, someone who didn’t even believe that Jesus was who He said He was, and used him to do extraordinary things. This is because of God’s mercy. I bet that every time Paul told the story of his conversion, he won over more people than the leaders in the church preaching about God’s mercy without ever having experienced it. It even says in the last sentence of this verse why Jesus chose Paul. He said, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Of these, I am the foremost. But for that reason, I was mercifully treated, so that in me, as the foremost, Christ Jesus might display all his patience as an example for those who would come to believe in him for everlasting life.” Paul was chosen, not despite his past sins, but because of them. He was chosen to be an example of Jesus’ patience to all those who would come to believe. Don’t you find it easier to believe that God will forgive your sins when you know He forgave Paul? What about Saint Peter? Peter loved the Lord, he followed Him for three years, and yet when Jesus needed him the most, he abandoned Jesus. He not only abandoned Him, but he also denied even knowing Jesus. And yet, knowing all of this, Jesus chose Peter to be the rock upon which His church would be built. If the Lord can use Peter, who denied Him three times in His time of need, and He can use Paul, who was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an arrogant man, don’t you think He can use you? Sometimes we count ourselves out, and we don’t listen when God calls us because we don’t think we are good enough to serve the Lord. He is almighty and powerful, and we are little and useless. He is perfect, and we are full of sin. How could He possibly use us when others out there are so much better than us at everything? God doesn’t want better, God wants you. If you are willing, God wants

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 Broken Chapter Category. We all have times in our lives when things don’t go as we thought they would. I think we have all had tragedy strike in one way or another. Some are worse than others but I don’t think anyone has had a tragedy-free life. The witnesses today are no different. They have had some truly terrible things happen and yet they are able to testify to how God was with them through it. 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.April: I was saved when I was 10 years old. There have been times in my life when I was walking closer to Jesus and times when I have drifted from Him.I’ve done a lot of things in my life that I’m ashamed of and I have a lot of regrets. I’ve felt that God has punished me for my sins, especially on the night of September 24, 2021.My oldest son Cole was killed by a drunk driver. Nothing “bad” ever happened to my family and this was totally unexpected. My husband and I were doing everything “right”, raising our kids in church and feeling like we were leading them in the way they should go.When Cole was killed, it was and is still the worst pain I’ve ever experienced. I felt it was my fault. I felt God was punishing me for all the shameful things I’ve done. I still struggle with this.I know Cole is with Jesus because God shows me and tells me all the time that Cole is with Him. He does this in many different ways. I’ve learned to be looking for Him and listening to His voice, because if I don’t I start to believe the lies of the enemy.I know that what happened to Cole isn’t my fault because Jesus took my punishment for me when He died on the cross. I’ve asked God so many times “why did you let this happen? “Why did it have to be my Cole?” “Why not me?” Well, the answer is that as Christians, we’re not called to understand why. We’re called to trust. I choose this every day.My faith has grown stronger since Cole went to Heaven. I have more joy in my heart than I had before. I know that sounds weird and I do wish that my Cole was still here with me, but I know that given the choice to come back here, Cole would say “no.” It gives me joy knowing that Cole is with Jesus and that one day I will be there too.I am working on forgiveness, forgiveness for the man who killed Cole. I don’t want to live in a cage of anger, so I have to choose forgiveness. It hasn’t been asked of me by this man, but it has been required of me by God. “Father forgives them, for they know not what they do.” Please pray for me to forgive as my Father forgives me.Many times, when I’m driving down the road I will be crying and feeling sorry for myself and then “Don’t Stop Praying “will come on the radio. This is not a coincidence; it’s God telling me to keep trusting in Him and to continue to bring everything to Him and lay it at His feet. He goes before me. If He is for me, who can be against me?Thank you, Matthew, for being obedient to what the Lord calls you to do. Your songs are reaching many people for Jesus and giving Him all the glory. Robin: My entire life is one broken mess after another. I grew up abused and broken and then I married someone who left me even more broken. I have struggled with depression and anxiety and often thought that the world would be better off without me. And so would my kids. I never wanted them to walk away even a little broken; if I was not there, I couldn’t hurt them. I was on the edge and ready to break and I just stopped and gave in. For years people tried to lead me to God and all his promises and I would not, could not believe them, no one had ever kept a promise before and God doesn’t have time for this broken-down sinner. I looked at my aunt and sister-in-law and saw the peace and love I longed for. So I gave in. I listened. I prayed for really the first meaningful way. Then I understood. I am not broken, just cracked but I was still whole. I picked myself up and God led the way to my next chapter. I am still cracked and I always will be, but now I know I will not fall apart. Wendy: When I was 17 yrs old, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life so I took a year off from college to volunteer while I figured it out. I found a mission organization out of San Diego called Amor Ministri

Be Bold & Be ObedientLuke 1:38 “Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.”This month in mentoring, the theme is “For Such A Time As This.” Last week, I talked about Joseph and Moses and how they were in the perfect place at the perfect time. It wasn’t an easy road for them to get there. They were both broken and then they were positioned. Then I talked about Mary and Deborah. I explored how they went from being obedient to Empowered. This morning, we will look at how saying yes to God can change everything.“Obedience isn’t about perfection. It’s about saying yes to God—even when it doesn’t make sense.” Often, God will ask us to do something, and we have no idea why he is asking us to do it. We don’t feel qualified. We don’t understand the plan, and sometimes, we just really don’t want to do it. Also, God often asks for our 'yes' before He reveals the full plan. This is why obedience is so important. Our yes allows God to work within us and through us.Obedience is the bridge between calling and empowerment. So what this means is that being called to do something isn’t enough—you don’t just instantly arrive at empowerment. The way to get from calling to being empowered to carry it out is through obedience: taking steps in faith, even when it’s hard, unclear, or uncomfortable. In other words, “You may have a purpose, but your obedience activates the power to walk in it.”Let’s talk about Mary first. Mary was a young, willing vessel. Let’s listen to Mary’s Yes to the Lord in Luke 1:26-38. “In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom, there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore, the child to be born[c] will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth, in her old age, has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then, the angel departed from her.To Summarize:- God chose a young, ordinary girl to carry the Savior of the world.- Mary responded in faith, not fully understanding. Do you think if Mary had known the complete story, she would have said yes? This could be why we don’t always know the full story before we have to answer, either. The person we are when we say Yes to the Lord is probably not the same person we will be at the end of the story. Mary was young when she said yes to all the Lord had planned for her. She was not the same young girl when she was sitting at the foot of the cross. She had many other experiences in her life that prepared her and trained her to be the woman she was at the foot of the cross.Mary's obedience unlocked the miracle of Jesus entering the world. Mary had free will, just like the rest of us. What if she had said no? Where would we be right now? Thank goodness for Mary’s obedience!Now, we will talk about Deborah. Deborah was a prophetess and the only female judge mentioned in the Bible. Her story is found in Judges 4–5. She led Israel during a time of oppression under the Canaanite king Jabin and his army commander Sisera.Her position was that of Judge and Prophetess of Israel during the era of the Judges before Israel had kings. She provided wisdom, judgment, and spiritual leadership. People came to her for decisions and guidance. She summoned Barak, a military leader, and told him God commanded him to go to war against Sisera. (Judges 4:14) Barak agreed—but only if Deborah went with him. She did.Israel defeated the Canaanite army, and Sisera was ultimately killed by a woman named Jael. Deborah was a worshipper and Poet: Judges 5 records the Song of Deborah, a victory hymn celebrating God's deliverance and the bravery of those who fought.To Summarize:- She was a prophetess and judge in a time when women had little influence.- Her obedience in speaking and leading brought victory.- She led with courage, wisdom, and worship (Judges 5).What Obedience Looks Like1. **Saying Yes in the Unknown** - Mary didn’t have all the answers. Yet she said yes anyway. - Ob

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

Be Bold & Start With LovePsalm 63:1 “O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”When I read this verse, I thought it did a great job explaining our yearning for God. We all need God in our lives. We are desperate to have him in our lives. This verse shows this in a way I don’t think I could. It also helps me realize how much I need God. Have you ever read something and then realized that was exactly how you felt, and you didn’t really know it before you read it? I knew I loved God, and I knew I longed for God. However, I couldn’t describe it until I read this verse. My soul thirsts for Him. My flesh faints for Him as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. There is no water if God is not in my life. My life is a dry and weary land when I don’t call upon God. Carrie Underwood has a song called “What I Never Knew I Always Wanted.” I have not heard this song before and yet I found it today while looking up something. This song was not written about Jesus. I believe it was written about her child, judging from the other words. However, the chorus speaks to how many of us feel about Jesus. The chorus says:I finally found what I never knew I always wantedI couldn't see; I was blind 'til my eyes were openedI didn't know there was a holeSomething missing in my soul'Til you filled it up with your loveI think so many people are walking around this world right now, and they don’t know God is what they have always wanted. They know they have a hole; they know something is missing in their soul, and yet they don’t know what it is. I like the line; I couldn’t see; I was blind ’til my eyes were opened. How can we help them open their eyes? The next line in this chorus might be giving us the answer to that very question. I didn’t know there was a hole, something missing in my soul, ‘till you filled it up with your love. What if we worked on filling people up with love? What if we showed people so much love that they realized that it was what they had been missing in their lives? We can’t fill them up with our love, though. Our love is broken and judgmental. Our love is not perfect love; it is flawed, and it can hurt others, even when we don’t want to. However, if we filled them up with God’s Love, the love of Jesus, they would feel an unconditional love that would fill the hole in their soul. I know you are already asking yourself, how do I do that? How do I love with Jesus’ love and not my own love? I know you are asking this because I am asking this, too. We are all called to be a reflection of Jesus. We are called to love like He loved. How did Jesus love? We can’t be expected to love like Jesus if we don’t know how He loved. The best way to know this is to look back at scripture. Jesus Christ set a perfect example of kindness and love. Throughout His earthly ministry, Jesus showed His love for others by blessing and serving the poor, the sick, and the distressed. Jesus did not run away from the leapers as most people did at the time. He touched them, and He healed them. He did not turn away anyone who needed help. How can we show Jesus’ love to others like this? How can we bless and serve the poor, the sick, and the distressed? Some people listening to this can go out and volunteer at a soup kitchen or a food pantry. Maybe you would rather volunteer at a hospital or somewhere you can help out with people who are sick. Maybe you would like to be a hospice volunteer and sit with those that are dying and have no one to be with them. However, others are listening, and you are thinking your days of helping the poor or the sick are over because you can’t get out of the house to volunteer anywhere. I assure you, your days of helping are not over. They have just changed. Now, instead of going and doing the volunteer work by hand, you can pray for those in need, and you can pray for people to answer God’s call to go and help. St. Terese of Lisieux is the patron saint of missions, even though she was never healthy enough to go on one. She didn’t let her health stop her from praying for everyone who could go on missions. Jesus also showed his love for others by not making people feel bad for their actions or who they were. God didn’t condemn the tax collectors or the Roman soldiers. He didn’t condemn the woman who was caught in adultery or the woman at the well who had been married several times and was living with a man she was not married to. In the beginning, the Love Jesus had for everyone brought people to Christianity. People found a love they had not known before when they found Jesus. They were used to rules and judgment. They were used to following God, which required so much of them. They found this new religion fascinating. A religion where God just wanted to love you and to be loved. He did not require much on your part. People could come as they were. They were not expected to be perfect because Jesus set the bar wh

Be Bold & Keep asking!1 Samuel 9:16 “Tomorrow about this time I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be ruler over my people Israel. He shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines, for I have seen the suffering of my people because their outcry has come to me.”The very last line stood out to me when I read this verse. In this verse, God talks to Samuel right before Saul shows up. God said that He will save His people from the hands of the Philistines because He has seen the suffering and because their outcry has come to Him. That is the part that stood out to me. He heard their outcry. I have been encountering more and more people who don’t pray for what they need unless it is a huge deal. They aren't asking God for anything if they don’t need a miracle.I understand this sentiment. I mean, God is busy; He is doing important things, and we don’t want to waste His time with our small issues. When we do this, we are saying that God has a finite amount of power. We are assuming that He won’t have enough time or enough power to deal with the more significant issues and our smaller issues. God’s time and power are infinite. There are no limits to time or power for God. We never have to worry that our request will take God away from someone else. He is with each one of us 100% of the time.Not only can God take care of the little things, He wants to. He cares about every aspect of our life. When we ask Him to help us and take care of things, we show Him that we trust Him. We show Him that we want Him in all aspects of our life. There are so many areas where I see people suffering, and they aren’t asking God for help. I understand and believe that redemptive suffering is a thing. I believe our prayers can be more powerful when we are in the midst of great suffering. I believe that if we can offer our suffering up for others, that is a powerful and beautiful thing. I don’t believe that God wants us to suffer for the rest of our lives. I don’t believe that if we have asked God for healing once or twice and it hasn’t happened, then that means that God isn’t going to heal us.I don’t know why some people have chronic pain and have been suffering for a very long time. I don’t know why it seems like God heals some people, and yet it seems like He doesn’t heal others. His ways are higher than ours, and His thoughts are higher than ours. I do believe God wants us to ask for healing. I believe He wants to hear the words coming out of our mouths. God believes in free will. If we aren’t asking Him for healing, He will probably not be healing it. From all that I have learned, God wants us to actively engage in our relationship with Him. He doesn’t just want us to sit back and have a hands-off relationship with Him. I don’t believe He wants us to hold anything back from Him. I don’t believe He thinks anything is too big or too small for Him.We have been told in our Encounter Ministries class that God cares just as much about our hang nail as He does about someone else’s cancer. It is not one or the other with God. It is everything. At the Encounter summer intensive, a woman was saying that she had pain and stiffness in her hips. When she sits for any length of time, she has a hard time getting back up and a hard time walking afterward. For a year now, she hasn’t been able to wear shoes with laces because of the stiffness in her hips. She couldn’t bend down to tie them. She was prayed over at the end of the healing night for the summer intensive, and the next day, she could bend down and tie her shoes again. Do you see? God even cares about what kind of shoes you want to wear.In the verse above, God sent Saul to save His people from the Philistines. He did this because He heard them crying out. Are you crying out? Are you asking God for help? I am not saying that we need to sit around and always cry out to the Lord. I am not saying we should be complaining about our pain or our circumstances either. I am saying that we don’t have to be afraid to ask God for something. We don’t have to feel like we are bothering Him. When we don’t ask Him, we deprive Him of the opportunity to help us.Think about how good you feel when you help someone out of a difficult situation. Think about the satisfaction and the joy you get when you help others. Now, think about how God might feel when He gets to be your savior and when He gets to save you from whatever it is you are going through, big or small. If you have chronic pain, you may be praying to God all the time, and yet you are not seeing healing. If this is the case, I am so sorry. I wish we could understand why God does what He does. However, if you are in chronic pain and you used to ask for God to heal you and now you have given up asking, I ask you to start again.I don’t know why He hasn’t healed you yet. I don’t know His plan or when He wants to heal you. I believe with all my heart that He wants to heal you. I do believe He wants you to k

