Walk Boldly With Jesus

Do I Know Who I Am?John 8:14 “Jesus responded, “Just because I am the one making these claims doesn’t mean they’re invalid. For I absolutely know who I am, where I’ve come from, and where I’m going. But you Pharisees have no idea about what I am saying.”This was not the verse I thought I would be using this morning. I first went to look at John 8 for verse 12, which says, “Then Jesus said, “I am light to the world, and those who embrace me will experience life-giving lights, and they will never walk in darkness.” Is that a great verse, or what? I think we all know Jesus is the light of the world. We have probably even said that before. However, I am not sure we all know that means we will never walk in darkness. Some of us may feel like we are walking in darkness right now. However, this verse is telling us that if we embrace Jesus, we will experience life-giving lights and will never walk in darkness.Why do we feel like we are walking in darkness, then? Is the enemy blocking out this life-giving light? Are we looking for this light in all the wrong places? Why isn’t this life-giving light shining through into our darkness? I know some people who are very close to the Lord, and yet this year has been really tough for them. They feel they are walking in darkness right now, and they feel like they can’t even pray. Maybe you are in this place too? If so, I want to assure you that the Lord is with you, even in this darkness.I have studied something called the Dark Night of the Soul in depth this year as some of the women in my mentoring group really wanted to learn more about it. One big thing that I learned is that even though the Lord seems really far away from you when you are going through it, He has actually never been closer to you. I learned sometimes it is necessary for us to go through a dark period where we receive no consolation from the things that used to bring us consolation so that we can learn to rely only on the Lord and not on the feelings we get from Him. We need to continue to have faith in doing the things we are used to doing, even when they don’t bring us great joy, comfort, or even peace.The people who have gone through a Dark Night of the Soul all have at least one thing that helped them: being faithful in their prayers and their spiritual habits, even when they received nothing back from them. People who are going through a Dark Night of the Soul feel extremely far from the Lord. They can’t feel His presence, they don’t hear His voice, they don’t feel any consolation. Yet, God is right there by their side, giving them the strength to persevere, and when they come out of it, they will be so much stronger and closer to the Lord.I thought that was what this whole episode was going to be about. They I read on a bit further, and I saw the verse for today. When I read it, the words just pierced my heart immediately. Let me read it to you again. “Jesus responded, “Just because I am the one making these claims doesn’t mean they’re invalid. For I absolutely know who I am, where I’ve come from, and where I’m going. But you Pharisees have no idea about what I am saying.” the words that pierced my heart were, “For I absolutely know who I am, where I’ve come from, and where I’m going.” As soon as I read it, I heard that voice inside me say, do you? Do you absolutely know who you are, where you’ve come from, and where you are going?”I knew those questions were ones that I needed to share with all of you because they are great questions. I was praying with some youth over the weekend, and identity seemed to be something they struggled with, too. There is so much confusion and chaos in the world today. That is from the enemy. God is not the author of confusion and chaos. He is the author of peace. The enemy wants us to question who we are. He wants us to question where we came from and where we are going. If we are looking to the world to help us define who we are, then, of course, we would be confused. Our identity doesn’t come from the world; it comes from God. He is our creator. He knows exactly who He created us to be.We tend to associate our identity with our vocation or our jobs. For instance, I am a mom and a wife. I might think that is my identity. However, my most important identity is that I am a child of God.There are so many songs out there that remind us of who we are in God’s eyes. They remind us of our identity. There is a Lauren Daigle Song called I Believe. The chorus of that song says, “ You say I am loved when I can't feel a thing. You say I am strong when I think I am weak. And you say I am held when I am falling short. And when I don't belong, oh You say I am Yours, And I believe (I). Oh, I believe (I). What You say of me (I). I believe. The only thing that matters now is everything You think of me. In You, I find my worth, in You, I find my identity.As you can see in this song, God’s truth is contrary to most of what we hear from the world. God says we are loved. He says we are s

What is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception?Today, I decided to do something a little different. I usually begin by sharing a scripture verse with you. However, today is a very special day, at least in the Catholic Church. There is a lot of confusion about this day and so I wanted to explain what we are actually celebrating today and why we are celebrating it. Today, in the Catholic Church, we celebrate the Immaculate Conception. When I was growing up I never understood how Mary could have immaculately conceived Jesus on the 8th of December and then delivered him on December 25th. It didn’t make sense to me and yet I didn’t really question it. It was not until I was an adult, I am not sure how many years ago, that I learned what we were truly celebrating. I found this great article that explains what we are celebrating and why. It is called, “8 Things You Need to Know About the Immaculate Conception,” by Jimmy Akin. I will put a link for the article in the show notes. (Click Here) for the article. This is where I found the information for this episode.The Immaculate Conceptions is not referring to Jesus’ conception, it is referring to Mary’s conception. Mary has a human mother and father, her conception was not the same as Jesus’. However, it was special in another way. Here is how the Catholic Church explains it:CCC490 To become the mother of the Saviour, Mary “was enriched by God with gifts appropriate to such a role.” The angel Gabriel at the moment of the annunciation salutes her as “full of grace”. In fact, in order for Mary to be able to give the free assent of her faith to the announcement of her vocation, it was necessary that she be wholly borne by God's grace.CCC491 Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, “full of grace” through God, was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses, as Pope Pius IX proclaimed in 1854:The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Saviour of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin. This means that Mary was not only free from original sin, but she was also free from person sin as well. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains:CCC493 The Fathers of the Eastern tradition call the Mother of God “the All-Holy” (Panagia), and celebrate her as “free from any stain of sin, as though fashioned by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature”. By the grace of God Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long. “Let it be done to me according to your word. . .”The next question Akin asks is, “If Mary was free from sin, does that mean she didn’t need Jesus to die on a cross for her?"He answers, “No. What we've already quoted states that Mary was immaculately conceived as part of her being “full of grace” and thus "redeemed from the moment of her conception" by "a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Saviour of the human race."The Catechism goes on to state:CCC492 The “splendour of an entirely unique holiness” by which Mary is “enriched from the first instant of her conception” comes wholly from Christ: she is “redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son”. The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person “in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” and chose her “in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love”.CCC508 From among the descendants of Eve, God chose the Virgin Mary to be the mother of his Son. “Full of grace”, Mary is “the most excellent fruit of redemption” (SC 103): from the first instant of her conception, she was totally preserved from the stain of original sin and she remained pure from all personal sin throughout her life.The next question Akin asked is, “How does this make Mary a parallel of Eve?” His is answer is: Adam and Eve were both created immaculate--without original sin or its stain. They fell from grace, and through them mankind was bound to sin. Christ and Mary were also conceived immaculate. They remained faithful, and through them mankind was redeemed from sin. Christ is thus the New Adam, and Mary the New Eve.The Catechism notes:CCC494 . . . As St. Irenaeus says, “Being obedient she became the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race.” Hence not a few of the early Fathers gladly assert. . .: “The knot of Eve's disobedience was untied by Mary's obedience: what the virgin Eve bound through her disbelief, Mary loosened by her faith.” Comparing her with Eve, they call Mary “the Mother of the living” and frequently claim: “Death through Eve, life through Mary.”Another question Akin asked was, “Was it necessary for God to make Mary immaculate at her conception so that she could be Jesus' mother?”Akin writes, “No. The Churc