Today’s Witness if from my friend Jess. Yes went to a healing room at Faith Worship center recently and she received an amazing healing. I will read to you what she posted on Facebook because she was there and can describe it much better than I can. Here is her testimony.Ok so now everyone at church knows what happened! I AM GOING TO TELL EVERYONE!!!!!I went to healing rooms at Faith Worship Center yesterday, there were some AMAZING HEALINGS yesterday, but I am going to give my Testimony to the GLORY OF GOD AND WHAT HE DID FOR ME YESTERDAY! I went in for healings of different things and BY GODS GRACE WALKED OUT WITH A SUPERNATURAL HEALING!!!!So I need to give a back story:In December I hurt my arm and my right arm, bc of me not going to therapy, was a bit shorter than my left arm. Basically my fingers on my right hand were about an inch shorter than the left, they didn’t meet tip to tip. So I went to healing room yesterday, and after the ladies prayed with me and then left me to soak in the prayer I was given, I had my eyes closed. My palms were facing up on my lap, and I could feel my right arm being dragged across my leg. I opened my eyes and no one was near me, the closest person was three or four rows in front of me, or all the way on the opposite side of the room. So I closed my eyes again and began soaking again. I had a sweatshirt on, and it felt like someone held my hand, my right hand and pulled it. I opened my eyes again right after this! Still no one around me, in fact less people than before! I ran to the closest bathroom and tried something. I measured the way I measure for archery, put my hands straight out in front of me, when I looked at my hands, MY FINGERTIPS WERE EXACTLY THE SAME LENGTH! I was able to put them together and the tips of ALL fingers matched up perfectly!!!!! God had healed me!!!! I was so excited and filled with the Holy Spirit I was literally shaking for HOURS after this (Holy Spirit shaking- the good kind)! I literally felt like a little kid at Christmas! I was so giggly and bubbly and to the point of being so excited I could hardly get the words out straight! I was so excited and happy I literally said I feel like getting on the floor and making snow angels!!!!So today at church when Pastor Daryl Nicolet asked about being whole and imagining what that would feel like, I turned to my friend behind me and said “JUST LIKE MAKING SNOW ANGELS ON THE CAFE FLOOR!”So I Just want to Give thanks to God and Jesus for this unexpected, and incredible healing that they honored me with! I lost my voice this morning before church because of all the people I told and all the praising I have been doing and continue to tell in the last 29 hours! Thank you Jesus! Thank you for reading my testimony on the amazing love of God! May you also be blessed in ways you don’t expect!!!!!!Thank you so much, Jess, for sharing your testimony. I think it makes God so happy when we share the miraculous ways he touches our lives with everyone. God is amazing, and it's great when we remember to give Him all the Glory!! If you are in need of healing, you can check out the Faith Worship Center in Pepperell, MA, on the first Saturday of the month from 10 am to noon. 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

Be Bold & Be Like DanielDaniel 6:10 “Although Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he continued to go to his house, which had windows in its upper room open toward Jerusalem, and to get down on his knees three times a day to pray to his God and praise him, just as he had done previously.”This verse may not make much sense if you don’t know the context. Once you do, you can see Daniel's bravery in continuing to pray. This situation boils down to greed and envy, which is the cause of so many bad decisions. Daniel 6:1-5 says, “ It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom one hundred twenty satraps, stationed throughout the whole kingdom, and over them three presidents, including Daniel; to these, the satraps gave account, so that the king might suffer no loss. Soon Daniel distinguished himself above all the other presidents and satraps because an excellent spirit was in him, and the king planned to appoint him over the whole kingdom. So the presidents and the satraps tried to find grounds for complaint against Daniel in connection with the kingdom. But they could find no grounds for complaint or any corruption because he was faithful, and no negligence or corruption could be found in him. The men said, “We shall not find any ground for complaint against this Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God.”Daniel was a good man. He loved God and was faithful to God. He was also faithful to the king. God was blessing Daniel, and so Daniel was excelling at his job, and the king noticed it. He was about to give Daniel a promotion and put him in charge of the whole kingdom. However, the others were jealous, and they wanted to discredit Daniel. However, they couldn’t find anything that he was doing wrong. Has this ever happened to you in your life? Have you ever had people who were jealous of you or what you have tried to discredit you? It is not a very good feeling. I remember hearing a story once of a woman who my dad worked with. She made an advancement towards my dad, but he was happily married with several kids, and he said he was not interested. She was upset and felt rejected, so she made up lies about my dad to the boss. Luckily, God was looking out for him, and the truth came out.The people who wanted to get Daniel in trouble went to the king and convinced him to sign something saying that whoever prays to anyone, divine or human, for thirty days, except to you, O king, shall be thrown into a den of lions. They knew Daniel was faithful to his God and that he would continue to pray, even when told not to. The king did not know this. He probably wasn’t even thinking of Daniel when he signed this into law. Once he found out, he was so upset and tried to rescue Daniel, but it was a law he could not revoke.Daniel was thrown into the lion’s den, and the king was so upset he fasted that night, hoping that Daniel’s God would save him from the lions. And, in case you don’t know the end of the story, God did! Let me read it to you in Daniel 6:19-23. “Then, at break of day, the king got up and hurried to the den of lions. When he came near the den where Daniel was, he cried out anxiously to Daniel, “O Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God whom you faithfully serve been able to deliver you from the lions?” Daniel then said to the king, “O king, live forever! My God sent his angel and shut the lions’ mouths so that they would not hurt me because I was found blameless before him; and also before you, O king, I have done no wrong.” Then, the king was exceedingly glad and commanded that Daniel be taken up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no kind of harm was found on him because he had trusted in his God.”Can you imagine what a witness Daniel is, not only for the king but for all those in the kingdom, as well as all those who hear the story later? Can you imagine the bravery Daniel must have had? He knew if he prayed to God during those 30 days, he would be thrown in the Lion’s Den. Or, at least, he knew it was a possibility, and yet he did it anyway. I wonder if I would have done the same. I wonder if I would have been brave enough or if I would have convinced myself that praying to the Lord in secret was ok. That God would understand because he wouldn’t want me to die, either. And this might be true. I am sure God would understand. And yet, Daniel didn’t pray in secret. He did pull down the curtains. He could have gone into his bedroom to pray or to any other room that might not have had windows. However, he didn’t. He continued his prayer routine as though nothing had changed.When I think of how brave Daniel was, I wonder if I would have been that brave. We live in a society right now where being Christian is not popular. When many people talk about Christians, especially Catholics, they say we are intolerant, unloving, judgmental, and hypocrites. It is sad that this is how Christians are portrayed. Sometimes, it is easier not to stand up for what we believe bec

Be Bold & Listen To God!Acts 18:9-10 “One night, the Lord appeared to Paul in a vision and said, “Do not be afraid. Continue with your preaching, and do not be silent, for I am with you. No one will attack you or try to harm you, for there are many in this city who are my people.”I always get a bit jealous when I hear verses that say the Lord appeared to so and so in a dream or an angel visited them. Then I remembered that although I am not getting visited by angels, that I am aware of, although if you listened to the episode on angels last week, you know we aren’t always aware when we are visited by an angel. Although I am not aware of any visits from angels or the Lord in my sleep, the Lord does show up and talk to us each and every Thursday during prayer group. He also talks to me during my prayer time, so I really have no reason to be jealous. I don’t know if you ever felt like I did. Have you ever been jealous that some people seem to hear the world of the Lord and you can’t? If this is the case, I want to assure you that He wants to talk to you. God is always talking to His people; we just struggle to listen sometimes. If you are struggling to hear the Lord. If you wish you could ask Him a question and really hear an answer I want you to know you can. It is possible. If you cannot hear Him, it is not because He is mad at you or because He is punishing you. There could be a number of reasons why you can’t hear Him. Maybe you are harboring unforgiveness to others, which can block all kinds of graces. Maybe you don’t believe you can hear Him, so you are afraid to sit in the silence and give Him time to talk. Maybe you don’t have any quiet time in your day? Think about how hard it is to hear someone that you are intentionally trying to hear when you are in a crowded restaurant or on a subway train. Look through your day. If someone was following you around trying to talk to you all day, would there be any times when you would hear them? The world we live in is busy and noisy. It is not often that we sit and listen to the Word of God. This can change. If you want to start hearing from God, all you have to do is listen. He is already talking to you. I know that this may sound weird to some of you, and yet I think it is important to tell you. I often talk with the Lord. I write Him a letter, and then I write one back to myself and let the Holy Spirit lead what I write in the one back to myself. I feel the Lord is constantly telling me, “Thank you for listening; not many do.” God is not mad; He is not punishing you, He is patiently waiting for you to come to Him and ask Him what He thinks. He is waiting to tell you how much He loves you until you take a minute to listen. Can you give God 5 minutes of your time today to just listen? If you are quiet, if you are asking the Lord to talk, and you can’t hear anything, then you can command the spirit of deaf ears to leave immediately. You can command your spiritual ears to open. You can ask God again and expect that He will answer as He always does!I am not sure that had a lot or anything to do with the verse, and yet when I feel led by the Holy Spirit, I just agree and go along for the ride. Back to the verse. It says, “One night, the Lord appeared to Paul in a vision and said, “Do not be afraid. Continue with your preaching, and do not be silent, for I am with you. No one will attack you or try to harm you, for there are many in this city who are my people.” I think this verse is a testament to God’s love for Paul. He knew He was afraid and He came to talk to him and to reassure him. It sounds like Paul wanted to leave the place where he was. Paul was in Corinth and that was not a nice town. Its nickname is “Sin City.” I have heard Father Mike liken it to parts of Las Vegas. Paul was preaching at the synagogue to the Jews & the Greeks, but they didn’t really want to hear what he had to say.When they started to oppose him and hurl insults at him, he decided to leave the synagogue and search out the gentiles. In case anyone listening is like me, and you are not sure who the gentiles were or what that word means, let me explain. You were considered a gentile if you were not Jewish. It was not a certain race of people or a certain tribe of people; it was all people who were not Jewish. God came to Paul in his dreams and told him not to be afraid, that He was with him, and that he would not be attacked or harmed. God is saying this to us, too! He is with each one of us, and He is protecting us from all evil. I was typing up the minutes for my prayer group, and we had several prophecies that seemed to confirm this. There were two that I thought were especially good to go with this verse.The first one says, “I watch over you, my children. All of you are my children. I break the sword of the enemy who would come against you. You have nothing to fear, for I am there for each and every one of you in each and every trial. I will never forsake my children or leave my childre

Be Bold & Experience Signs & WondersMatthew 10:7-8 “As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.”I saw this verse this morning, and I thought it was a great verse for today. As you can tell from a lot of the verses I have been sharing with you lately, the class I am taking talks a lot about the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit. I would love to share this information with you because I am not sure how many of us really know or believe that the Holy Spirit is still working in a supernatural way in this world. I am sure we all believe in the signs and wonders that occurred when Jesus walked the earth and the ones the apostles saw and did. However, it seems most people do not believe these things are still happening today or that they have been happening ever since Pentecost. Through the ages there have been times when the supernatural signs and wonders were less and less. However, there was never a time when there weren’t any signs and wonders. If you read about the Saints, you will see the miracles they performed all throughout the ages. I think because the Saints are attributed to a lot of the miracles that we hear about we assume that only Saints can perform miracles. Do you want to know a secret about Saints? They weren’t always Saints. At one point, every saint was just a regular human like you and me. They didn’t always know they were going to be a Saint. You may be on your way to Sainthood and you might not even know it. All they knew was that they loved Jesus and wanted to do all they could to follow Him. Do you love Jesus? If so, you are well on your way!In the verse above, Jesus tells us what we need to do. Remember, the Bible is a living document; what we are reading in the Bible is just as much for us today as it was for the apostles 2000 years ago. Jesus is telling you and me to go and proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” People need to hear this, even today. Today, the enemy wants to fill us with worry and anxiety. He wants us to spend our time looking around the world and seeing what a mess it is. He wants us to look around the world and feel like things are hopeless because that is what it looks like right now. There is so much violence, so much hatred, so much craziness. It is easy to get lost in worry and anxiety when we are looking at the world. This is why we need to affix our eyes to Jesus. He is our savior. He is our peace. Only when we take our eyes off of Him that we get wrapped up in worry and even fear. It seems more and more people are giving in to fear and anxiety these days. They are taking their eyes off of Jesus and turning them to the news, to social media, and to the newspapers. We need to be proclaiming the good news of Jesus. We need to be helping people turn their eyes back to Jesus, and what better way to do that than to show them signs and wonders? Signs and wonders will not necessarily be enough to change the hearts toward Jesus. However, signs and wonders might get their attention, and once we have their attention, we can tell them all about Jesus’ love. I think a lot of people are disillusioned with the Church these days. They see all the division and the scandal, and they think that is all the church is. The Church is made up of people, and since we are a fallen people, there will always be people who don’t do as they are called to do. This isn’t a reason to take our eyes off Jesus; if anything, it should be more of a reason to keep our eyes fixed on Him so He can help us not make those same mistakes. Be honest, when I mention signs and wonders, do you instantly count yourself out? Do you think the Saints could do them because they were Saints, but that isn’t something we ordinary humans can do? Me too! I used to think like this, too. Well, actually, if I am being honest, I still have doubts, but they lessen with each step out in faith that I take. If you are like me, you don’t have doubts that God could do miracles through you; God is God; he can do anything. However, when I think of God doing signs and wonders through me, I think, “Why me?” The enemy gets in my mind, and he tells me God wouldn’t use me. He tells me I am too boring, too weak, too sinful, not holy enough, not good enough, and so on. The thing is, Jesus doesn’t usually use those who are perfect. He didn’t come to find “perfect” people to start His church. He used 12 people who most of us wouldn’t have picked. One of the reasons the Gospels start with the lineage of Jesus is to show us that Jesus did not come from a perfect line of people. There were plenty of people in Jesus’ lineage who weren’t holy enough, weren’t good enough, weren’t even close to perfect by the world’s standards, and yet they were chosen out of everyone to be part of the lineage of Christ. Besides proclaiming the good news, Jesus is calling

Be Bold & Do the Works Jesus Did!John 14:12-13 “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.”This is one of my favorite verses in the Bible. it is one that I read, and when I heard it, I immediately believed it. Some verses are like this in the Bible. When you read the Bible, some things are easy to take in, and others are difficult. These easy and difficult things are different for everyone. We all have different experiences when we read the Bible because we have all had different experiences throughout our lives. There is a quote by Steven R. Covey that I really like. Steven R. Covey said, “We see the world, not as it is, but as we are.” This is true for the Bible as well. We look at and interpret the things we read in the Bible with our own unique lens. For instance, if we had people letting us down our whole lives, we may read the parts of the Bible that talk about trust and struggle to believe we can trust God because we haven’t been able to trust anyone on earth. If we have grown up in a very unloving environment, we may struggle with the parts of the Bible that talk about unconditional love. Other things may come easier to us. For me, I instantly loved this verse. I know the Bible is God’s Word and that God chose His words very carefully. Sometimes, when we are reading the Bible, there may be a question in our minds about why they used this word vs. that word. One thing I have learned from doing Bible studies is that there is always a reason why certain words were chosen. Also, if you have done Bible studies, you have had the benefit of hearing all about the original Greek or Hebrew words that were used in the original translation and what those words meant. Sometimes, when translated, we don’t have an exact word to mean what they were saying. I find Bible studies fascinating because you gain so much more insight into what the verses are really saying. Anyway, back to the verse. I heard this verse or read this verse, and I believed Jesus’ word to us. I have never really been one to struggle with trust. I grew up in a loving family; I had great friends growing up, I am blessed to be able to say I was not let down by those I know and cared about often growing up. Therefore, I trust them pretty easily.But what if you don’t trust easily? What if you look at that verse and say there is no way we could perform the works Jesus did? Jesus was God; of course, He performed miracles. Also, the apostles were right there with Him for 3 years during His ministry. Of course, they could do miracles too. We can all usually agree that Jesus did miracles when He walked the earth, and we can also usually agree that the apostles were sent out, and they performed miracles, too. We run into trouble by trying to believe we can do signs and wonders in today's world. Who are we? We are not holy enough; we are not worthy of that power and authority. I agree with both of those statements and yet Jesus still says we will do the works that He did and even greater works than He did. How is this possible?It is possible through the Holy Spirit. Did you ever realize or notice that no single miracle was recorded in the Gospels before Jesus was baptized? Jesus was fully human and fully God the entire time He walked the earth. There was nothing stopping Jesus from performing miracles during the first 30 years of His life. However, He chose to wait until after He was baptized and received the Holy Spirit to start performing miracles. This is something I recently found out and found fascinating. It was unsurprising to me that Jesus did miracles in the Bible; he is God, after all. I didn’t know that Jesus didn’t use his divinity to perform miracles. He used the Holy Spirit, working through Him to perform the miracles. He chose to put his divinity aside and act from his human nature, with the help of the Holy Spirit, because it would be greater glory for God. St. Lawrence of Brindisi explains it like this:"Christ came into the world to do battle against Satan, to do away with idolatry, and to turn the world to faith and piety and the worship of the true God. He could have accomplished this by using the weapons of his might and coming as he will come to judge, in glory and majesty… But in order that his victory might be the more glorious, he willed to fight Satan in our weak flesh. It is as if an unarmed man, right-hand bound, were to fight with his left hand alone against a powerful enemy; if he emerged victorious, his victory would be regarded as all the more glorious. So Christ conquered Satan with the right hand of his divinity bound, and used against him only the left hand of his weak humanity.”Is this new to you, too? Did you know that God performed these miracles and defeated satan without u

Today’s Witnesses are from the Encounter Ministries NorthEast Regional Conference that I just attended this past weekend. I had the privilege of being on a prayer team with someone who I had never met before. This is how they usually do it. If you are selected for prayer teams, you are assigned a partner that you do not know. I like this because you get to meet someone new and also because you get to learn from that person. We all pray a bit differently, and we all hear the Lord differently. it was really great to experience praying with my partner, Lynn.We were asked to pray in three different ways. The first time we prayed, it was for a baptism in the Holy Spirit. I have done this type of praying before but not very often, and I was nervous I wouldn’t know what to say. However, the Holy Spirit came through, as He always does, and it was great. The first person we prayed over was slain in the spirit. I had never prayed over anyone who was slain in the Spirit before. If you don’t know what that means, it means that they are so filled with the Holy Spirit that they can no longer stand, and they fall backward and lay on the ground. Of course we have people catching them so they do not get hurt. They are not passed out, but they are not really awake either. Those who I have talked to who have been slain in the Spirit said it is really peaceful. When they get up, they are so full of peace and the love of the Father.When we asked people how they were feeling at the end of our prayer, most said either “really good” or “very peaceful.” God is so good. He gave each person exactly what they wanted. There were over 600 people attending the conference, and there were only about 30 prayer groups. So, we prayed over a lot of people each time.The next section was the Prophetic Sections. So when someone would come up to us for prayer, we would ask if they had anything specific they would like us to ask God about for them. Many of them said that they didn’t have anything specific, and then some of them did. What we do when we pray for a prophetic word is we ask the Lord what He would like to say to the person, and then we are quiet and listen. Then we tell the person what we heard the Lord say, and then we ask them if what we said resonates with them or makes sense to them. This last part is mostly to help us grow in our gifts. The more we know about how accurate our prophetic words are, the more we can know what is the Lord’s voice and what is not.It was exciting because everything we said seemed to resonate with the people we prayed with. God is so good, too, because He must have known that we were nervous that we might not hear His voice, so oftentimes, He would give me and my partner very similar messages so that we were able to be confident it was from the Lord. We also had several people who said that the word we gave them Friday morning during the prophetic part actually confirmed what their prayer team had told them the night before during the Baptism in the Spirit section.We had one person who told us He wanted God to confirm something for Him. He wanted us to pray that God would give him a message that would confirm either something he heard the other night or something he had been thinking about. He did not tell us what he wanted to be confirmed. He didn’t have to because the words we were getting were coming from God, and he knew what this young man wanted to hear. We said we would ask the Lord and then tell him what we heard. We couldn’t guarantee it would be what he wanted to hear.I closed my eyes, and I immediately got an image of a cross on a hill. At first, I couldn’t tell if it was Jesus’s crucifixion or not. Then I saw Jesus on the cross, and I heard very clearly, “Even if you were the only one, I would have still died for you. That is how much I love you.” The young man was shocked and started to cry. He said that did confirm what he was thinking. He said for some reason, this whole conference, he had been running away from God’s love. He wasn’t sure why. He felt God was trying to tell him how much he loved him, and he seemed to be running away. But now he was sure that God loved him. How amazing is that? We had no idea what this young man wanted to hear, but God did!We had so many beautiful experiences just like this. It is such an honor to witness people hearing what the Lord wants to say to them. It is an honor to be used as an instrument for the Lord to pass along His words, His encouragement, and his love to each and every person we prayed with. Each person left our prayer session feeling loved and seen. That is another superpower of the Lord. When you receive prophetic words, you are able to feel seen, truly seen, and known in a way that you have never felt before. God is so good!!The last thing we prayed over was for physical healing. There was a healing service first, and then we did individual healing. During an encounter ministry healing service, they always start with corporate prayer. During

Be Bold & Do It AnywayEsther 4:14 For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” I think we can all agree that the world is a pretty crazy place right now. In America, there is so much disagreement and arguing going on right now. I am not sure there has been a time when the country was more divided. Although, as I say that, I am reminded of the Civil War, and I think that was probably a time when this country was more divided. In the world, there are wars going on in several countries. There is famine; there are still 1 in 4 people who do not have access to safe drinking water. How is that possible with all the technology we have today?Thinking about how crazy this world is can lead us into an emotional spiral, especially if we feel there is nothing we can do about it. I want to encourage you not to get stuck in negative thoughts and to watch less news if you find yourself starting to spiral or getting stuck in those negative thoughts. If you read the stories of the Saints, you will see that all of them mention how the times they are living are the worst that they have ever been. I think we all feel this way because we live in a broken world, and when we compare that to the world God wants us to be able to experience, we see such a stark contrast.However, what if God has been preparing us for such a time? There is a story in the Bible about Esther. She was a young Jewish woman who found favor with the king and became the queen. Her uncle Mordecai adopted her as his own when she was young, as both parents died. Mordecai had told Esther before meeting the king not to reveal that she was Jewish, and she listened. This story tells about how a powerful vizier to the king, named Haman, wanted to kill all the Jews living in the Persian Empire in one day. He was angry because Mordecai refused to bow down to him. Mordecai explained he only bows down to God and this angered Haman—who told the king that there were people living throughout his kingdom that did not obey the same laws of the king and that he should not tolerate them. He convinced the king to issue a decree that would destroy the Jews, and upon doing so, Haman agreed to put ten thousand silver talents into the royal treasury. When the Jewish people heard, they went into mourning with prayer and fasting. Mordecai got word to Esther and explained the situation. He asked Esther to talk to her husband, the king, and beg for the lives of her people to be spared. Esther explained that if anyone goes in front of the king while he is in the inner courtroom without being summoned, they will suffer immediate death unless he offers them the end of the scepter. Mordecai wrote back the following in Esther 4:14: “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”. Esther risked her life to go in front of the king, and because of her bravery, she saved her people, God’s people. We do not usually know why we end up where we end up or why we go through the things that we go through. God is a mystery, and only he knows what he is doing. He can see the whole picture: past, present, and future. We can only see the past and present. I once heard a quote that I liked and found comforting when I was going through some hard times. The quote said, “You were assigned this mountain to show others it can be moved.” I found it comforting to think that by making it through the situation, I would show others that they could make it through, too. I also used the quote in reverse and thought, “Ok, then I just need to look for someone who has made it through this type of situation to show me that I could make it through as well.” There is a song by Christina Perri that’s called "I Believe." In that song, she says, “I believe that you fell so that you would land next to me.” Have you ever been in a situation where you can tell God arranged it? Sometimes, we can tell what God is doing. Sometimes, we can feel it in our bones that we are exactly where we were meant to be at that precise moment. God placed us here in this moment, and what if everything we have done up to this moment has been getting us ready for whatever is going on in our lives right now? What if all the scripture readings we have done, bible studies and prayer groups we have attended, and all the praying we have done were specifically to help us get through these tough times? What if all those days at the gym, long walks, or yoga classes were to prepare us for the mental and physical challenges of these past few months? What if all the past experiences we have had with friends, families, and coworkers were to prepare us for this extraordinary time in his

Be Bold & Be An Ambassador For Christ!2 Corinthians 5:20-21 “So we are ambassadors for Christ since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”I love this verse because it reminds us that we are all ambassadors for Christ. This is true whether we want to be or not. The fact is that when you are Catholic and when you are Christian, people are always watching you. They are watching what you are doing and what you are saying. They are watching to see how “Catholics” or “Christians” act. If you are a Christian, your life is a witness to Christ. What type of witness are you?Everything we do and say is evaluated. I had a friend who said she stopped going to church because she was tired of going for fellowship after mass, and it would just turn into a gossip session where they would talk about all those who weren’t there. Or sometimes, those who were there but just not in earshot of their conversation. She got tired of these people who said they were Christian and went to church each week and yet were so full of judgment and gossip.Unfortunately, my friend’s story is not all that uncommon. There are plenty of people who have left the church for things that have either happened in the church or at the church. I know several people who have left the church because of the abuse scandal that was going on within the church. I do not blame those who left. The priests and those who follow Christ are held to a higher standard. This is because we represent Christ. We are His followers and also his ambassadors.It is our job to represent Christ. When people look at us, we want them to see Christ. We want them to look at us and say, “I want what they have.” Instead, a lot of times, others will see us getting angry and lashing out, gossiping, or treating others disrespectfully, and instead of saying, “I want what they have,” they say, “If that is what it is like to be Christian, then I don’t want any part of it.” We are all human, and we all make mistakes. However, the more we can be Christ-like, the more others will recognize that there is something different about us, and they will want to see what that is.I had the opportunity to witness the peace of Christ this weekend at a conference I went to. I was in charge of booking the Uber to get us to and from the conference. It was a somewhat easy job, and I didn’t mind at all. The conference went from Thursday after until Saturday night. We didn’t really have any issues Thursday. Friday morning, the Uber came as scheduled, and our day was off to a great start. Each time we got out of the Uber, we asked the Uber driver if he needed us to pray for anything for him, and they always thanked us and told us what prayers they needed. Mostly, they just said for their health and or their families.This morning was no different. As I gave the Uber driver the tip money, I asked what he wanted prayer for, and he said for his health, he was having some problems. We said we were headed into the church and we would pray for him. He thanked us and drove away. As soon as we got into the church, I looked for my phone and realized I must have left it in the back seat of the Uber. This is typically not too much of a problem as Uber has a great way to let them know you forgot something in the car. However, it was my Uber account we were using, and I didn’t have my phone.I couldn’t just report it on the app because I didn’t have my phone. I tried to sign into the app on my friend's phone, but Uber sent a code to my email to ensure it was me. I tried to sign into my email on my friend’s phone, but they sent a code to my phone number to ensure it was me. So, long story short, I could not get ahold of Uber without my phone. Then, I remembered, I am sure the Holy Spirit reminded me, that I had my computer back at the hotel, and I was signed into Uber and my email both on that. So, I just let go of all the worry and stress and reached out to Uber when I returned to the hotel that night.I also asked those around me to pray that I get my phone back. However, the rest of the day, I just let it go. I did not really worry about it or stress about it. There wasn’t anything I could do to change it, so I turned it over to God. When I returned to the hotel, I contacted Uber through their website. They contacted the driver, and he called the following day. He had to drive to an airport not too far away, so he dropped my phone off at the hotel at 9 AM Saturday morning. I was already at the conference for the day, but I got it when I got back to the hotel at 11 PM that night. Aside from being without it for two days and the fee I needed to pay for having the driver come and return it, it all worked out.I am telling you this story because I could have freaked out about losing my phone, yelled, screamed, and cried, letting it ruin my entire two days at the confe

Be Bold!Deuteronomy 31:7-8 “Then Moses summoned Joshua and said to him in the sight of all Israel: “Be strong and bold, for you are the one who will go with this people into the land that the Lord has sworn to their ancestors to give them; and you will put them in possession of it. It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.”I thought it was interesting that this was a verse that I read this morning. Yesterday at prayer group, we stayed after and did our monthly bookmark meeting. What this means is that we take a look at the bookmark for the month, and we each say what stands out to us. The bookmark is the discerned word for a particular month. Each week at prayer group, we get several words of prophecy from the Lord. We record these words that are given, and there is a team that discerns the words given and picks one: Call, Proclamation, Promise, and Directive for the month. One of our members then types them up and puts them on a bookmark so we can share them with the entire prayer group.Yesterday we did the bookmark from February 2023. That was almost a year ago, and yet the bookmark was similar to the words that we received yesterday. For the most part, the Lord is not saying new things to us. He is saying the same things we have heard time and time again. Sometimes, He says those things in a new way, and sometimes, He uses very similar words. What is striking to me today is how this passage says, “Be strong and bold,” and this is the same thing He was telling us last February and the same thing He told us yesterday.In the February bookmark, the Lord said, “Do all to make me known and proclaim my Name. Be bold and step out. Serve me with all you are each and every day. Go now. Do not delay.” The passage talks about being strong and bold so they can take over the promised land. The passage in the bookmark talks about being bold so we can proclaim the Lord’s name. The apostles prayed for this boldness to preach the word of the Lord at a time when it was very dangerous to preach about Jesus. In Acts 4, Peter and John talk to people about Jesus and His resurrection. The rulers, elders, and scribes didn’t like what they were teaching, and they threatened Peter and John as to what would happen to them if they didn’t stop talking about Jesus.Instead of cowering and obeying when they were told to stop talking about Jesus, they prayed for more boldness to do it anyway. Acts 4:29-31 says, “And now, Lord, look at their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.” They asked for boldness, and they were given it. It is the same for us. All we need to do is ask. God is calling us to be bold in our faith. We sometimes worry that we will be alone in this boldness. Sometimes, it can feel like it is us against the world, and when we think about being brave, we aren’t sure we can do it.In the verse above Moses reminds Joshua that God will be with Him when they go into the promised land. It says, “It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.” This is reminding Joshua that God will not let them down. He is reminding them that they do not have anything to be afraid of. It is not up to them to defeat the enemy. God will be with them, and He will help them! In the February bookmark, before God told us to be bold, he reminded us, “I am the Lord of the universe.”God is not calling us to be bold on our own. He is right there with us. He goes before us to prepare the way. For instance, if God is calling you to be bold and step out in faith and pray over someone, then He has already prepared that person’s heart to accept that prayer. If God is asking you to be brave and ask for something then He has already softened hearts and prepared them for you. God says 365 times in the Bible, some version of “do not be afraid.” This is another way to say, “Be bold.”My friend Peggy at prayer group yesterday was saying she has learned to be bold just by hearing the title of this podcast. She said it reminds her that she can be bold with Jesus by her side. She said she has gotten much bolder since listening. She gets a daily devotional from another friend of ours. She forwards it to many people. She was brave and took a step in faith and gave her grandson a Max Lucado book called “Fearless.” She wasn’t sure how he would respond. He is a teenager and, in the past, has been resistant to faith. However, recently he said he has been reading the Bible. She took this book off of her shelf and said she thought he might like it and gave it to him. Her grandson sent her a text message wh