Let’s Not Sleepwalk Through Life1 Thessalonians 5:4-8 "But friends, you’re not in the dark, so how could you be taken off guard by any of this? You’re sons of Light, daughters of Day. We live under wide open skies and know where we stand. So let’s not sleepwalk through life like those others. Let’s keep our eyes open and be smart. People sleep at night and get drunk at night. But not us! Since we’re creatures of Day, let’s act like it. Walk out into the daylight sober, dressed up in faith, love, and the hope of salvation.”Just before these verses, St. Paul was talking about how no one knows when Jesus will come again. The time is not for us to know. However, he is saying that we are not in the dark because we know that He is coming, so how can we be taken off guard by any of this? We know the Lord will come again to judge the living and the dead. We say this each week in the Nicene Creed. This should not be a surprise to us. What Paul is saying in this first part of the verse is that we are at an advantage. There are people who do not believe; they do not go to church, and they do not follow God and all His ways. We are not those people. Even though we don’t know exactly when the Lord will return, we believe He will return at some point. This means we can always be ready for His return.The when He is returning is not as important as the fact that He is returning. We know this to be true, and so we can be prepared. We can make sure whenever that day comes, we are ready to go. The verse goes on to say that we are sons of light and daughters of day. We live under wide, open skies and know where we stand. I am such a big fan of the light. I love thinking of God as the light. I like thinking about how we are children of light. We walk in light and not in darkness.I know some of you feel like you are walking in darkness right now. You feel like you can’t see the light. If this is you, I want you to remember that you are a child of the light. The enemy can try and hide the light from you. He can try to cast shadows, so you think you are living in the darkness. However, He can’t take all the light away because the light lives inside of you. You have the Spirit of God living inside of you, and that is all the light that you need. When you feel like you are surrounded by so much darkness, call on the Holy Spirit to light your way.I love the next line in these verses, “So let’s not sleepwalk through life like those others. Let’s keep our eyes open and be smart.” This is such great advice. How many of us have been sleepwalking through life? I am part of Big Life mentoring with Pamela Crim, and this is a big reason many people join this group. They feel they are sleepwalking through life. We are meant to live life to the fullest. It says in John 10:10, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” God does not want us to waste this life that we have. He doesn’t want us to go about our days in a fog. If we are not careful, we can just fall into a routine and go through life on autopilot.Did you know that 40-45% of your decisions are automatic based on your habits? That is almost half of all our decisions. That is a lot. What if we don’t have good habits? Does that mean we are not making good decisions? Frequently, yes. For instance, I used to be in the habit of eating pretty healthy. That meant when my husband took out the package of Oreos, I didn’t instinctively reach over and grab one. I knew that was not going to be good for me, so I didn’t take any. However, right now, I am not in the habit of eating healthy, and so when he takes out the Oreos, I grab one, ok, more than one.St. Paul is warning us about doing this in our spiritual life. We need to be intentional in all of life, but especially in our spiritual life. It can be too easy to put things off and think we will just take care of them later. You know you need to spend time with the Lord, but he will always be there, and this movie you want to go see won’t be. You know you need to go to confession, but you could go to confession anytime, but your friends want to meet for lunch today. We know we need to love our neighbor, but that is hard, so we figure we love the next neighbor that comes along. Do you see how easy it is to “sleepwalk” through life, as St. Paul says?We know God is coming. We need to be ready because He could come at any moment. The only thing the Bible assures us of in regard to His coming is that no one will know when He is coming and that we will be surprised and taken off guard. The verse says to let us keep our eyes open and be smart. This is great advice. Let’s not sleepwalk through life. Let’s live our lives intentionally with passion and purpose for the things we care about. The things we know are important.The verses end with, “People sleep at night and get drunk at night. But not us! Since we’re creatures of Day, let’s act like it. Walk out into the daylight sober, dressed up in faith, love, and the hope of salvation.”

Have No Fear, Don't DespairJeremiah 30:10 “‘So fear no more, Jacob, dear servant. Don’t despair, Israel. Look up! I’ll save you out of faraway places, I’ll bring your children back from exile. Jacob will come back and find life good, safe, and secure.”There are several things I like about this verse. Do you remember a while back when I talked about how you can personalize scripture? You can put your name in Scripture verses so you can see that God is talking to you, too! When I was first taught this, I was told whenever you see the word “Jacob” or “Israel,” you can replace it with your name. Today’s verse has both of these words right at the beginning. I love this because it helps make it more personal when we substitute our name. Let’s try that with the first two lines of today’s verse.“So fear no more, Catherine, dear servant. Don’t despair, Catherine.” Now you try it.“So fear no more, Joanie, dear servant. Don’t despair, Peggy.”“So fear no more, Jo, dear servant. Don’t despair, Nancy.”“So fear no more, (insert your name), dear servant. Don’t despair (insert your name).”Did that make it more personal for you when you put your own name in? I know it always does for me. How many of us really needed the Lord to give us that personal message today? How many of us needed the Lord to tell us not to fear anymore? How many of us needed the Lord to tell us not to despair?The holidays are such a happy time for so many people. They are a time to celebrate and a time to be grateful for all that we have. It is a time to see our loved ones and hug them tight. It is a time to eat too much food and share presents. It is a time for decorating Christmas trees and watching Hallmark movies. It is a time to celebrate the amazing miracle of God sending His only son down to earth to save us. The birth of Christ is something to celebrate for sure. There is so much good this time of year. People are generally filled with the giving spirit and you will see a lot more acts of kindness if you are on the lookout.The holidays are also a really sad time for a lot of people. I have a friend whose daughter just died from cancer a week or two before Thanksgiving. She was in her 30’s with two small children. I can’t imagine the sadness these holidays will bring for her. My nephew’s dad is in the hospital and may have brain damage; they won’t know until he wakes up. I can’t imagine the sadness they will have this holiday season as they wait to find out if their dad will be home to celebrate with them. If their dad will ever be the same again. What about all those on the streets? All those who don’t have family or don’t see their families.As happy of a time as it is for some of us, those lucky enough to have friends or family to celebrate with or a warm home to celebrate in. It will be just as sad for so many others. I am not sure why the Lord put that so strongly in my heart this morning. I guess because the verse was telling us to fear not and to not despair. If you are someone who is having a really difficult time this holiday season for whatever reason, I hope you know the Lord is talking to you, too! Fear not; do not despair. He is there with you. He knows this is a really difficult time for you. He is right there in the hard times with you.I was looking through all the words of prophecy that my prayer group received in the month of August this morning, and this one just came to mind. I think the Lord wants me to share it with you. “I hear your cries, my children. Come to me, come to me in your brokenness. Do not be afraid to come. I will help you. But in my time. Wait patiently, and I will show you a way out. Know that all is possible when you trust and believe. I am here. Do not doubt it. I do hear your cries. I do feel your pain. Continue to trust, continue to believe, and I will help you.” God hears your cries, and he feels your pain. Don’t ever doubt that. There is always hope with the Lord. We just need to wait on His timing, which I know is really hard. You can do it, though, because you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you.I also love the end of this verse, and I don’t want to leave you today without discussing it. The verse goes on to say, “Look up! I’ll save you out of faraway places; I’ll bring your children back from exile. Jacob will come back and find life good, safe, and secure.” The first two words are so important. “Look up!” Are we doing that? Are we looking up, or are we looking all around, trying to find the solution ourselves? Are we too busy looking at how big our problem is, or too busy looking down in shame to look up and see where our help comes from? God is our answer; He is our help. He always has been so stop looking around, stop looking down, and just look up!!Next, it says, “I’ll save you from faraway places; I’ll bring your children back from exile.” Yes, please, to both of these. Sometimes, I feel so far away from the Lord. This promise to bring me back from those faraway places is such a