Be Bold & Turn To God (Be Bold Series)Psalm 138:7-8 “Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life. You stretch out your hand against the anger of my foes; with your right hand, you save me. The Lord will vindicate me; your love, Lord, endures forever—do not abandon the works of your hands.When I read this passage, I got the picture of a football player holding the ball in his right hand, with his body turned away from the opposing player and his other hand out to block. However, instead of being a football player, it is God. He has His right arm around me, shielding me from danger, and His left hand out to shield me from the anger of my enemies. To me, this is a beautiful image. I am so thankful that I know that God is out there protecting me. I have heard some incredible stories of this protection. I think that sometimes we can think that God can protect us from things by helping us avoid them or making sure we are in the right place at the right time. And He does do this. However, He can also protect you from danger at the moment as well. The verse above starts with the statement, “You preserve my life.” I would like to tell you a story that is an excellent example of this. The story is from the book “How To Live Like A King’s Kid." by Harold Hill. If you have not read this book, I can’t recommend it enough. It is so good and will definitely boost your faith. Here is a short excerpt of how God can save you from real physical danger at the moment. “Recently, I was driving down a divided highway to a meeting. The dividing strip was maybe 20 feet wide. Suddenly, a car coming from the other direction, going about 70, the same speed I was traveling, started to cross the strip. It was headed straight for me. A 140 mph impact was in the making, with me in the middle. Mincemeat.I was glad I didn't have to wait to get into the high gear of praise and Thanksgiving because I wouldn't have had time. It all happened so fast. Walking in the light has to do with all circuits being tuned up by praise and Thanksgiving all the time – in everything, giving thanks for everything. I have been walking in the light all day. So I thanked God and prayed in the spirit for the people in the other car all in the same breath, realizing it could be my last one. But I was singing the songs of Zion, knowing that King's kids don't have to graduate on Satan's terms.The car hurtling at me was less than 20 yards away when suddenly it shot straight up in the air and turned upside down. It was a convertible, the top was down, and people flew in all directions. Then, the car crashed flat right alongside me."Lord, do you want me to stop?" I asked him then. “No. Don't stop. You intercede,” was is the message I got. In my rearview mirror, I could see other cars and trucks stopping. They wouldn't need my physical presence there, but God needed me to be an intercessor. And so I kept on praying, praising God, praying in tongues. I was aware of raw power, rivers of living water, flowing from my innermost being directly to the throne of grace as I interceded in the spirit.Before I was half a mile down the road, I had God's assurance that he had taken care of everything, and I went to my meeting satisfied. That was Friday. On Sunday morning, I was invited to speak at the Kent Island Methodist church near where the accident occurred. I shared my experience from the pulpit and said that if anyone present knew the outcome of the accident, I'd like to hear about it. I knew something good had taken place. Sure enough, three people came to me at the church door after the service and said they were at the scene just a few minutes after the accident happened because they lived close by. The car had blown a tire, going at high speed, and had gotten completely out of control. The people in the convertible had fallen clear of the car, and everyone had walked away from the accident! The car was demolished, but no person was injured. It was a miracle.A car coming straight at you on a level Road does not suddenly jump straight up in the air. From straight forward motion to vertical motion is impossible unless you hit something curved to change the course. And that's what happened in that accident. The car's course was changed when it hit a curved surface – the curved circle of light that prevented darkness from entering to annihilate a king's kid. There were millions of foot-pounds of energy involved, but that's nothing for an angel of the Lord. Hallelujah! When we call upon the king, he works supernaturally to deliver us from trouble.”I always get emotional when I hear stories like this because I am reminded of how much God loves us and that He will go to any lengths to save us. I also get emotional because of how touching it is. These people all seemed to be headed for death. Their lives could have been over in an instant. And they weren’t. Satan meant for that tire to go out and for the situation to end badly. If Satan had gotten his way, those peo

Welcome to Witness Wednesdays here on the Walk Boldly With Jesus Podcast. I am your host Catherine Duggan, however, each Wednesday I will have a guest give their witness of how God is working in their lives. Hearing how God is working in other people’s lives shows us how deeply He cares for each one of us individually. Listening to these experiences will help your faith grow. I am so blessed to be able to share these with you. The title of Today’s Episode is The Lord Doesn’t Have Favorites, He Has Intimates. Our guest speaker today is Tina and she is going to talk about her journey to forgive. We all struggle with forgiveness, some more than others, but it is not easy for any of us. Listening to how others learned to forgive helps us on our journey toward forgiveness. While you listen to Tina’s amazing witness try and see how it may apply to your own journey. Thank you Tina for being willing to share your difficult journey! 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

Be Bold & Be Content!Philippians 4:11-13 “Not that I am referring to being in need; for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we all learned this invaluable lesson? Paul said that he has learned to be content with whatever he has. If we could all learn this, there would be so much less fighting in the world today. A lot of fighting seems to begin when someone has something and someone else wants it. It can be a material thing, like oil, food, or water, or it can be something else, like power, fame, or good fortune. When we see others with these, we tend to get jealous and want what others have. Some people feel they deserve to take what others have and try to take what they want. Can you imagine a world in which we are all content with what we have? I think it is hard in this country because we have access to so much, and the American dream seems to be wanting more and more. Climbing that ladder of success no matter what it means for you personally or in your relationships. It seems that there are few people in this country who are content with what they have. I think social media makes it even harder to be content with what you have because everyone is always posting photos about their new car, their vacation, their house, or whatever exciting new thing just happened to them. Back in the day, if your neighbor got a new car, you would see it outside their house, but you wouldn’t be reading about it online. You probably wouldn’t always see everyone’s photos of their vacations. It would be if you happened to be at their house when they developed their film. However, with digital cameras and phones in everyone’s hands all the time, we tend to document our lives and live more publicly than we used to. This is not necessarily a bad thing as I am very happy that I get to keep in touch with my friends from all over the world. I like that I can spend 30 minutes on social media and catch up on most major events in my friends' lives instead of having to email, snail mail, or call all of them. Technology has been a lifesaver in many instances. Especially when we couldn’t leave our houses during the pandemic. My family had many Zoom calls during that time, and it was great to be able to see everyone's faces.As much as technology can be a lifesaver, it can also be a major source of envy for many people. It can be hard when you are going through a particularly hard season of parenting, and all you see on social media are these posts that make it seem like everyone else seems to be a superstar parent. Maybe you have been struggling with health, yet everyone you look at online seems so healthy, and it appears to come so naturally to them. Maybe you just lost your job. I know this is a very real possibility for many people today with all that is happening. It is hard if you lost your job not to be jealous of those who have jobs and are posting about their jobs. You can tell people are not content with what they have when you hear them constantly complaining. When you are content with what you have you don’t complain much. You are happy with the way things are, and you are grateful for what you do have. The definition of being content is being in a state of peaceful happiness. This does not mean that you never strive for more, but it does mean that you are happy with what you have at the moment. One thing we can do that could help us be more content is to focus on the things we do have instead of the things we don’t have. It can be easy to get stuck in a rut thinking about all the things that we want and yet don’t have yet. However, if we shifted that focus to thinking about all the things God has blessed us with, we would be much more content. We may even be grateful. I think being grateful is one of the keys to being content. You may be complaining about something that you have while someone else is begging God to have that thing. For instance, you may be complaining because your hair is too thick, too thin, too long, or too short, all the while someone who is going through chemotherapy is praying for God to give them hair again. You may be complaining because your car is older than you would like, and someone else is praying for a car so that they can get to work. You may complain because your spouse or children drive you crazy. Meanwhile, there are so many out there who are still struggling to find a spouse or to have children. Thinking about what we have in this manner makes it much easier to be content with what we have. I have heard stories of people from other countries that have far less available to them than we do, yet they are completely content and grateful for all they have. I have heard of people going on mission trip

Be Bold & Be Purified (Be Bold Series)1 Peter 1:6-7 "I know how great this makes you feel, even though you have to put up with every kind of aggravation in the meantime. Pure gold put in the fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine. When Jesus wraps this all up, it’s your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory.”In Tuesday’s episode, we talked about 1 Peter 1:6-7. This verse ends with, “The Day is coming when you’ll have it all—life healed and whole.” This is where today’s verses pick up. I had to go back and look because today’s verse begins with, “I know how great that makes you feel,” and I couldn’t remember what made us feel so great. Now that I look back, I agree that thinking about a day when we have it all—life healed and whole- makes us feel great. Today’s verse talks about why we have to go through some of the things we need to go through. Or, maybe not why we have to go through them, but the result of going through them.The verse says, “Pure gold put into the fire comes out proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine.” I remember I was at a prayer group meeting once, and the leader was talking about the process of refining silver. I am unsure if the process is the same for refining gold. I think this story will give you a good idea of why we must all go through a refining process. Here is the story:The Refiner’s FireAs she watched the silversmith, he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up. He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the flames were hottest so as to burn away all the impurities. The woman thought about God holding us in such a hot spot; then she thought again about the verse that says: ‘He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver.’ (Malachi 3:3) She asked the silversmith if it was true that he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time the silver was being refined. The man answered that yes, he not only had to sit there holding the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the fire. If the silver were left a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed. The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the silversmith, ‘How do you know when the silver is fully refined?’ He smiled at her and answered, ‘Oh, that’s easy — when I see my image in it.’ I love this story because it explains why we have to go through some of the things we have to go through. My favorite part is the very last part. I love that the silversmith said it is done when he can see his image in it. Isn’t that beautiful? Isn’t that the same with us? God is refining us and helping us to become not just better versions of ourselves but actually to become more and more like Jesus. God can tell when He is done refining us because he can see his reflection in us. I think that is a beautiful thought.Today's verse says that when gold is put in the fire, only the genuine gold remains. It also says that when genuine faith is put through suffering, it proves genuine. Can you see how this would be true? Can you think of a time when your faith was tested? A time when you were sure you believed God worked all things for good. A time when you felt you really trusted in the Lord. Then, it seemed like your whole world came crashing down. Maybe you lost your job? Maybe you lost your house? Maybe you lost a spouse or a child? Maybe you lost your parent?Whatever it is that happened, it shook your world and tested your faith. You struggled to understand how the God you loved so much could allow this terrible thing to happen to you and your family. You struggle to trust that He will be there with you through it all. This is hard for all of us. It is easy to have faith when all is going well. It is easy for someone who is doing great in life to tell you to trust in the Lord, to turn to Him, and He will help you. Those are easy words to say to others when all is going well. However, it is very different when you are the one going through it.This is what this verse is trying to tell us. When we go through a difficult struggle, we can keep our faith through it. Our faith is proven when we can turn to the Lord in our confusion and anger and talk with Him. That is how we can prove our faith is genuine. This isn’t just proving it to the Lord either; it is also proving it to us. We may wonder if our faith is true and genuine, and when we have a hard time, we get to see if it is.The last line of this verse says, “When Jesus wraps this all up, it’s your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory.” This can be a very important thing for us to remember because it is so contrary to how the world thinks. The world only seems to care about how much stuff you have. Do you have the nicest house, car, job, etc? However, this verse tells us that it is our faith, not

Be Bold & Accept God’s LoveRomans 8:35 “Who could ever divorce us from the endless love of God’s Anointed One? Absolutely no one! For nothing in the universe has the power to diminish his love toward us. Troubles, pressures, and problems are unable to come between us and heaven’s love. What about persecutions, deprivations, dangers, and death threats? No, for they are all impotent to hinder omnipotent love.”This is the passion translation again. I decided this morning to open it, read some of it, and see what jumped out at me. I really liked all of chapter 8, but I thought it best to limit it to a verse or two. It was tough to decide between this verse and the verses at the end of this section. This section in Chapter 8 is called “The Triumph of God’s Love.” Can you tell just by the title why I loved all of it? The end of this section was similar to this verse, yet it said it in a different, equally compelling way. I will probably use those verses on Thursday or Friday, so stay tuned.I decided on this verse today because it drives home something that I try to help people see. Something I wish everyone in the world knew down deep in the depths of their hearts. God loves us ALWAYS, NO MATTER WHAT WE DO! The verse starts by asking us a question. “Who could ever divorce us from the endless love of God’s Anointed One?” I like that it uses the word divorce, which is a word where, unfortunately, everyone knows the meaning. The verse answers that question with an, “Absolutely no one!” There is so much in that one sentence. That one sentence tells us that no one could ever divorce us from Jesus’ love. Divorce means to separate something from something else. The verse is saying no one can separate us from the endless love of God’s Anointed One. This tells us that the love is endless. It is not fickle like human love. It doesn’t come and go with the changing of the winds or the changing of our moods. God’s love is endless.The next line says, “For nothing in the universe has the power to diminish his love toward us. Troubles, pressures, and problems are unable to come between us and heaven’s love.” The first part was saying no one could come between us; now this verse says nothing can come between us. We might agree that no person could come between us and God, and yet we struggle to believe that nothing can come between us. We think our failures make it so God can’t love us. We think our sins make it so God can’t love us. This verse shows us that NOTHING in this universe has the power to diminish His love towards us.It even says that troubles, pressures, and problems are unable to come between us and heaven’s love. I think it is really important to know this because what it doesn’t say in this verse is no one, and nothing will try to come between us and heaven’s love. You will find plenty of people that want to come between you and heaven’s love. You will find plenty of things that the devil will use to try to come between you and heaven’s love. If we know these things aren’t strong enough to block God’s love for us, we won’t worry so much. We won’t pay them so much attention. The enemy tries to convince us that every little thing we do makes us unworthy of God’s love. He tries to convince us that God could never love us; look at all we have done. This is why it is important to read God’s Word. It is important to know what the Lord is actually saying to us so we can stand up to the enemy and know when He is lying, which, by the way, is always!The last line in this verse says, “What about persecutions, deprivations, dangers, and death threats? No, for they are all impotent to hinder omnipotent love.” This last part is interesting. You might think, why would these things hinder God’s love? I am not doing them; they are being done to me. For instance, persecution is hostility and ill-treatment, especially based on ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or political beliefs. Why would someone being hostile to me get in the way of God’s love? The reason we think this is because of the things they say to us. Their primary purpose is to make us feel like we are not good enough. They want us to think God could never love us. This verse confirms that even if we might feel far from God because of deprivations, dangers, and death threats, He is still right there with us, and He is loving us no matter what.I love the language the last line uses. It says that all these enemy tactics are impotent to hinder God’s love. Impotent means unable to take effective action; helpless or powerless. I love to think about how powerless the enemy and His tactics are to separate us from God’s love. The only thing is, we have to know this, we have to believe this, and we have to live this. If we don’t know this, we will believe the enemy's lies and think we are unloved. We will feel like we are unloved. When we believe the lie, we empower the liar. The enemy convinces many people that the Lord couldn’t love them. We have to get His word out. We