Witness Wednesday #139 More PopWe Stories (Healing)Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose three testimonies from the Healing Category. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray when you hear this testimony, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation, also. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your situation, He can help. I hope you enjoy these testimonies.Diane: I have been a Christian since the age of 16 when I accepted Jesus into my heart. I got breast cancer in 2009. I was having a lot of pain in my right breast, and I thought I was having a heart attack. My husband told me to make an appointment with my doctor he sent me for a mammogram. It came back that everything was okay, but I knew that it wasn’t. The pain continued and grew stronger than ever. I called my doctor and told him that there was something terribly wrong with me. I kept praying to God to please let the doctors find out what is wrong. The doctor sent me to a surgeon who did a biopsy. He called me the next day and told me to come in and see him and bring someone with me. I knew it was bad.When my husband and daughter and I arrived, the surgeon told me that I had stage 4 breast cancer. We then went to an oncologist who told me I had 16 weeks to live and that I had to have surgery to remove my right breast. I also went through chemo radiation. I never stopped praying and believing in my God. I had a clinical trial and in 2011 I was told that my cancer was gone and I had reconstructive surgery.Now it’s 2024 and Matthew West his songs helped me so much. I recently lost my husband and Matthew’s song, “Don’t stop praying” has brought me through.Diane: On April 2, 2024, I awoke at 5am, on the floor in terrible pain. I could not get up. It felt as if my hip was broken. I laid there for 12 hours until my family came home. I was taken to the hospital by ambulance. Tests showed that nothing was broken. However, the muscles in my leg were all torn. They also discovered that my kidneys had stopped functioning. Also, my potassium was dangerously high and causing an erratic heartbeat. The doctors asked me if I wanted CPR if my heart stopped. But I refused three times. Each time I refused, I closed my eyes and prayed God’s will over my life. I was filled with peace that truly is beyond understanding. The doctors have no explanation for me surviving that night. Six days after my fall, I returned home. My kidney function’s higher than it had been in the past three years. I know God spared me. I have work to do for His kingdom!Honey: My husband was hospitalized in 2021 at the age of 40 for severe COVID. He nearly died. We have 3 children who were at the time 13, 11, and 4. He was in the hospital for 3 ½ months. Fortunately, I was the only one working at the time, so we didn’t lose income. However, driving to see him 60 miles every other day used a lot of money.And since I was basically a single parent, any time my kids had appointments or got sick I had to miss work. God in His infinite wisdom had blessed me with a job at a Christian school, so I didn’t have to worry about losing my job. But He didn’t just stop there. Throughout the almost 4 months of emotional struggle, God provided for our every need. God provided Christmas by having one of the members of our church take me to the store and told me to pick out 3 gifts per kid and stocking stuffers. God provided tires by having someone gift me a $300 Walmart gift card just before my tire went flat. But He didn’t just provide financially.I live in rural Kansas where hitting deer at night is a very real issue. Neither of our cars would have survived if we had hit a deer. But God protected me the entire time by always allowing me to see the deer and stop in time with no damage to me or my vehicles. He protected me from speed traps and tickets by either slowing me down or having the cop busy with someone else when I passed speeding by to get back home to my children.He strengthened me day after day and showed me almost every day that He was with me through the darkest time of my life. My husband’s miracle is his healing, but my miracle was an everyday occurrence. I never would’ve had the strength to go to work every day, go to the hospital and hear bad report after bad report, and be home present and active with my kids if it weren’t for God’s never-ending strength and peace. He showed me His presence in songs that played, friends at church,

Keep Your Eyes Fixed On JesusMatthew 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 was talking 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 just not only witnessed a miracle but 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 be afraid of, 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 also you were afraid? I love that Peter just stepped out of the boat, and He 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 that is 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 direction 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 he started to sink, he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord 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 n

Be Ready At All TimesLuke 12:40 “So keep being alert and ready at all times. For I promise you that the Son of Man will surprise you and appear when you don’t expect him.”This verse reminded me of a conversation I had with my confirmation kids one year when I was teaching the confirmation class. We were talking about confession and why it is so important to go to confession. We were also talking about how God always forgives us when we ask for forgiveness. No matter what we have done or how long ago it was. The kids were asking, what if someone sinned their whole life, they did really bad things, and then on their deathbed, they asked for forgiveness? Would God forgive them? I said yes. They said that didn’t seem fair.Then I asked them, “If someone was sinning their whole life. If they did one bad thing after another. Did they think that person would actually ask for forgiveness in the end?” They said probably not. The thing about sin is that it drives a wedge between you and the Lord. It fractures your relationship. The more you sin, the further away you feel. You might start off with a plan to sin as much as you like because you know that at any point, you can ask God for forgiveness, and He will give it to you. And yet, the more you sin, the more you harden your heart. By the time you get to the end of your life, you don’t care if God forgives you because you are so far away from Him, you forget what it is like to feel His love.This verse is telling us to be alert and ready at all times. I think we can all slip into a comfortable feeling where we know we may need to go to confession at some point, but it's okay to put it off a bit. Or we know we need to give something up or stop doing something, and yet we figure there is always tomorrow. Guess what? There might not be tomorrow. None of us know the day and the time that we will die. None of us know when the Son of Man will return. What the Bible tells us in more than one place is that it will be when we least expect it. Today’s verse says, “For I promise you that the Son of Man will surprise you and appear when you don’t expect him.”It doesn’t say you might be surprised, or I think the Son of Man’s coming might be a surprise. It says, “For I promise you that the Son of Man will surprise you and appear when you don’t expect him.” This is a promise. Jesus is coming, and we have no idea when, but we do know that we won’t expect it. This means we should always be ready for it. We shouldn’t put things off until tomorrow. If we truly lived this way, I believe our lives would be transformed!Imagine a life where you didn’t procrastinate. Where you didn’t put off calling that person you have been meaning to call but haven’t. Imagine a world where you didn’t hold a grudge because if you did, it meant God was going to hold a grudge against you. You do know that is what the Bible says, right? Do you know that is what it says in the prayer Jesus taught us to say? “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” God is going to forgive us to the same extent that we forgive others. Learning that truly was life-changing for me.As soon as I learned that, I made a decision to learn how to let things go. I made a decision to no longer stay or hold onto a grudge. Whatever it is that someone did to me, it is not worth my eternal salvation. Forgiveness is not easy, especially if someone hurt us deeply. However, missing out on eternal salvation or spending eternity in hell because of that unforgiveness would be a lot harder. I have heard stories of people going to hell because of unforgiveness in their hearts, and I don’t want that to be me.Today’s verse is a great reminder not only of how we should live our lives in order to get into heaven, but it is a good reminder that none of us know when we will leave this earth. It is a good reminder to not leave things unsaid and not wait for our loved ones to make the first move. What if we all lived our lives like this was our last day on earth? What would our day look like? What would our lives look like? How much more fully would we live our lives if we knew we wouldn’t see our loved ones again?Yesterday was Thanksgiving and I love Thanksgiving. It is one of best holidays with my family. My siblings and I gather at my mom and dad’s house the day before to help cut up the veggies and make all the desserts. It is a time of so much fun, love, and laughter. Then we get together on Thanksgiving and eat amazing food and talk, laugh and usually play games or watch movies. I love it. It is probably my favorite holiday. I was really looking forward to it.Wednesday night, one of my sons got in trouble at the mall. We were unsure what that meant for his job as he works at the mall. Thursday morning, he was really upset and wanted to go for a bike ride, and we said no because it was pouring rain out. He went anyway. Then Tony and I fought about whether we should go to CT or not while he was out on his bike ride. I decid

Today, I have two witnesses that I have heard about from friends in this last week. The first one is from my friend who has been struggling with hearing loss. I did a witness about her last year also. She had a ringing in her ears, and she said it had gotten pretty bad. I reminded her that we were at Encounter School of Ministry, where they teach us and encourage us to pray over people for healing and where we see a lot of healing. I prayed over her for healing that night, and then later in the night, two other people prayed over her, and there was no change. However, when she woke up the next morning, the ringing was 90% gone. Praise God! She said it was the quietest her mind had been in a long time.My friend also found out that she has a tumor in her ear. They said they are going to need to operate. The operation will leave her with permanent hearing loss. The last time she had her hearing tested, the intelligibility in that one ear was 39% when someone was yelling. That means that even when someone was yelling or speaking loudly into her ear, she could only understand 39% of what they were saying. We have been praying over her ear for over a year now. Besides the ringing that stopped she had not seen much change.When she was on the way home from an Encounter School of Ministries event the other day, she felt something weird going on with her ear. It felt strange, and I don’t remember if she said she heard a noise in it or what. I do remember she said she felt like her hearing was suddenly improving. When she got home, she decided to test it out. We have learned in Encounter School of Ministry that often, the healing doesn’t come when the person is praying, but it comes when the person takes that leap of faith and tests it out to see if a healing has occurred. In order to test it, you would try to do something you couldn’t do before, or you stop and evaluate the pain and see if it's less than it was before the prayer started.For my friend, she decided to put YouTube on her phone on a song that she didn't know the words to. She turned her volume all the way down until it was just one bar away from being on silent. She put the phone up to her ear and hit play. She could understand all of the words. Even the words in the commercial at the beginning. When she called me to tell me, she had the phone up to that ear that previously wasn't able to hear very much at all. In the past, when talking on the phone, she would have to have the phone to the other ear in order to hear the person on the other line. Praise God! He is so good! My friend's hearing is not perfect. It's not back to normal. And that's OK she's happy with the healing that God has done so far, and she knows and has faith that God's not done yet! Thank you Jesus!The next one I heard was at the prayer group last week. Recently, there was a Men’s March for Life in Boston. It was peaceful; they were just walking the streets with signs in support of saving babies from abortion. Here is what the woman said.Well, a dear friend of mine went on the walk and took her 11 year-old son. He was wearing a black suit, and carrying a sign the whole way saying, Why should we kill our babies? They encountered resistance. There were hate-filled faces all around them.There were knives. There were guns. There were people being thrown on the ground. There were people throwing urine-filled balloons. It was awful. There were police around, but the police couldn’t keep up with the amount of people who were against the march. The people who were marching were scared for their safety. My friend's son got hit with one of these urine-filled balloons.So my friend turned to her little son, who is, like her, very anointed and said, What do we do? He said, We call on Michael. He was, of course, talking about Saint Michael the Archangel. He started yelling, Michael! And people all around started chanting, Michael! And they were already doing the rosary. Some people kept on saying, Mother Mary, you're going to help us. As many were calling out to Michael there was a flash overhead. There was a flash. And then there were sparks of light, people were getting out their cameras to document the flash of light and the sparks. They knew St. Michael had heard their calls and came to answer them. The next thing they knew, they were completely surrounded by a blockade of military looking police. The police were standing shoulder to shoulder, and there were enough of them to surround everyone marching in the parade. The march was able to continue because everyone now felt safe and there were suddenly enough people to protect them. Thank you, St.Michael.I'm not saying these were angel warriors because the report online said that the police did call for reinforcements. But it was a miracle that they were immediately after the flash in the sky and the sparks.Thank you to both of my friends for sharing their miracles with me so I could share them with you! I am so grateful, especially with this bei

I Sought The Lord, And He Heard, And He Answered!Psalm 34:4-5 “I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed.”When I saw this verse this morning, I thought of an elevation song that is on the KLOVE radio station a lot. I know I have mentioned it before, but if you haven’t checked out KLOVE, you really should. You can google what the closest station to you is, or you can get the KLOVE App and listen from there. Not only do they have great Christian music, but the DJs are great, too, and they are always talking about uplifting stuff and not the news or politics. It is great!Anyway, I thought I would share this song with you as the Lord does answer us when we seek Him out. He can deliver us from all of our fears if we let Him. I also like how the verse says that those who look upon him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. Imagine if you could live your life never being ashamed. Did you even know that was possible? All things are possible through Christ!The song is called Trust In The Lord and is sung by Elevation Worship. Here are the words:… Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mineHe's been my fourth man in the fire, time after timeI love this line. He’s been the fourth man in the fire, time after time. Do you know what they are talking about here? Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are three Jewish men from the Bible's Book of Daniel who were thrown into a fiery furnace for refusing to worship a golden statue set up by King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon. King Nebuchadnezzar had his servants turn the furnace up so that the fire was white hot. These three men were bound up and thrown into the fiery furnace. The king was watching the whole thing. But after they were thrown in, those watching didn’t hear screams or anything. When the king looked in, he saw that the three men were standing in the fire, untouched by the flames and that there was a fourth man in the fire there with them. This is such a great story of God’s power.My favorite part of that story is that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego didn’t seem to be afraid at all about going into this fiery furnace. I love what they said before going into the furnace. Daniel 3:17-18, "If it is so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.” Can you imagine how brave these men were? They weren’t afraid to die for what they believed in. I love that they knew God could save them and yet they also knew that might not be what God had in store for them and yet were willing to risk it all anyway. What an incredible faith and trust in the Lord!Next, the song says,Born of His Spirit, washed in His bloodAnd what He did for me on Calvary is more than enoughI just had a conversation about this yesterday with a friend. Do we believe this? Do you believe that what Jesus did on Calvary is more than enough? We tend to get caught up in our sins and our past, and we can’t seem to forgive ourselves. My friend said she had a conversation with the Lord once. He asked her three times if she believed He died on the cross for her. Each time, she said yes. Each time, God said that she didn’t believe that was true. Finally, she asked the Lord why He kept saying it wasn’t true, and He said that if she did, she would forgive herself. Isn’t that powerful? God wants this freedom for all of us. He died to free us from our sins, our past mistakes, and all we have done. When we hold onto those mistakes, when we hold onto that sin, when we can’t forgive ourselves, we are telling the Lord that what He did for us on Calvary wasn’t enough. Is that what we really believe? If it was enough, why can’t we forgive ourselves?Next the song says… I trust in God, my SaviorThe one who will never failHe will never failWe can trust in the Lord. He will never fail us. This can be hard for us to believe because people fail us all the time. However, God is not a person. He will never fail us. We can count on Him to be there for us. He is there in the good times, and He is there in the bad times. He is always there. He never leaves your side!Next, it says… Perfect submission, all is at restI know the author of tomorrow has ordered my stepsDid you know that God is the author of tomorrow? He is helping you write your story. He has ordered your steps. Does that mean you will never take a wrong step, no. God has laid out our steps before us, but we have free will, and sometimes we take the wrong path. However, God can always turn us around and get us on the right path again. If we are looking to God for direction. If our eyes are fixed on Him, we will see the path He has laid out for us, and we will follow it. We get lost when we take our eyes off the Lord.Next, the song says,So this is my story, and this is