Be Bold & Fix Your Eyes On Jesus (Be Bold Series)Matthew 14:26-31 “ When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified. “It is a ghost,” they said, and they cried out in fear. At once, [Jesus] spoke to them, “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.” Peter said to him in reply, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” Peter got out of the boat and began to walk on the water toward Jesus. But when he saw how [strong] the wind was, he became frightened, and, beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately, Jesus stretched out his hand, caught him, and said to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”I love this story. I remember the first time I remember someone talking about it was a speaker at a retreat in England. The theme of the retreat was Radical Trust. I loved that theme from the moment that I heard it. I instantly knew that was what I wanted. I wanted to have radical trust in the Lord. The speaker talked about how she loved Peter because he was always ready to follow the Lord. It seemed as though he didn’t always think before he did things, but that was part of what made him so special.Just before the disciples were on this boat, they had just been with Jesus as he spoke to a large group of people, and they got to be a part of the miracle of feeding the 5,000 men with five loaves of bread and two fish. They witnessed a miracle and got to be a part of it. Afterward, Jesus told them to get in the boat and go ahead to the other side while he dismissed the people. Once the crowds of people had left, Jesus climbed the mountain to be alone to pray with his Father. He stayed there late into the night. Once he was done, He decided to catch up with His disciples on the water. However, it was the middle of the night, and all they saw was someone walking towards them on the water. They didn’t know who it was and they were afraid.I think we all would have reacted this way if we saw someone walking on the water towards us. However, when they called out to Him, He answered them and told them they had nothing to fear, that it was Jesus. Then I love what Peter did next. He told the Lord if it is really you, command me to come out on the water with you. Jesus said, Come. What happens next is remarkable. Jesus invites Peter out onto the water, and Peter gets out of the boat onto the water. I wonder how many of us would have the courage to ask the Lord to invite us to join Him, and then when He did, how many of us would actually be brave enough to get out of the boat.I have asked the Lord for many things. I have asked Him to use me for healing, and then I have absolutely had times when He said ok, and yet I was too afraid to do what He called me to do. Has this ever happened to you? You asked the Lord for something, and then when he said yes, you were surprised and afraid? I love that Peter just stepped out of the boat and was walking on the water with the Lord, at least for a bit. That is amazing. Imagine the opportunity Peter would have missed out on if he hadn’t asked or if he hadn’t gotten out of the boat. I wonder if all the other apostles were sad they hadn’t asked the Lord to call them out of the boat?The next part is a part I think we can all relate to. Peter got out of the boat. He was walking on water to the Lord, and all was great, and then he took his eyes off of Jesus and looked at the world around him. Instead of keeping his eyes fixed on Jesus, he looked around and saw how [strong] the wind was. He became frightened and began to sink. I think we have all been here before, too. We had our eyes fixed on Jesus. We knew we were doing what He called us to do, all was going great, and then we started to look around us. We noticed others talking about us, we noticed the circumstances around us were different, we got enticed by our surroundings, and we stopped doing what we knew we should do.God is not always calling us to do something easy. He is not always calling us to do something that will feel good or that will please others. Remember, Paul was thrown into prison while he was doing the work God called him to do. He was not in prison for disobeying the Lord; he was following the Lord’s directions and was imprisoned for it. You may know that you are doing the right thing, and yet if you take your eyes off Jesus and look around you, it may seem like the circumstances around you are overwhelming. If you start to listen to those around you, you may start to sink, just as Peter did.I think it is important for us all to remember what happened to Peter so that if we are in a similar circumstance, we will know what to do. When Peter took his eyes off Jesus and started to sink, he cried out to the Lord, who saved Him. It says in the verse above, “He cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately, Jesus stretched out his hand, caught him, and said to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” It does not say that Jesus took His time to walk ove

Today’s Witness is from a friend of mine named Ed. Ed is a part of my prayer group and a student at Encounter School of Ministry Boston. The same program I graduated from last May. Ed went to Belize on a mission trip with the Encounter School. There were 37 of them that went to Belize. They went out on the streets to pray for those who wanted it. Ed talks about the amazing experience it was and some of the miracles they saw! I will let him explain. 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

Be Bold & Have Radical Trust (Be Bold Series)Daniel 3:17 “If our God, whom we serve, can save us from the white-hot furnace and from your hands, oh king, may he save us! But even if he will not, know, O king, that we will not serve your god or worship the golden statue which you set up.”Radical Trust was new to me when I attended a conference in March 2011. I had seen radical trust in action many times, but I don’t think I had ever heard it called that. I was instantly in love with the phrase. I loved the idea of having Radical Trust in our God. I really enjoyed learning about that concept over the weekend. The speaker, Anne Trufant, asked us, “Do you trust God?” Not do you trust in God, but do you trust God? Do you truly trust what he says to you, what he tells you? It was a different way to look at it. Do I trust everything God tells me when I read the bible? Do I trust that he is saying those things to me? Do I trust God? I definitely took some time to ponder that and pray with that thought. After that retreat, I started to pray for radical trust a lot more often. I also tried to implement radical trust in my life. It’s not just about saying, “Of course I trust God,” it's about truly believing that with your whole being. Wouldn’t it be great if when we got a bill that we did not have the money to pay, we could say and truly believe, "God’s got this?" "I don’t need to worry because He’s got this." What about when we see that our kids are doing something that we know is wrong, and we can see all the ways they can get hurt if they continue down that path? Can we truly say, "God’s got this," and not worry about it? Ever since this retreat, I have prayed so many times for radical trust because, in my experience, it does not come overnight. And it is not always universal. Over the years, I have found myself having radical trust in one area but not in another. However, every day, I see the benefits in my life of praying for radical trust. I am much better about radical trust now. I have a supernatural trust that all will be ok. I do not tend to feel stressed out about the future because I know that God is in charge, and I am not. Why should I worry when he is the one in control? I enjoy reading books about radical trust because every example I read strengthens my trust a little more. So, I thought I would give you a few examples. The next two examples I have heard from people close to me. My mom and dad had 11 children. My mom stayed home with the kids, and my dad worked. He had a good job, but money was always tight because of the number of kids in our family. One day, my parents’ friends had to go out unexpectedly. They asked my parents to watch their kids. They had 10 kids. My parents said, “Yes, of course we will.“ Then they thought about how to feed all those 21 children when they had no food in the house. They had a radical trust and prayed to God, trusting that he would come through. They trusted even though they did not know how he would show up or come through for them. A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door. It was a neighbor with bags of groceries. The neighbor’s father had just moved into their house unexpectedly, and they had nowhere to put the food from the dad’s house as they had just gone shopping. So my parents gratefully accepted the food. They looked through and noticed that there was some pasta and sauce in the bags. They then thought they could feed everyone spaghetti if they just had meat. A few minutes later there was another knock at the door. A different neighbor had a cooler full of meat. They had just gone hunting and stocked their freezer and fridge with all the meat they could hold, and they did not know what to do with what was left. Again, my parents gratefully accepted it. Then, they immediately thanked God for providing for them as he always does. Another time, a friend was sitting in her car. She was at the store trying to buy groceries for the week. She had three small children. Her daughter was with her. The store had not opened yet, and they were the only people in the parking lot. As she made her list of what she needed, she realized she did not have enough money to buy all the necessities. She prayed to God then, “God, if I just had an extra $50, I could buy all I needed for the week.” At that moment, her daughter saw something fly past the car on the ground of the parking lot. Before her mom could tell her not to, she jumped out of the car to get it. She got back in the car and gave it to her mom. It was a $50 bill. When reading a few articles about radical trust online, one of them talked about how radical trust is trusting God even when he doesn’t come through. This is probably the hardest thing to do. If you always see ways that God is coming through, it is easier to have radical trust. I think it may be easier for me to have radical trust because I have seen and heard many examples of how people have trusted and God has shown up in big ways. But what about

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

Be Bold & Step Forward in Faith ( Be Bold Series)Hebrews 11:1-2 “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old received divine approval.”I have done the Bible in a Year podcast with Father Mike for two years. This year, he is doing the Catechism of the Catholic Church in a Year. The Catechism aims to summarize in book form the main beliefs of the Catholic Church. I have owned this book for several years now and yet have never read the whole thing. I did find some things highlighted today when looking through it, so I have looked through it, but never read through it all. I was excited about this new podcast Father Mike is doing because I think it is important to be able to understand your faith completely and also to be able to explain it to others when asked. People tend to have many questions as to why Catholics believe what they believe. The other day, when I was listening, Father Mike touched on something that I thought was important to share with you because it is something that we have all run into many times in our lives. The Catechism talked about how God sometimes reveals things to people to invite them into His company. The adequate response to this invitation is faith. It goes on to say in paragraph 144 that Sacred Scripture calls this human response to God, the author of revelation, “the obedience to faith.” It says to obey in faith is to submit freely to the word that has been heard because its truth is guaranteed by God, who is Truth itself. Abraham is the model of such obedience offered us by Sacred Scripture. The Virgin Mary is its most perfect embodiment. Paragraph 145 says The Letter to the Hebrews, in its great eulogy of the faith of Israel’s ancestors lays special emphasis on Abraham’s faith; “By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where to go.” He lived as a stranger and pilgrim in the promised land by faith. By faith, Sarah was given to conceive the son of the promise. And by faith Abraham offered his only son in sacrifice.Father Mike pointed out that all three people mentioned here, Abraham, Sarah, and Mary, acted in faith. This was not the part that surprised me as I have heard the story of Abraham and Sarah many times, and I know everyone knows that Mary acted in faith when she said yes to carrying the Son of God. What Father Mike said that makes sense when you think about it, but I guess I never really thought about it before, was that God didn’t give these three people all the information before they answered in faith. He didn’t lay out every step they were going to take. He didn’t tell them every bump in the road they would run into. He didn’t give them a five-year plan or a 10-year plan. He didn’t even give them a one-year plan. He gave them the initial invitation with very little detail. Abraham knew he couldn’t stay where he was and that God was inviting him to leave his homeland. He said yes without knowing where he was going and how all would turn out. Sarah knew she would conceive a son but was not given any other information about when or how since she was advanced in age. Mary was invited to conceive the son of God, and she asked one clarifying question: How was that possible when she had not known man? She was told the Holy Spirit would overshadow her, and she would conceive the son of God. However, that was about all the information she got. She also was not told everything she would go through. She wasn’t told she would leave him in Jerusalem when he was 12, and she would be worried he was lost for 3 days. She wasn’t told about his suffering and crucifixion. She was told about just that first step.This is the part that I think we can all relate to. God is calling us all to something, and He calls us to it without giving us all the details. He shines just enough light on our situation so we can see the next right step. This can be scary for us. We tend to want to know what is coming next. We want to make sure we will be safe and secure. But what if we knew everything we would go through and were scared we couldn’t do it? Everything we go through in life prepares us for the next thing we will go through. If you knew it all in advance, you might not say yes. It is believed that Mary was very young when she got married and had Jesus. Do you think a teenager could have said yes to having a child that was going to be tortured and killed? Would she have had that kind of strength as a teen? I think Mary was able to be with Christ through all that because of all the things that came before that. Everything we go through, good or bad, prepares us for the rest of our lives. What about Abraham and Sarah? Do you think they would have been all excited about having a child if they knew they would have to offer him up in a sacrifice? Probably not, but God had been so faithful to His word that Abraham knew if God was asking him

Be Bold & Fight Your Battles (Be Bold Series)Hebrews 12:1-2 "Therefore, since we are encompassed with such a great cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Let us look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.Two years ago, I was away on a retreat with 20 other Christian women who are all dedicated to starting their year off right and turning their focus to God. Each year in Big Life Mentoring, shout out to Pamela Crim, we each pick a word and mantra. Our word and manta is what we say every day to help remind us of the commitments we made to ourselves to live as the best version of ourselves. This New Year’s retreat that I was on for the last 5 days was a chance to talk about what we want to get out of this year and also to form a great bond and friendship with several other ladies. These ladies can be our accountability group and support throughout the whole year. We know what each and every lady on this retreat wants this year, and we can pray for them and their goals. This was my first year going to this retreat. It was an amazing weekend. I love it when women who love Jesus get together to talk and get to know each other. We played worship music and walked to the beach at night to look at the stars and thank God for all He has done. We all talked about our strengths and our areas for improvement. We discussed where we are struggling and what we want from this upcoming year. We discussed what we would do to help make those wants a reality. It was really good girl bonding time, and everyone loved it. While I was on this retreat, several ladies talked about how they have that negative voice in their head so often. You know the voice I am talking about, the one that says you are not enough, the one that says God would never forgive you, the one that makes you feel awful about yourself. That voice that makes you question every decision you have ever made. That voice that makes you feel like you don’t belong. We all have our own version of the mean voice inside our head.This verse tells us that we can look to those around us as witnesses. I saw so many witnesses that weekend on the New Year’s retreat. The women who were on the retreat were truly amazing. We all struggle with different things and are all good at other things. We can look to each other for help with our struggles. Who in your life could be a witness? Who in your life could you look to for an example of how to live? The people in my prayer group are also great witnesses. They are all excellent examples of how to be the face of Christ to others. In the 6 years I have been in this prayer group, they have taught me much about God and His love. Look to those around you and learn all you can from them!This next line is the one that really made me think this was the verse for today. It says, “Let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.” That is a powerful statement and one that we all need to remember when we have so many burdens in life. We have so much that can go wrong each day. If we can lay aside everything weighing on us and run the race with endurance, life will be much easier. The verse also asks us to lay aside the sin that so easily entangles us. This is a very true statement of how sin works. We tend to get entangled in it. We make one bad choice and then another; before we know it, we are wrapped up in sin, regret, and shame. This verse is telling us to lay our burdens and sins aside. The question is, “How do we do that?” How do we lay our burdens aside? How do we avoid getting entangled in sin? The answer is right in this verse. “Let us look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.” Jesus is the author of our faith. He can show us the way. We can learn much just by looking at Jesus and how He lived. We can also look to Jesus when we are trying to find the strength to lay our burdens aside. We can look to Jesus when we are trying to find a way to make it through the day. That weekend, there were at least two ladies who said they were afraid that the enemy was stronger than they were. This is a real fear that many of us have. The truth is, the enemy probably is stronger than we are, but he is definitely not stronger than God is. God has already won that battle and come out as the victor. When we start to get scared that the enemy might be getting stronger than we are, we can remember Romans 8:31 “…If God is for us, who can be against us?” This is the truth that we need to keep reminding ourselves. If God is for us, who can be against us? God is for you and me and each one of His children. Yes, you, you are His child. Even when you don’t feel worthy, even when you don’t feel you deserve it,