Never Let Anxiety Enter Your HeartsLuke 12:22-23 “Jesus taught his disciples, saying, “Listen to me. Never let anxiety enter your hearts. Never worry about any of your needs, such as food or clothing. For your life is infinitely more than just the food you eat or the clothing you wear.”Wow, Jesus could not be more direct with us. He is not calling us to a fear-free life; He is commanding us not to fear. He is not telling us that sometimes anxiety is ok and sometimes it is bad. He is telling us to never let anxiety enter our hearts. Never is a pretty strong word. He is telling us never to worry about any of our needs, like food or clothing. I don’t know if you ever had to worry about these things before. If you haven’t, then I can see why it would be really hard not to worry. I mean, you have to eat to survive, and you need clothes to get through the day. At least now we do. Before the fall, we didn't even need clothes, Adam and Eve walked around naked and were perfectly content. They saw nothing wrong with it. It wasn’t until sin entered the world that shame entered the world. Before sin, there was no shame.When I was growing up, we did have to wonder sometimes about where our food or clothes would come from. I still, to this day, do not know how my mom was able to pay for all the special shoes and socks that we all needed to go with our cheerleading, football, color guard, or band uniforms. I am 100% sure that I don’t even know a fraction of the sacrifice my parents made for us 11 kids while we were growing up. They are probably still making sacrifices. I am sure there were countless times when they went without so we could have what we wanted. I am so grateful to them.I feel extremely lucky because my dad is a Deacon in the Catholic Church, and one of their responsibilities or jobs is to give the Homily/Sermon at Mass about once a month or so. My dad often used stories from our home life in his homilies because my dad knew that people learned best when they had real-life examples to help them understand the scripture. I feel lucky because I am not sure if I would know half of the stories that I have heard if it weren’t for my dad recounting them for the church.My mom and dad were very faithful in counting on the Lord to provide for all of our needs. I am not sure if they prayed, trusted, and worried or if they just prayed and trusted. Either way I do know that the first thing they did when they were in need is they turned to the Lord. Most of the time, they had little choice as they were desperate for food, clothing, or money. However, there are many people who are desperate, and they still don’t turn to the Lord. My parents always turned to the Lord, and He always showed up in such big ways.We were one of the biggest families in our small town. There was one family about the same size that had older kids, and there was another family that was the same age as our family. One of my best friends in school was in the other large family in my town. That was it, just 2-3 large families. This meant that we frequently had clothes and other things dropped off at our house. If people had clothes that their kids outgrew, they would drop those clothes off at our house as they knew we probably had a kid that was just that size. Most of us were just a year or two away from the next sibling, so if they didn’t fit one of us, they would fit another one. We never had to worry about where our clothes would come from; the Lord took care of it.We also never really had to worry about where our food would come from either. God always took really good care of us. I am still astonished at how many grilled tuna melts my mom can make with two cans of tuna! One of my favorite stories is when my mom and dad were talking one morning about how they didn’t have any food in the house, and they weren’t sure how they were going to feed all of us kids. Then they got a phone call, and it was their good friends from a few towns over. They had an emergency come up, and they wanted to know if my parents could watch their kids. Now my parents had about 10 kids at this time, and this family had ten kids as well. My parents had no food in the house, but they knew they needed to help their friends out. They said yes and then immediately started praying to the Lord. They were asking the Lord what He wanted them to do for food. They were telling Him that they were counting on Him to provide the food as they knew He could.Before they were even done praying, their next-door neighbor knocked on their door. She said that her father-in-law had to move in with them unexpectedly. He had just gone grocery shopping and so he brought all of his food with him. However, they had just gone grocery shopping, too, and they didn’t have room for all of this food. They were wondering if we could use some food. My parents were so grateful, and they said yes, that would be nice. They looked through the bag, and they found several packages of pasta and tomato sauce.They