Witness Wednesday #150 911 MiracleToday’s witnesses are actually two things I read on line and really wanted to share them with you. The first one is about how good God is, even in a tragedy. It is a story about what happened to one family on the terrible day of September 11, 2001. The second one is about a little boy who had extraordinary courage to speak up against someone a lot older than he was in order to defend someone he didn’t even know. They are both amazing stories of how God is working in our world.A man from Norfolk , VA called a local radio station to share this on Sept 11th, 2003, TWO YEARS AFTER THE TRAGEDIES OF 9/11/2001.His name was Robert Matthews. These are his words:A few weeks before Sept. 11th, my wife and I found out we were going to have our first child. She planned a trip out to California to visit her sister. On our way to the airport, we prayed that God would grant my wife a safe trip and be with her. Shortly after I said 'amen,' we both heard a loud pop and the car shook violently. We had blown out a tire. I replaced the tire as quickly as I could, but we still missed her flight. Both very upset we drove home.I received a call from my father who was retired NYFD. He asked what my wife's flight number was, but I explained that we missed the flight.My father informed me that her flight was the one that crashed into the southern tower. I was too shocked to speak. My father also had more news for me; he was going to help. 'This is not something I can't just sit by for; I have to do something.'I was concerned for his safety, of course, but more because he had never given his life to Christ. After a brief debate, I knew his mind was made up. Before he got off of the phone, he said, 'take good care of my grandchild.' Those were the last words I ever heard my father say; he died while helping in the rescue effort.My joy that my prayer of safety for my wife had been answered quickly became anger. I was angry at God, at my father, and at myself. I had gone for nearly two years blaming God for taking my father away. My son would never know his grandfather, my father had never accepted Christ, and I never got to say good-bye.Then something happened. About two months ago, I was sitting at home with my wife and my son, when there was a knock on the door. I looked at my wife, but I could tell she wasn't expecting anyone. I opened the door to a couple with a small child.The man looked at me and asked if my father's name was Jake Matthews. I told him it was. He quickly grabbed my hand and said, 'I never got the chance to meet your father, but it is an honor to meet his son.'He explained to me that his wife had worked in the WorldTrade Center and had been caught inside after the attack. She was pregnant and had been caught under debris. He then explained that my father had been the one to find his wife and free her. My eyes welled up with tears as I thought of my father giving his life for people like this. He then said, 'there is something else you need to know.'His wife then told me that as my father worked to free her, she talked to him and led him to Christ. I began sobbing at the news.Now I know that when I get to Heaven, my father will be standing beside Jesus to welcome me, and that this family would be able to thank him themselves ..When their baby boy was born, they named him Jacob Matthew, in honor of the man who gave his life so that a mother and baby could live.Please take time to share this amazing story. You may never know the impact it may have on someone. God doesn't call the qualified, He qualifies the called.“I was on my usual running path when I heard an older man yelling loudly enough for me to hear through my headphones. "Sexy lady, hey hey hey sexy lady!" He kept screaming it and I decided to just ignore him and keep running.This ignoring seemed to piss him off so he lashed out and said "eff you, dumb B****!" Now let's keep in mind he was well-dressed and appeared to be on his lunch break from an office job.That was my trigger point. The B word. I ripped off my headphones prepared to stand up for myself when this little boy who was walking alongside his mother and little sister in a stroller looked at the guy and said, "Hey. That is not nice to say to her and she didn't like you yelling at her. You shouldn't do that because she is a nice girl and I don't let anyone say mean things to people. She's a girl like my sister and I will protect her."The man was immediately embarrassed and started gathering his lunch to leave. I asked the mother if I could hug the little boy (his name is James) and I told him how grateful I was for him. He just shrugged and said "Well I just wanted to make sure your heart was okay."According to his mother, this is a typical day in the life of James. Thank you so much to the mothers and fathers who are raising the next generation to be brave and courageous, and to be little earth angels for all. I am so touched.” Weren’t those two stories amazing! The

Be Bold & Fear Not (Be Bold Series)2 Timothy 1:7 “For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power, love and self-control.”There is a lot of fear in the world today. There was a lot of fear during the pandemic, but now there may be even more. It seems as though everyone is afraid of something, and some people live in fear all day. People all over the world are fearful. There is so much violence in the world right now. So many people are fighting. In America, there is a lot of fear with the change in government. There are people afraid for their lives, afraid to get sent back to unsafe conditions in their countries. People fear losing their jobs, health care, and benefits like food stamps and social security. People are afraid of losing their rights as American citizens, and many are afraid of losing democracy altogether.There are a lot of reasons to be fearful. These reasons are real; the threat is real, and it makes sense to be cautious. However, we need to remember who we are. We are children of God. He tells us in Matthew 6:27, “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” Worrying won’t get us anywhere. However, knowing this does not make our fear any less real. I was doing Jeff Cavin’s Walking Towards Eternity bible study during the pandemic. One of the chapters addresses fear. One thing that I think is important to point out is that there is a difference between healthy fear and unhealthy fear. The difference is that a healthy fear keeps you safe and helps you make good choices. For instance, having a healthy fear of God can help you make choices that keep you from sinning. Having a healthy fear of COVID-19 or any disease can help you practice good hygiene and make other choices to prevent spreading the virus. An unhealthy fear is one that keeps you trapped in some way. For instance, you are so afraid of COVID-19 that you don’t leave your house even when necessary or spend every moment of the day afraid you might catch the virus. One of the questions I found in the chapter that I thought would be especially relevant for everyone right now was, “What practical steps can be taken to overcome fear?” Did you know that fear, all on its own, triggers more than 1,400 known physical and chemical responses and activates more than 30 different hormones? Here are several practical steps you can take to conquer your fear.1. Turn your fear over to God. “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:5. As soon as you notice you are having a fearful thought, take a moment and hand that thought over to God. 2. Ask yourself if this fear is a legitimate fear/scenario. Is it likely that the thing you are afraid of will happen? Oftentimes, we worry about things that never happen. Mark Twain once said, “I… have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”3. Educate yourself: “Prudent education teaches virtue; it prevents or cures fear … The education of the conscience guarantees freedom and engenders peace of heart.” (Catechism 1784) Learn your faith, learn to know God, the more you know and understand the word of God the less you will be afraid.4. Understand your fear: Some fears are based on personal experience, and some are a result of culture and past experiences. Understand how your fears came to be. Understand how it comes on, how it makes you feel, and what level of intensity it is.5. Visualize Courage: What would it look like if you did not have this fear? What would it look like if you overcame this fear? What if this fear did not exist in your life? 6. Act as if: If you act courageously in a gradual way, you will overcome the limiting story you tell yourself. For instance, if you are afraid to give a presentation, one way to start overcoming this fear is to give a short presentation to a family member. When you are comfortable with that, you could give the presentation to a close friend and then to a not-so-close friend. The point of this is to step outside of your comfort zone slowly and then gradually expand your comfort zone. 7. Move towards your fear: Instead of running away from your fear, turn around and face it. Write down 5-10 ideas of ways you can face your fear in some small way, and then act on these ideas daily . 8. Don’t live in Denial: It is important to examine how your fear is limiting you. Sometimes, we are so used to our everyday routine that we don’t see the ways our fear has us trapped.9. Fortitude: “The virtue of fortitude enables one to conquer fear, even fear of death, and to face trials and persecutions. It disposes one even to renounce and sacrifice his life in defense of a just cause. ‘The Lord is my strength and my song.’ ‘In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.’” (Catechism 1008) Keep going, even when you don’t want to, even when you are afraid. 10. Channel you

Be Bold & Be Strong & Courageous (Be Bold Series)Joshua 1:9 “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; be not frightened, neither be dismayed; for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”I saw this verse on my refrigerator this morning. A few years ago, someone gave me one of the desk calendars. Each day, a new page features a new picture of amazing scenery worldwide. The calendar also includes a different Bible verse. I hung this one on the fridge because I needed the reminder. Today, I know several of you need this reminder, too!This is a great reminder to be strong and courageous. A lot is happening in the world right now, both in our own families and our own houses and the world at large. I know people who are scared because their loved ones had major surgery, and their recovery is going slow. They are worried that things won’t get back to normal or that it will be a long and painful road back to normal. I know someone living in her car right now who is tired of not having a safe place to sleep at night. I know someone else who is always scared, and she is unsure why. As you can see, there are many reasons why I thought this would be a great verse for today’s devotional.In this verse, the Lord reminds us not to be afraid or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Do we know this already? I wonder if we are scared even though we know the Lord is with us always or if we forget this and that is why we are scared. It can be one thing to know the Lord is always with you and another to know He will take care of everything. I was talking with a friend the other day, and she knows the Lord is with her always, and yet she can’t help but be scared of things. This fear that she has did not just develop overnight. She has carried it with her from childhood and is only now finding some freedom from it.Isn’t it amazing how things from our childhood or past can have such a strong influence on our present and future? Often, we don’t even realize our past is creeping into our present. We know we are scared of something but don’t know what. Maybe we are scared of our boyfriend or husband leaving us. We don’t know where this fear is coming from, and yet, if we look back at our past history, we have had loved ones leave us. We might be afraid that our loved one will not recover completely from surgery, and when we look back, we see that in the past, we knew people who had surgery and didn’t recover.Our past can creep in and try to make us afraid of the future. This is one of the enemy's favorite tricks. He loves to use our past against us. He loves to point out all the places where we messed up in the past and try to get us to believe we will do it again. He loves to point out all the places where people have hurt us in the past and get us to believe they will do it again. We are not our past. Just because something has happened in the past does not mean it will happen again.It is not easy to be strong and courageous. If it were, everyone would be doing it, and this world wouldn’t be such a scary place. However, it is possible. It says in 2 Timothy 1:7, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity but of power, love, and self-discipline.” We were not born with a spirit of fear and timidity. God created us with a spirit of power, love, and self-discipline. However, sometime in the course of our lives, a lot of us have lost or forgotten about the spirit that God created us with. We have become afraid and timid. It is time to reclaim our true nature, our true spirit.The question is, how do we do that? How do we reclaim our spirit of power, love, and self-discipline? I think we can do it by remembering what this verse tells us. We must remember that the Lord is with us wherever we go. I think sometimes we think that we can go places that the Lord won’t follow. For instance, we are stuck in a pit of despair, and so there is no way the Lord would be with us there. Guess what? He is right there next to you in that pit. We think He won’t follow us into the hospital or home from the hospital. He is right beside you as you do your best to help your loved one. God does not leave your side, no matter where you go. If you are sleeping in your car, God is sleeping right there next to you.God is always by our side, and the more we can remember this, the more we will be able to be strong and courageous. The more we believe that God is right there with us, the more we will trust in His protection. I have heard many stories of people who have been scared and cried out to the Lord, and miraculous things have happened. For instance, one time, a woman was about to walk down an alley and saw a man who looked pretty scary at the end of the alley. She asked the Lord for protection. The next day, she read in the paper that a woman was attacked in that same alley that same night. She went to the police station to help ID the man she saw in the alley. When she asked him why he did not attack her

Be Bold & Be Christ-LikePhilippians 1:20 “No matter what, I will continue to hope and passionately cling to Christ so that he will be openly revealed through me before everyone’s eyes. So I will not be ashamed! In my life or in my death, Christ will be magnified in me.”I have really enjoyed reading through Philippians this week. There were so many good verses. I started at the end and worked my way forward. I am unsure why it worked out that way, but it did. I read this verse yesterday, and it stuck with me, so I wanted to share it with you today. This is something for which we can all aspire. We can all continue to have hope and passionately cling to Christ so that when others see us, they see Him.Paul says, “In life or in my death, Christ will be magnified in me.” How great is that? How great would it be to know that you have helped to bring others to Christ, not only in life but in death, too? This makes me wonder, what am I doing to magnify Christ? When people look at me and how I live my life, do they see Christ?I will always remember what Father Mike said on the podcast Catechism in a Year. He said to take a minute and imagine it is illegal to be Christian. Luckily, this is not the case in America, but pretend it is. He said to imagine now that you are on trial for being a Christian. Besides going to Mass or your church service on the weekend, would they have enough evidence to convict you? I don’t know why this has stuck with me over the past two years, but I think it is a compelling question.Many of us go to church on Sunday. We love God, and we think that is all we really need to do. However, we are all called to be Christlike. We are called to be Jesus's face to all we meet. Jesus said we need to love the Lord our God with our whole heart, mind, and soul, and then He also said we need to love our neighbor as ourselves. I think this is the part that we often forget. I think we all remember to try to love God, although I am unsure if we try to do it with our whole heart, mind, and soul. I think we try to love God when it benefits us. We all remember God when times are hard; I hope we remember Him when times are good, too.We often forget to love our neighbors. This doesn’t just mean the person living next to us; it means everyone we interact with. If we had a private investigator following us for a week to look at our behavior and try to gather evidence that we were a Christian, would they find any evidence? Would they see you being compassionate to all those you interact with, whether you know them or not? Would they see you being patient and considerate when you are driving around? Would they see you being kind and helpful to the poor? Would they see you were a Christian when interacting with the various people you met throughout your day? How did you treat that one co-worker who always gets on your nerves? How did you treat that person who cut you off in traffic? How did you treat that person who cut you in line just as you finally reached the front? What about the homeless person who asked you for money?How we treat others matters. We can’t simply focus on our relationship with God and disregard the rest of the world. We can’t claim to love God and then treat others unkindly. Our actions toward others reflect our faith and our commitment to living a Christlike life. When others look at our lives, they should be able to see Christ in all that we do. Jesus addresses this in the Gospels. God would not have ensured this was in the Bible if it didn’t say something we should pay attention to. The following verse shows us how important it is to care for everyone we meet.Matthew 25:31-46 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers,[f] you did it to me. “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked

Be Bold & Trust (Be Bold Series)Psalm 56:3-4 “But in the day that I'm afraid, I lay all my fears before you and trust in you with all my heart. What harm could a man bring to me? With God on my side, I will not be afraid of what comes.”Today, I decided to read from the Jesus Calling Devotional. I have not done that in a while; I am unsure why. For those of you who don’t know, this is a devotional book written as if God is speaking to you each day. It is really good and often says exactly what you need to hear for that day. Today’s spoke right to me. It reminded me how important it is to trust God in all times with all things. It is just as important to trust Him with the small things as it is to trust Him with the big things. I will read today’s devotional for you, as I think it will speak to you just as much as it spoke to me.“TRUST ME with every fiber of your being! What I can accomplish in and through you is proportional to how much you depend on me. One aspect of this is the degree to which you trust me in a crisis or major decision. Some people fail miserably here, while others are at their best in tough times. Another aspect is even more telling: the consistency of your trust in me. People who rely on me in the midst of adversity may forget about me when life is flowing smoothly. Difficult times can jolt you into awareness of your need for me, whereas smooth sailing can lull you into a stupor of self-sufficiency.I care as much about your tiny trust-steps through daily life as about your daily dramatic leaps of faith. You may think that no one else notices, but the One who is always beside you sees everything — and rejoices. Consistently trusting in me is vital to flourishing in my presence.”Do you see what I mean when I say it often says exactly what you need to hear for the day? I love that it is written as if God is saying it directly to you. This is truly how God talks to us. I am not sure how many of you listening have taken the time to sit and listen to what God has to say to you. If you have not, give it a try today. God wants to talk to each one of us, and yet the world around us is so noisy it is hard to hear him. However, if we sit down and take the time to listen, we will hear what He wants to tell us. This can take time and also practice. The more time you spend trying to hear God talking to you, the more clearly you will hear Him. The more you will begin to recognize what He sounds like to you.I have a journal, and I try to write in it as often as possible. In 2020, I changed the way I write in my prayer journal. I used just to write God about my day and what was going on in my life. I still do this, but I don’t just do this. Now, I try to stop and take the time to listen to what God has to say back to me. This has been amazing. I have spent a lot of time listening and have given the Lord time to speak into my life, and it has been life-changing. You would be surprised what the Lord wants to say to you if you only gave Him the time to say it. He is so gentle and affirming.Sometimes, we think we wouldn’t want to hear what the Lord has to say because we feel we aren’t doing a very good job, and He probably wouldn’t have anything nice to say to us. This is not true. That is what the enemy wants you to think so that you don’t stop and give the Lord time to speak love, light, and truth into your life. When you give Him the time and you listen, you will be surprised at how nicely He talks to you. You will be surprised at how much He loves you. Even in our brokenness, even in our sin, He still speaks so much love to us. It is truly amazing.This is why I started ending each episode with the Word from the Lord that He gave to our prayer group. The more we all start hearing the way He talks to us, the more we will start to recognize it when we hear Him talking in our own lives. Here is what I do when I write to the Lord. I write Him a letter, and then I ask Him to answer me using my pen, and then I start to write a letter back to myself. I don’t question what comes to mind; I don’t overthink it; I write everything that comes to mind. Does that mean that everything I write down is from the Lord? No, probably not. However, I asked Him to answer me, and when we ask, He answers, so I trust that what I am writing down is from Him.After you are done writing it down, you can re-read it and see what you wrote and how it makes you feel. If you wrote anything down that makes you feel bad, shameful, or guilty, that is probably not from the Lord. That is not how He talks to us. Sometimes, He will convict us of something if we are doing something wrong. However, He doesn’t use shame and guilt to do it. God does not condemn us. He lovingly points us in another direction and then gives us the strength to go in another direction. Anything you are not sure of, you can take to discernment. You can ask the Lord to clarify; you can ask the Lord to explain more, and you can always go deeper with what you got in the lett

Witness Wednesday #149 Day of ReflectionToday’s Witnesses are from a Day of Reflection that I went to last Saturday. The Charismatic Renewal Service of Boston put it on, and some Encounter Ministry students ran it from the Boston Campus. Year 2 students at Encounter need to do a project before they graduate to show they have learned what they were taught. It was a really special day filled with praise and worship, adoration, mass, and fellowship, and we had a section where people could receive individual prayer for impartation and prophecy. We asked the Lord what call he had placed on their life and what gifts they might need for that call. Any gifts he has given us that they may need, we imparted our gifts on them. It was really amazing, the things that the Lord showed us. The group I participated in ran very smoothly, and the Lord was so good to confirm most of what we were hearing. The participants said they were moved and that what was said really resonated with them. There was a time for large group sharing towards the end, and these witnesses were shared during that time.One woman named Nancy said that they did the project so they could give back to the community. “And when I see three people from my prayer community that gave the Life in the Spirit seminar, that was my introduction to faith-filled Catholics. And it was my gateway to be reconciled to the Lord, to come back to the faith. The Life in the Spirit seminar is a series of talks; they kind of lay out the gospel message. I had such an experience of the presence of Jesus at that seminar. And it just changed my life.And I've had such a beautiful life since. So I was so happy that in some way, I hope, I could give back to Gail, Carolee, and my husband Mike for all the years that they've accompanied me on my faith walk. And so I'm enjoying it.Next, Mike spoke and said, “Today has been a blessing to me. Just a flood of beautiful blessings and memories since I've been in the Spirit. It started off right when I walked through the door and was given a book a book by Father Ralph Diorio, who died recently.I had been to one of his healing services. And I heard he's going to be in Franklin, the next town from us, in that way. And for healing services, a big deal, St. Mary's Church, you have to get tickets. You want to sit in the upstairs church. I wasn’t going to go, but then they said, there's a bunch of women, from one of the senior housings, they want somebody to drive them there. All right I guess I will go. So we're down in the basement. Beginning of the service, Father had some kind of word of knowledge thing and announced a few ailments that he felt the Lord wanted to heal. If you had the problem he was talking about he wanted you to come up to where he was.He started talking about a man who had this and that. I started to think, I have those problems. Then he said a man who recently had back surgery. I said, I'm getting a throbbing throat. He's talking about me. And so I went up, and they had about five of us sitting in the sanctuary when he went through his healing service.And then he prayed with the other ones, one, two, three, four. Then he got to me. Now, what are you here for? Well, I'm the back person. He said, Okay. You can sit down. I'm going to look at you. He said, Did you know your one leg is shorter than the other? I said, Not really, because it wasn't significant. So he said, Stretch out your legs. And the way this ran, it was like a closed circuit TV. So the people in the basement in the lower church could see what was going on.And so the camera behind me was focused right on my feet. The people in the upper church couldn't see what was going on. But some of my neighbors and their friends down there, they could see. We saw your leg grow. Yes. Now, frankly, it was just a little bit shorter. And nothing had ever bothered me. But I said, you know, I always wear out the heels of my shoes faster. So that was true, I guess.So it was nothing that even fascinated me. So okay, well, that's interesting. But it turns out my neighbor, who was also there, had a son who was a little older than the toddler. He had some kind of growth, I don't know what you'd call it, abnormally, where one of his legs was growing less than the other. At his next doctor's appointment, the doctor told my neighbor’s son, “Oh, you're okay now.” So I said, I think mine was just a sign for what was going on with my neighbor’s son. Next we heard from another Nancy:As I was preparing to be on the team today, you know, I took a day and I fasted. And I prayed that I could hear Him for each person that I was going to pray over. I get nervous. And God, in his faithfulness, is easy. He gives us the graces so easily that in praying over people, a word would just come. Not that I had prepared it or thought about it or whatever. And so, God is faithful. And I have learned over and over again and still need to learn over and over again to just trust in him to relax and step back an

Be Bold & Ask For More! (Be Bold Series)Isaiah 40:28-31 “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall, but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”“He will not grow tired or weary.” I thought of two things when I read this. The first was, wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t it be nice not to grow tired or weary? I know a lot of us have been feeling tired and weary lately. A lot is going on in our world, and we are ready for a break. This is why my first thought was, wouldn’t that be nice. My second thought was, do we believe this? Do we believe that God doesn’t grow tired and weary? I wondered this because I feel as though often times we treat God as though this is not true. We treat God as if He is not the almighty and powerful Lord that does not grow tired or weary.I say this because we tend to be cautious with our prayers. We save up our prayers for the really important times, as if we only get so many, and we don’t want to run out. This may sound silly, but you know you have all thought that at one time or another. Maybe you didn’t think that exact thought, but you did hold back from asking God for something because it wasn’t that important, and He had bigger things to think about. We have all done this. We want to pray that our child wins the football game, but then we feel guilty because there are people with real problems, and we are taking God’s attention away from them to ask Him to help our kids win a football game or to help me find a parking spot. This verse is telling us something that we already know on some level but have trouble believing. God does not grow tired or weary. God can help you with your small request and help someone else with their giant request all at the same time. He can do it all and still not grow tired or weary. He is that amazing.The next line in the verse says that no one can fathom his understanding. We can’t even begin to understand all that the Lord knows. We see how he is working in our lives, and we think He is a little crazy, or we think He is upset with us because things aren’t going our way. We don’t understand that all these things are happening so that His plan for us to have ridiculous goodness can come to fruition. We needed to lose that job to get this better one. We needed to lose that sense of security to appreciate it when we regained it. We needed to go through that hard time to show someone else they can get through it, too. We can’t fathom the Lord’s understanding. It’s just like it says in Isaiah 55:8: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.” The Lord knows what He is doing. It is ok if we don’t understand. It will all make sense one dayThe next line says, “He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.” This is something that can help us if we can remember it. He gives strength to the weary. How long have we been weary for? Did we know that God would give us strength? Did we ask for it? If a lot is weighing down on your heart, I want you to know I am right there with you. There isn’t a single person I know right now who is coasting through life with no troubles. We are all weary. I think it is a condition of living in a broken world. We are imperfect; we all hurt each other, sometimes without even knowing it. We have fallen into an age where our own pleasure and our own wants trump all else. We don’t want to hurt our loved ones, and we also don’t want to give up the things that we want. We are weary because we are trying to exist in a world that doesn’t understand the Christian way of life. We are weary because we rely on the world to give us our strength when our Lord sits by, watching and trying to offer us the strength we need. However, we are so busy trying to do it all ourselves that we don’t see him there handing it out. What is coming to me right now is that we need to stop turning to the world to get our strength and our power. Yes, the world does offer us power, and it might feel good for a while to have that power. However, if you find your power from he world, you will never be fulfilled. You will always be searching for more. You will have this part of you that will always feel empty. However, if you turn to the Lord and ask him for your strength and power, He will fill you up completely. You will be lacking nothing. It says in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 “But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in

Be Bold & PersevereHebrews 10:36 "You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.”This was one of the verses I typed for our August discernment notes for the Prayer Group. The message translation came up when I looked up the verse on biblegateway.com to check out different versions. I love the message translation because it puts it in our current terms. It takes what the Bible says and uses common everyday language to tell us what they are talking about. Another thing it does is group verses together. So, instead of having verse 36, it had verses 32-39 all lumped together. This way, you don’t take any verses out of context. I don’t always use this translation when writing the devotional, but I frequently look at it to ensure I understand what is being said. Today, I didn’t intend to look up the message translation; it just came up, and the verses blew me away. When I get a verse, I often read it before and after it. When I do this, I sometimes switch to those verses. The verses before this one give us much more context into what this verse means.Here is the message translation for Hebrews 10:32-36, “Remember those early days after you first saw the light? Those were the hard times! Kicked around in public, targets of every kind of abuse—some days it was you, other days your friends. If some friends went to prison, you stuck by them. If some enemies broke in and seized your goods, you let them go with a smile, knowing they couldn’t touch your real treasure. Nothing they did bothered you, nothing set you back. So don’t throw it all away now. You were sure of yourselves then. It’s still a sure thing! But you need to stick it out, staying with God’s plan so you’ll be there for the promised completion.”I loved these verses because they explain how hard it can be to stick with something. When we start something new, we are excited and go all in, or at least I do. I always want to do it because it is new and exciting. Even if it is hard work, it can still be exciting, and we can still be motivated. However, what about when it is not new or exciting anymore? Think about a hobby you started. You were so excited about it that you bought all the things to go with it and did it all the time. When I got married, my neighbor started selling Creative Memories scrapbooking supplies. To support her, I started a scrapbook for Tony and me. Then, when I had kids, I got more into scrapbooking. I would stay up late doing it. My fellow moms and I would have scrapbooking nights going well into the mornings. I bought more and more stuff, and I loved it. Then, as I had more kids and they got to ages where they were into more stuff, I slowly got away from scrapbooking. Now, I have two bookshelves full of supplies, and I rarely ever scrapbook. I also got into running during COVID-19, and I was excited to go out and run. Not excited every day, but excited enough to get myself out there. I don’t think I ran much at all this past year. Our interests come and go. Our relationship with the Lord should remain a constant in our lives.The letters to the various communities in the New Testament addressed the people of the early church. Jesus came here to set up a new kingdom in this world. This religion was new and exciting. It was familiar in some ways and radically different in other ways. People were excited, and they were all in at first. People were excited about this new religion, and yet it was not an easy life for those who believed in Christ. Nowadays, if you believe in Christ, you may have some persecution, but nothing like they received back at the beginning.Right after Christ died, there was a lot of persecution. Many could not openly worship, and if they were caught, they were put in jail or they were killed. Peter was crucified, Paul was beheaded, Andrew was also crucified, Thomas was pierced through with spears, Philipp was arrested and cruelly put to death, Matthew was stabbed to death, Bartholomew was a martyr for the Gospel, James was stoned and then clubbed to death, Simon, the zealot, was killed after refusing to sacrifice to the sun god, Matthias was burned to death, & John was the only one to die of natural causes. It was not easy to be a Christian when these letters were being written. This is why the early church fathers wrote letters to their people. They wanted to encourage them to keep believing.These verses do just that. “Remember those early days after you first saw the light? Those were the hard times! Kicked around in public, targets of every kind of abuse—some days it was you, other days your friends. If some friends went to prison, you stuck by them.” This reminds them of how they felt when they first came to know Christ. They are reminding them that times were hard even from the beginning, and yet they followed Christ anyway. They were kicked around, and they were abused in all sorts of ways, and yet the Lord was still with them, and they were still with

Be Bold & Pray (Be Bold Series)Ephesians 6:18-20 “Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak.”Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. Praying in the Spirit, to me, means praying in tongues. It says in Romans 8:26, “ Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” In other words, we don’t know how to pray, but if we allow the Spirit to take over for us, then He can pray what we really need to pray. I am not sure how many of you listening to this podcast have prayed in tongues before or even believe that praying in tongues is something people do. I thought I would take a moment to explain what happens when you pray in tongues. When you are praying in tongues, your mouth and vocal cords are making sounds that most of the time do not sound anything like real words. You do not know what you are saying when you are praying in tongues. It is a conversation between the Holy Spirit and the Lord. The Holy Spirit is speaking what it finds in your heart and sharing that with the Father.When looking up the meaning of this verse, two different sites talked about how living and praying in the Spirit was about more than just our thoughts and our desires. Praying in the Spirit also has to do with our submission to God. We need to realize that we are dependent on the Lord for all things. It is about turning to God and asking Him to help us, and then we also trust that He will help us and His help will be whatever is best for us. Then the verse says to keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. When I first read this, I thought it was asking us to persevere in asking the Saints for their help. However, upon research, this verse is actually asking us to persevere in supplication for the saints, not from the saints. It is asking us to pray not only for the things that we need but also for the needs of other believers. It talks about how we are to pray persistently and about all matters. Although we might not be able to pray out loud every second of every day, it is important to develop the habit of praying consistently. When something comes up, no matter how big or how small, our first thought should be to share it with the Lord. We need to turn to Him no matter how small the matter is. The second half of this verse talks about St. Paul. St. Paul was imprisoned because he was sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. Now, in this message, he is asking for prayers so that he may speak boldly about the message of the Gospel. He is still in prison when he writes this, and that is why he is saying that he is an ambassador in chains. How many of us would be willing to continue to proclaim the Gospel if we were sitting in jail for doing that very thing? Take a minute to think about it, would you? I have prayed for a holy boldness ever since I knew that was a thing. I don’t remember when I learned about holy boldness or where I first heard that term, but I instantly loved it. If you don’t know, let me share something with you: I am a crier. I cry when I see a sad movie or TV show. I cry when I see a happy movie or TV show, especially if I didn’t expect the happy ending. I cry when I am upset, I cry when I am nervous, and I cry when I am happy. Sometimes, I don’t even know why I am crying. I can feel the tears falling down my cheeks, but I don’t feel sad, and so I don’t know why I am crying. I have been told that tears can be a gift from the Holy Spirit. They have never felt like a gift. I know some people who can’t cry. Due to their upbringing, things that have happened to them in their past, or some other reason, they can’t cry. No matter how hard they try. So when they see me cry, they feel that it is a gift. I guess it all depends on how you look at it. The reason I mention this is because this is a big part of the reason I never really talked about my faith to people unless they started the conversation. I was afraid that if I got nervous and started to cry, they would think I was crazy. I still don’t really like to walk up to someone that I don’t know and start a conversation. However, I am getting better at this as I have been asking God to help me with this for a very long time now. I remember the first time I felt called to ask someone if I could pray over him. It was a silent retreat, and I had just been given the gift of speaking in tongues. This guy was really suffering, and I felt the Holy Spirit tell me to pray over him. I didn’t know this guy. I hadn’t ever talked to him. The only reason I knew he was hurting was because he shared that on t