Thanks so much for that amazing teaching, Tina. I told you guys that you were going to like it! I don’t know about you, but I don’t know a ton about the angels, and I always jump at the opportunity to learn more about them.Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember Jesus loves and accepts you just as you and so do I! Have a blessed day!Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email [email protected]. Today’s Word from the Lord is more of a vision from the Lord, “As we were singing the songs, I saw us in a huddle with Jesus. We're all in this huddle, we're all surrounding each other, and He says, okay, and He points to each one of us, and He's given us the play, so what He wants us to do, you go do this, you go do this, you go do this” 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 Carefree in the Care of God!Luke 12:24-27 “Take the carefree birds as your example. Do you ever see them worry? They neither grow their own food nor put it in a storehouse for later. Yet God takes care of every one of them, feeding each of them out of the abundance of his love and goodness. Isn’t your life more precious to God than a bird? Be carefree in the care of God! “Does worry add anything to your life? Can it add one more year or even one day? So, if worrying adds nothing but actually subtracts from your life, why would you worry about God’s care of you?”This is a verse that we often hear when we talk about how God will provide for us, and we don’t have to worry about anything. There is a lot in these short verses. First, it tells us to take the carefree birds as our example. We don’t ever see birds worry about where they will get their next meal or if they will be able to eat that day. They don’t grow their own food; they don’t store food. Each day, the bird goes out and looks for what it will eat that day. If it has babies in the nest, it will look for food to feed them every day as well. However, they don’t seem to be worried if they will find food.What I read in this verse that I don’t remember seeing before is that it says, “Yet God takes care of every one of them, feeding each of them out of the abundance of his love and goodness.” I am not sure if I haven’t seen that before because that is only included in this translation or if I just never noticed it before. However, I think it is a really good thing to think about. God feeds the birds out of the abundance of his love and goodness. Did you know God had an abundance of love for all of His creatures?This world tends to operate from a scarcity mindset. The world teaches us that we should get what is ours now before it runs out. We should strive to make more and more money because what if we don’t have enough for all we need? When we approach things from a scarcity mindset, we won’t be grateful for the things we have because what we have will never seem like enough. When we approach God with a scarcity mindset, we may think He does not have enough for us. That might be enough love, enough provisions, enough mercy, enough grace. Whatever it is that you think you need.I like how this verse reminds us that God doesn’t scrimp together all he can to provide for us. He provides for us out of His abundance and His goodness. God will not ever run out of provisions for us. He won’t ever run out of mercy, grace, or love for us, either. God has an abundance of all things. Next, the verse says, “Isn’t your life more precious to God than a bird?” If God is providing for the birds every single day out of His abundance, don’t you think He will provide for you, too? Humans are God’s greatest creation. He likes us the best. If He is making sure the birds don’t go without, then He is making sure you won’t go without, also.The last part of the verse says, “Be carefree in the care of God! “Does worry add anything to your life? Can it add one more year or even one day? So, if worrying adds nothing but actually subtracts from your life, why would you worry about God’s care of you?” I think we all know this on some level, and yet we aren’t really sure about how we can change it. The verse reminds us that worry won’t add anything to our lives. It won’t add another year or even one day. So, if it adds nothing to our lives, why do we do it? I think we do it because we live in a society that trains us to worry. All of the news that we watch on TV is designed to get a reaction out of us. It is designed to make us worry so that we will keep watching it. It is also designed to keep us worrying so we will vote for a certain candidate, or vote a certain way on a bill, or anything else they want us to do.Even advertisements have capitalized on the fear, worry, and anxiety of our world today. When people are trying to sell us something, they tell us how bad life will be if we don’t buy their product. Instead of leading with all the good things their product will do, they lead with all the bad things that happen if you don’t buy the product. I was listening to one of my life coaching teachings the other day, and they said fear of the consequences if people don’t change is a much stronger motivator than the positive rewards they will get when they do change. The world is full of fear, and yet you don’t have to be. You can learn to trust the Lord and know that He will protect you. He will provide for you. He will always come through for you. God has an abundance of love for you that you can count on.Lastly, something I don’t know if we realized is what it says about worry adding nothing but actually subtracting from your life. How does worry subtract from your life? How many times have you missed out on important moments because you were stressing about something instead of enjoying the moment? How much of your life has been taken away because of panic attacks? When you look bac

This morning’s witness is about my day last Saturday. I had the privilege of joining a group of young adults in the Boston area who belong to a ministry called Encounter. This is different than the Encounter School of Ministry that I attended. This ministry is a group of Catholic young adults that get together as a large group on the third Saturday of the month. They meet at a church in Boston, and they gather for Mass. Then, they head downstairs to the church hall for breakfast and fellowship. After breakfast is over, they gather in groups. One group is for those who have been there before and they meet and do formation. They learn a topic or something that will help them when they go out and minister. Last week they talked about Mother Theresa I believe. They also have a group for newcomers where they explain all about the ministry. They talk about what you should and should not do while you are out there. They give you tips about what works and what doesn’t. Then, they show you a video about the group in Colorado that they designed their group after. This group is called “Christ in the City.”When you go to their website, the first thing you see is a quote from Mother Theresa that says, “Many people talk about the homeless, but few talk to them.” Mother Theresa talks about something called the Poverty of loneliness. The approach of “Christ in the City,” and also this Encounter Ministry in Boston, is Healing through Relationship. These two ministries spend time each week building relationships with the homeless on the streets. It is through seemingly small interactions—the disarming power of eye contact, a genuine smile, stopping to say hello and learn someone's name—that the seeds of friendship take root, and a journey of healing begins.There are lots of homeless ministries in Boston, and they are all a little different. I know two people from my class who go out on Saturday mornings in Boston and pray over people. They head to Mass Ave and another place where there is a large homeless population, and they pray with them for healing and for conversion. They pray for an end to their addiction, and whatever it is they need prayer for. There are also other groups that bring the homeless food, clothing, or other material things they may need. Encounter’s primary goal is to build a relationship with the homeless. They walk the same paths each week so that they really get to know the people on their path. They become friends with them, and then they pray for their friends during their prayer time.After this group time, they meet up in the church again to break into small groups. They usually only have 2-3 people in a group, and they try to have at least one male and one female in a group, as males and females both offer something unique to any situation. Before heading out, the priest will say a prayer. Then, everyone heads out to their specific section of Boston to minister for about two hours or so.This weekend was my first weekend joining this group. Mostly because I did not know about it before but also because it is for young adults, and I am no longer a young adult. However, I have had the privilege of spending time with 6 of the ladies in this group lately, and so I wanted to see what it is they do for ministry. They invited me to join in this week. I was in a group of four going out for ministry. We decided to walk to our area. As we walked, we talked and got to know each other a bit. Once we got to our area, we decided to split up into groups of two as larger groups can be intimidating, and also, we can reach more people if we split up.I was with a young man named Duke. He had been doing this ministry for a few years, I believe. He was great at initiating conversations with those we met. I was nervous because I had never done this before and also because I am not always great at starting conversations or keeping them going. However, it was a great day. We first met this man who Duke has seen around a lot. We talked with him for a while, and he seemed happy to have the company and to have someone listen to him. He said he always has a goal each day for what he will spend the money that he makes on, this way, he doesn’t waste it on just cigarettes. I thought this was a great idea. Saturday, he was trying to make enough money to buy a cheap watch as he doesn’t have a phone anymore, and it is really hard getting through the day without knowing what time it is. Especially if he has to be back at the shelter at a certain time.What I loved about the first man we talked to is that he seemed happy. He talked about how he knew God was always looking out for him. He was thankful to God for all he had. He was grateful that he wasn’t sleeping on the streets and that he had a shelter to stay in. He said he was sleeping on the floor at the shelter, but that was better than the streets so he was grateful. He said he was waiting for disability to go through so he could maybe get an apartment. He seemed very optimistic

Our Heavenly BankLuke 12:33-34 “Now, go and sell what you have and give to those in need; you will be making deposits in your account in heaven, an account that will never be taken from you. Your gifts will become a secure and unfailing treasure, deposited in heaven forever. Where you deposit your treasure, that is where you fix your thoughts—and your heart will long to be there also.”Yesterday after school, I went to the church near me as it is always open. I wanted to sit there with the Lord and ask Him what he wanted me to teach about in mentoring tonight. I took out my Bible and asked Him to give me a scripture verse. I don’t do this too often, but I asked for a verse. I told the Lord I was going to just open the Bible, and I asked Him to show me a verse on the page I just happened to open up to that would either be relevant for mentoring or for life in general.I picked a random part of the Bible to open up to, and it happened to be Luke 12. What is amazing to me is that there is a whole section on the page I opened up to that is called in my Passion Translation, “Don’t Worry.” the theme for mentoring this month is “Be Not Afraid.” I love it when the Lord does that. He just has you open up the Bible to the perfect page. What was interesting to me is that I have heard and read that section several times before, and yet today, a few things stood out to me that I don’t remember ever hearing or reading before. One of those things is the verse above.I have heard before that Jesus wants us to sell what we have and give to those in need. He tells this to the young man who asks what he needs to do to get into the Kingdom of Heaven. However, I have never heard of it as making deposits into our account in heaven. I love that imagery. It reminded me of when I was reading a book one time. I think it might have been The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families, but I am not sure. Whatever book it was, it talked about how we need to make emotional deposits into our loved ones. The idea of "making regular deposits into our loved ones' emotional banks" means consistently building a positive relationship with your loved one through kind gestures, praise, and supportive actions so that when you need to say something negative or critical, they are more likely to trust your intentions and not feel overly hurt because of the strong foundation of positive interactions you've already established; essentially, it's like having a "reserve" of positive experiences that can buffer against occasional negative feedback.This is what I thought of when it comes to our heavenly bank. We can store our treasures up there as they won’t do us any good down here. We can’t take our treasures with us. We can’t take our material possessions with us. It makes sense that we could sell those things to make a deposit into our heavenly bank. To be honest, after having this thought, I started to wonder if it was the same as with our kids. We make regular deposits into our heavenly bank so that when we do something bad, we are still ok because we have all the other deposits to cover this thing we just did. However, I don’t think this is what the Lord is talking about. If this was the case, then it would be as if we were earning our way into heaven. It would be as if we needed to do more good than bad, and there was a scale in heaven that was making sure we put in more good than the withdrawal due to the bad behavior.I know this is not the case because we don’t have to earn our way into heaven. Jesus died on the cross for us so that we may be saved. Our getting into heaven isn’t based on how many good things we do on Earth vs. how many bad things we do on Earth. After realizing this, I wondered why the Lord highlighted this section for me and why he brought that story up about depositing into our loved ones’ banks. First, I think he reminded me of that story because I think we all needed that reminder that it is important to continually be investing and depositing into our loved ones banks. Second, I think God highlighted this section for me because of the last line.The last line of the verse above says, “Where you deposit your treasure, that is where you fix your thoughts—and your heart will long to be there also.” I think God wanted us to take some time today and think about where we are depositing our treasures. Where we deposit our treasure is where you fix your thoughts. So, where are your thoughts fixed? Are they fixed on the Lord, or are they fixed on the world? Are they fixed on all God has done for you, or are they fixed on all the things going wrong in your life? What about our time? Time is the most valuable resource we have. Where are we spending our time? Are we making regular deposits of our time with the Lord, or are we spending our time elsewhere? For me, I feel as though I am not spending as much time as I would like to with God. I am allowing myself to be distracted by TV and other things.The verse above says, “Where you deposit your tr

Sanctify Them In The TruthJohn 17:17-18 “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes, I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.”The beginning part of this was the verse of the day today. I liked this verse because it talks about sanctifying them with the Lord’s truth. I wasn’t exactly sure what this verse meant, so I turned to the “Enduring Word Bible Commentary.” I always learn a lot when I look to the people who write Bible commentary for more information.The verse above starts with, “Sanctify them in the truth.” Sanctify means to be set apart for God’s special pleasure and use. It implies holiness, being set apart from the corruption of the world and for God’s use. We have all been set apart from this world. Yes, we are all meant to live in this world, but we are not meant to be of this world. I know that probably just sounds like fancy rhetoric that you hear people say but don’t really know what it means. What it means is that although we are living in the world, we must not conform to its ways.The world’s view and the Lord’s view are very different, and we must be careful not to get lazy and just start believing what the world believes. It can be hard not to fall into the trap of believing what the world believes because what the world believes is so much in our faces. We are surrounded by it. They try to convince us that the things they are doing are not as bad as we think they are. The world will try to normalize all the things that the Lord says we should not be doing.The world tells us that it’s ok to tell “little white lies” because they really aren’t hurting anyone. The world tells us that it is ok to take what is ours, even if it doesn’t technically belong to us. The world tells us so many things that just aren’t true. Yet their justification seems to make sense to us. This is why I said earlier that we have to be careful not to get lazy and just start believing what the world believes. It takes work to examine their reasoning and their justification and see right through it.Another thing that just came to mind is that we need to know why God says what He says. We need to know why the church says what it says. Before I started learning more about my Catholic faith, I would have people ask me why I believed what I believed, and they would quote scripture to me and tell me why I was wrong or why the Catholic Church was wrong. Their arguments seemed to make sense, and I would start to question what I believed. This is when I started learning all I could about my beliefs and why the Church teaches what it teaches. I learned so much, and I began to realize that most of the things that my friends were saying about the Catholic Church were not actually true. They had issues with what they thought we believed or what they thought we were doing, but that wasn’t what we believed or what we were doing.One instance is when they asked why we worship Mary or the Saints. We don’t do either of these things. We definitely give Mary the respect she is owed as Mother of our Lord and Savior, but we don’t worship her. We also don’t worship the saints. We do talk with the Saints, and we do ask them to bring our requests to the Lord, but this is no different than when anyone would ask you to pray for their family. We aren’t asking the Saint to fix our situation; we are asking them to bring out a request to the Lord. The more people praying for our situation, the better!Back to the verse. Jesus didn’t just leave the disciples to sanctify themselves. He prayed for their sanctification. This process is not left to us alone; it is a work of God in us and through us. Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth: The dynamic behind sanctification is truth. The word of God is read, heard, understood, and applied. “Sanctification is not effected apart from divine revelation.” (Morris) “The more truth you believe, the more sanctified you will be. The operation of truth upon the mind is to separate a man from the world unto the service of God.” (Spurgeon)The verse goes on to say, “As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.”Jesus gave us a mission to go out into the world. The reason Jesus asked for our sanctification was not primarily for personal holiness, although that is included, more so being set apart for God’s service and mission. “He does not merely leave them in the world, but sends them into it, to witness to this same truth of God.” (Alford) “The word ‘mission’ comes from the Latin verb mitto, mittere, misi, missum, which means ‘to send’ or ‘dispatch.’ A mission is a sending forth.” (Boice) Jesus gave us each a mission, and we need to start living out this mission. “Christ was the great Missionary, the Messiah, the Sent One; we are the minor missionaries, Sent out into the world to accomplish the Father’s will and purpose.” (Spurgeon) “Christ’s commission is on a higher s