Be Bold & Spread The Gospel (Be Bold Series)Ephesians 3:7-13 “Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all men see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and confidence of access through our faith in him. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory.”It was tough to pick a verse this morning. I have been reading Ephesians, and there are so many good verses in there. I kept reading and re-reading chapters 1 and 2, and so many things were jumping out at me, but I didn’t feel like any of those verses were the ones I was supposed to talk about today. Then I went on to chapter 3, and this verse jumped out at me. I felt the Lord wanted me to speak to you about evangelization today. If you are like me, that word might scare you a bit.When I hear that word, I want to look around and see who else the Lord might be talking to. When I hear that word, I instantly feel inadequate. Why is this? I know several Gospel stories and parables, so it is not as if I don’t know what’s in the Gospel. I know that God is love, which is the most important word to get out there. I know it is essential that people discover the love God has for them. I know these things, so why do I feel so afraid when I hear someone say that we are all called to share the good news with everyone we meet?St. Paul was an extraordinary man and a great evangelizer. He is credited with writing about half of the books in the New Testament. Yet, in this opening verse, it says, “Of this gospel, I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, to preach to the Gentiles.” St. Paul knew he was called to be an evangelist as well. He knew his calling was to spread the word of the Gospel to all he met, but he really didn’t feel qualified.I take comfort in this. I take comfort in knowing I am not the only one who gets nervous when I look at the call the Lord has placed on my life. I also hate to be the bearer of bad news, but God has also put this call on your lives. We are all called to bring the Gospel to all we meet. Does your stomach feel funny when I say that? Do you get nervous when you realize God calls you to spread His word? If you do, you are not alone. I don’t know anyone who is only excited and not nervous to go out and share the Gospel. Don’t get me wrong, I know people who are excited to share the Gospel with others; however, they are nervous about doing it and feel inadequate to do it. I don’t know anyone who sets out to evangelize, thinking they know everything and that it will be easy.This is why the next line is so important. It says, “This was according to the eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and confidence of access through our faith in him.” This verse says we have boldness and confidence of access through our faith in him. Jesus can give us the boldness we need. Let me read you this part in the message translation. “I have been made a messenger of this wonderful news by the gift of grace that works through me. Even though I am the least significant of all his holy believers, this grace gift was imparted when the manifestation of His power came upon me. Grace alone empowers me so that I can boldly preach this wonderful message to non-Jewish people, sharing with them the unfading, inexhaustible riches of Christ, which are beyond comprehension.”I love that this translation says, “by the gift of grace that works through me.” Grace is a gift from God. Grace can help us do things we could never do on our own. The verse also says, “Grace alone empowers me so that I can boldly preach this wonderful message.” God is calling us all to share the Gospel with all we meet. This means that He will equip us with all the grace we need to do so. If you feel inadequate to share the Gospel, join the club; we all feel inadequate. However, that doesn’t mean we get to excuse ourselves from doing it. How we feel doesn’t stop us from fulfilling our calling.There is a podcast I used to listen to called “Do It Scared.” This is what we are called to do. We are called to step out in faith even when we don’t think we are the best person for the job. Who are we to question God’s judgment? We are called to step out in faith even when we are scared. We are called to trust that God’s grace is enough to empower us to do what He has called us. We are called to step out wit

Today’s Witness is actually from the Encounter School of Ministry Website. The Encounter School of Ministry has healing services in person and also online. Gabriella was watching this healing service on Zoom. She was suffering from Lupus and had a lot of inflammation. Her story is miraculous and so exciting. It is exciting not just for Gabriella and her family but for us, too. It is exciting for us because if God will do it for Gabriella, He will do it for you, too!! Anything is possible with the Lord! No matter what you are struggling with, don’t give up! Keep praying for the Lord to heal you!! Here is Gabriella’s testimony. 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

Be Bold And Ask God (Be Bold Series)Acts 4:29-31 “And now, Lord, look at their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your Word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus." When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.”Last night, I attended the East Coast Encounter Ministry Conference. I was so happy to be there. I love being in a room that is full of the Holy Spirit. Have you ever had the privilege? Have you ever been in a room where you could feel the Holy Spirit? I am not even talking about when you have a sense that the Holy Spirit might be there. I am talking about when you walk into a room, and you can feel the Holy Spirit is there in a big way. It is a feeling I can’t quite describe. There is so much joy in the room. It is truly amazing. Last night was one of those nights. The conference started with worship, which is how we should start anything. Even your own personal prayer time will be more meaningful if you start it with praise. God loves when we praise Him. There isn’t one certain way that we need to praise Him. He leaves the how up to us. My favorite way is to listen to Christian music and sing along. Maybe you would prefer to tell God how great He is or call out various names for Him. The choice is yours. After worship, we had prayer time, where a Deacon spoke words of prayer and words of prophecy over the whole group. Next, we had a speaker talk to us about the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. It was a wonderful and funny talk. I am sure I will pass along some of what I learned at a later date. Right now, I am just letting it all sink in. After the talk, there were prayer teams that were set up to do individual prayers over people. It was so beautiful. There were people who were overcome with the Holy Spirit everywhere you looked. It was amazing. The Holy Spirit definitely showed up there last night. However, I wasn’t surprised as He always shows up when we call on Him. He is so good like that. He wants to give us all He has, His gifts and His fruits; we just aren’t usually asking for them.The speaker went through several scriptures tonight, one of which was the scripture above. I liked how this verse begins because the person writing this verse is telling God to “look at their threats,” talking about the Jews that killed Jesus. It’s as if the speaker is telling God something He didn’t already know. There is nothing that goes on that God does not know about. He not only knows about it while it is going on, He knew about it long before it started. He knows everything, from the beginning of time until the end. It wasn’t necessary for Peter or John, whoever was speaking at that time, to make that statement and yet it speaks to their human nature. It is tough for us to wrap our heads around the fact that God knows everything. So, sometimes, oftentimes, we feel the need to remind Him of what we are going through. What Peter and John are looking for in this verse is boldness, along with signs and wonders to be performed in Jesus’ name. They understand what they are up against. They are trying to spread the Gospel to people who lived the same time Jesus lived and yet still don’t believe. They are trying to spread the Gospel at a time when they could be put in jail, stoned to death, or crucified just for saying Jesus’ name. They know if they want to have any chance at being successful in their mission, they will need to preach with a holy boldness. They know if they expect people to believe them they need also to have signs and wonders to back up their teaching. It would be so great if we could all believe without seeing, but that is not how a lot of us work. We need to see first and then believe. The apostles knew this. What happened after they asked for boldness, signs, and wonders? “When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.” What happened? God answered their prayers. He always does! He is good like that. I know there may be a lot of people in your life that you can’t count on. We live in a fallen and broken world. However, God is not one of these people. You can count on God to answer your prayers every time you ask. He will never let you down. I feel like I should say something about that last statement. Every time I write that statement, I wonder if this is true. When I say He will never let you down, I mean He never says He will do something and then fails to do it. He never breaks His promises. He never leaves us. He is always with us. He always answers your prayers. There is never a time when you are asking for something and He is ignoring you. He always comes through.I think why I get this funny feeling when I write that God never lets us down becaus

Be Bold & Sprinkle Love Like Confetti 2 Corinthians 3:4-6 “Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.I liked this verse when I read it for a couple of reasons. The first reason was that it says, “Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God.” I liked the phrasing of it. The verse is saying that they have confidence in God through Christ. They are acknowledging that Christ is the reason the have confidence in God. It is through Him that all things are possible. I like this because it means that all the responsibility for trusting God is not on my shoulders. If I ask, Christ will help me with my confidence in God.The next line says, “Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God.” I like this because, again, it takes some of the responsibility off of us to have to know how to do it all and to be good at everything. If God asks us to do something, then He will give us all we need to do it. This is sometimes hard to believe. Imagine God asking you to build an orphanage in a foreign country. One where you have never been before. It is difficult to say yes to this when you have no idea how any of the pieces will come together. Maybe you don’t even know how to build anything, and you are not a fan of travel. Maybe you don’t have any money and you don’t have the first clue how to do fundraising. It would be hard to step into this calling when you don’t have any answers. And yet, some people do. God asked Noah to build an arc. He asked him to build an arc in the middle of a drought. Noah had no idea how to build an arc. He was a farmer. Noah had never built an arc before. I don’t think that Noah had all the supplies to build the arc before he said yes to the Lord. God asked Noah to build an arc with very specific dimensions, and Noah said yes. He said yes, not because he knew what he was doing and not because he had all the answers. He said yes because he loved God, and God asked him to. He said yes and relied on the Lord to give him what he would need to complete the project. I wish we all had this kind of trust in the Lord. I wish that when God asked us to do something, we all just said yes. We didn’t think about it, we didn’t weigh the pros and the cons, we didn’t worry about whether we were good enough or not. I wish we just said yes. If God wanted to erase everyone except Noah off the face of the earth, then it seems like the world was in a pretty bad place. The world is in a pretty bad place right now. It seems as though you can be anything you want today except for Christian. You have to be tolerant of everyone else’s beliefs, but no one has to be tolerant of Christian beliefs. Don’t get me wrong, I think that we should be tolerant of other people’s beliefs. I just expect that same respect, and it doesn’t seem to be happening these days. I believe that God is calling us all to action. I believe He wants us to spread the gospel and to live His word every day. This brings me to the next line in this verse, “our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant.” God made the apostles competent ministers of the new covenant. He will do the same for us. If we just say yes, he will equip us with the knowledge and power that we need to spread the good news. If you are anything like me you shrink away from the responsibility to spread the good news. You think to yourself, “Who am I to talk about God? What do I know?” or you say, “There are others much better suited to talk about Jesus. Others that have studied harder or paid attention more.” There are any number of things we tell ourselves to convince us that God may be calling some people, but He isn’t calling me. I am not worthy to serve the Lord. I am not good enough, smart enough, educated enough, or whatever your version of “not enough” is. This is the enemy talking! He has convinced us that we aren’t enough, so God couldn’t possibly use us. All the proof you need to know this isn’t true can be found in the Bible. God never used the most educated men, the most holy people, the people who got everything right. He used normal, everyday people to be his instruments in the world, and He wants to use you. Do not believe the enemy that you are not enough. Are you worthy? No, none of us are worthy, and yet God loves us and wants to use us anyway. God made us in His likeness and image, so we can’t be all that bad. The last part of this verse is a really important part. It is one that I find really interesting and want to dive deeper into. I will touch on it today to draw your attention to it, and then, if you want to dive deeper to understand it better, you can do that. The last part of this verse says, “

I Am Saved! (Identity Series)2 Samuel 22:1-6 “David sang to the Lord the words of this song when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. He said: “The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation. He is my stronghold, my refuge, and my savior— from violent people, you save me. “I called to the Lord, who is worthy of praise and have been saved from my enemies. The waves of death swirled about me; the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me. The cords of the grave coiled around me; the snares of death confronted me.”I heard this verse while typing up the minutes for my prayer group yesterday. I was just going to use the first part, the part that ends with “my refuge and my savior —from violent people you save me.” That was where I was going to stop, and yet I felt the Holy Spirit tell me to include the next few verses, too. The thought came to me, “What if the Lord hasn’t saved them yet? What if they are still stuck in a rough time? They will want to hear the next few lines. They will want to see that David knew the real dangers. I will start at the beginning. “David sang to the Lord the words of this song when the Lord delivered him from the hand of his enemies and from the hand of Saul.” If you don’t know the story of David’s life you should read it sometime, he had a truly fascinating life. Most people know about David and Goliath, and maybe that David is the author of many of the Psalms, and that’s about it. If you only know about David and Goliath, you might think that David has a pretty great life. It seems like if he did something that amazing, he would be instantly famous. In today’s day and age, he would become an influencer and go all over the world talking about how we can all slay our giants. However, this wasn’t David’s fate. David killed the giant and then went back home to tend to his dad’s sheep. One day, the prophet Samuel got the word from God that he needed to go and anoint one of Jesse’s sons as the next king. Samuel saw David’s older brothers and thought for sure they would be the anointed ones because they “looked like kings.” God told Samuel that He will not judge by outside appearance but by inside appearance; he will judge by what is in their hearts. David was not home when Samuel first got there to pick up a son. Once the Lord ruled out all the other sons, Samuel asked if Jesse had any other sons and they sent someone to go get David. David was now anointed with oil to be the next king. After being anointed as the next king you would think that David’s life was not going to get really interesting. Maybe he would go to the palace and learn from the present king. You might think that he was to become king right away. Neither of these is what happened. I believe David went back to taking care of his father’s sheep. From the time that David was anointed King to when he became king was 15 years. During that time, David went to play the Lyre for the current king, Saul, got banished by Saul, hid in the desert, lived on the run, was forced out of the nation, and fought many battles. This was all in the 15 years before David became king. I didn’t intend to go into so much detail about David, and yet I think the Holy Spirit wanted to let us know that life is not linear. It is not that things in life always work out at the time that we want them to. It is not always moving forward. Sometimes you will get great news, like a job promotion is coming and yet that promotion might be three years in the future. You might pray for God to save you from your current boss, and He is, just not yet. You might take three steps forward and two steps back. This is how it was for David. He would have something amazing happen and then nothing. He would be doing great and then find himself hiding in a cave.I feel what the Holy Spirit is trying to tell us this morning is that this verse is absolutely true. The Lord is our rock, our fortress, and our deliverer; Our God is our rock, in whom we take refuge, our shield and the horn of our salvation. He is our stronghold, our refuge, and our savior. This is all true and on good days, in good times, we know this, we say this, we tell others this. What about the bad times? Do you still know this? Do we still tell others that God is our rock and our savior when we are in the middle of a really hard time? Do we tell ourselves? Is there a way to rely on the Lord in these hard times?You might be thinking when you first hear David’s songs to the Lord, as he has many, that David is different because he was anointed. Of course, he can rely on God, or, of course, he is taken care of by God; he is anointed. I’ve got news for you my friend, so are you! You were anointed in your baptism as priest, prophet, and king. David was anointed as king, you’ve been anointed for all three. One thing I really admire about David is that he was never too proud to turn bac