You Are Chosen!John 15:16 "You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.”This was the verse that the praise leader talked about at the prayer group yesterday. Her talk lined up so much with yesterday’s episode of the podcast. Then we had a bookmark yesterday at a prayer group, and her talk and my episode both lined up perfectly with the bookmark. Our bookmarks are a compilation of the Lord’s Word for the month. The month we happened to be going over was October 2023. I love how God does that. He takes His word that we have discerned from a year ago, and he fits it right in with what we are talking about today. God is so good. I guess that is a good reminder that God’s word is timeless. It is always relevant, no matter when He gives it to us.What I love about this verse is that it reminds us that we are chosen. We didn’t choose God; He chose us. We are the chosen ones. How great is that? Even if you feel rejected by everyone else in your family or all those who surround you, you can rest assured that you are chosen by God. You are chosen by the one true King. You are chosen by the creator of the universe. God could have chosen anyone, and He chose you. That is something to hold onto. That is something to remind yourself of when you are struggling. God chose you!The praise leader did an excellent job of explaining what it means to be chosen and what it means to bear lasting fruit. I would like to share this with you today. The audio quality is not great because I recorded it on my phone in a room full of people. However, it is too good of a teaching not to share just because of the audio quality. Here is Louise giving her teaching on the verse above.Do we really know what it means to be chosen? I did a little bit of background reading in my commentaries, and a particular person that I read mentioned a few things about being chosen, and one of the things that he mentioned was that when Jesus chose us, He chose us for joy, and joy we find in doing the right thing, and joy we find and exhibit when we recognize that yeah, we're sinners, we make mistakes, we do things wrong, but we are redeemed sinners, and that brings joy, that allows us to be joyful in the midst of us making a mess. We are chosen for love.Jesus wants us to live in such a way that we show love to our fellow men and women, and that's not an easy task, but what we can remember is if we look at Jesus, His whole life, He lived that. He always was showing love to men and women, always. They came first.He focused on them. He met their needs, whether they needed healing, whether they needed forgiveness, whether they needed a word of encouragement, He met their needs, and that's the kind of life He wants us to live. He's also called us to be His friends, and one of the things this commentary shared, which I've never thought about is, you know, when back in the Old Testament, when He said this to His disciples, this would have really struck home with them, because the Old Testament way of thinking was that to be a slave of God, to be a real servant of God, that was one of the highest honors you could have.That was one of the highest honors you could have. You know, people strung for it. The prophets, they were called, you know, servants of God, slaves of God.Well, Jesus then takes it a step further and says, I no longer call you slaves, I call you friends. And being friends and not being a slave means that you know what the Master is about. A slave doesn't. A slave just does what he's told. He doesn't know the intimacy of a relationship with his Master. He doesn't know his Master's thinking. He doesn't know why his Master wants to do something. He doesn't understand. He just does what he's told.Well, Jesus wants us to be friends. He wants that intimacy with us. And one of the things, too, that I read was Abraham was called a friend of God. He wasn't just called a servant of God. Abraham was a friend of God. And why was Abraham a friend of God? Because he intimately talked with God and listened to God and followed God even when he didn't understand what God meant and how things could happen.So one of the things we need to remember is that you know what? Jesus didn't choose us for a series of tremendous privileges. Although he does give us those. Joy and peace and you know, they're all ours. He gives them to us. But that isn't the main reason he chooses us. He chooses us to be partners with him. That, when you think about it, is phenomenal. I know I'm not what I consider a good partner with Jesus. But I believe that God looks at each one of us and says, you are a great partner. And you're a great partner because you have an intimate relationship with me. And you try to listen to me. And you praise me when you can. And you try to do what I'm telling you. And yeah, okay, you mess it up. But you're still a great partner. And that's what he

God Knows You, The Real You!John 1:47-48 “When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.”If you have not seen the chosen, I invite you to watch it. The series is amazing, and it helps you to understand the various things in the Bible. I love how it takes something that may seem small in the Bible and helps you to remember it forever. In Season 2 Episode 2, The Chosen depicts the story of Nathanael. Because it is a show and is also for entertainment, they added things that I don’t know if they are factual or not.In the show, Nathaneal was a contractor, and he finally got his big shot, He was helping build something, I think maybe a temple, but I don’t remember what he was building. His dreams were coming true, and then something happened, and he got fired. He was sitting under a fig tree, crying out to the Lord. He was doing what we all do when something bad happens. He was asking the Lord, “Why?" He was asking the Lord, “Where were you?” He was asking the Lord, “Why have you abandoned me?” He was lost and sad and searching for the Lord, and he couldn’t find him. He truly felt alone and abandoned by God. Who hasn’t been there before?I love this scene in The Chosen because it brings these verses to life. The story of Nathanael in the Bible is told in just nine verses. It is something that could easily be overlooked or read and forgotten. However, watching it unfold on the screen, you can see what a powerful encounter it was between Jesus and Nathanael. You can see the love the Lord has for him. The Lord has that same love for you! The Lord sees you in your dark times, too. He knows who you are.I love when Jesus sees Nathanael coming up and says, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Can you imagine someone you have never met saying something so nice about you? Can you imagine someone you have never met searching for you and seeing the truth of who you are? I can imagine Nathanael was confused, and I bet he probably had trouble believing what this man was saying to him. We always have more trouble believing the truth than believing the lies. Jesus saw right through Nathanael to the heart of who he was and then called it out.Jesus knows who you are, too! Jesus knows the real you. Not the you that you want everyone else to see. Not the you that you pretend to be so that you can protect yourself from getting hurt. Not the you that you pretend to be so that you can fit in with others. Jesus knows who you really are, the you that you keep hidden for fear of getting hurt. The you that you keep hidden because you are afraid people won’t like you or they will tell you that you are too much or not enough. Maybe they have already said that to you, and that is why you hide the real you so deep down inside.I wish Jesus was walking around on earth today calling out our identity. I wish when we met Him He would state our identity so matter of factly like He did with Nathanael. What popped into my head when I wrote that is that we can be the face of Jesus to others. What if we called out the good that we saw in people? We had a meeting with the leadership team of my prayer group the other day. I mentioned how great it felt when I first got involved and someone in the group would call out something that they saw in me and invite me to grow in some way.For instance, they would ask me to join the discernment team because they thought I would be good at it. That meant the world to me. It felt so good for someone to notice something good about me. At the time I joined the prayer group, my family was in turmoil. Everyone was angry all the time, and all I heard at home from my kids and my husband was what I was doing wrong. I heard how everything was my fault; I was an awful mom, an awful wife, a terrible person, and so on. I know they didn’t mean it, and they were just angry, and yet it still hurt.However, at the prayer group, people would notice the good things in me, and that felt amazing. Have you ever had someone call out the good in you? Have you ever had someone say something about you that you didn’t know or realize before? Has someone ever told you that you were good at something? Have you ever had someone ask you to do something and felt honored that they thought you were capable of doing it? It is an amazing feeling when other people show their faith in us when they believe in us.What if you were that person for someone? What if we all started trying to be the face of Jesus for those around us? There are enough people in the world to tell us what we are doing wrong. What if we all focused on calling out the good we see in people? What if we had a goal to say one nice thing about each person we interact with throughout the day? I wonder how different our day would be? I wonder what an impact we would make on oth

The witnesses today are from the Global Awakening Website. Randy Clark is An international itinerant minister birthed from a 4-day meeting in Canada; Randy Clark illustrates perfectly the aphorism, “Don’t despise small beginnings.” The son of an oil field worker, Randy, like most from his generation, learned the importance of perseverance. After his miraculous healing from a car accident when he was eighteen, he felt led to go into the ministry. Since that day, November 20, 1970, Randy’s involvement in ministry soared. Shortly after graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Religious Studies in 1974, Randy went on to receive his Master of Divinity from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY, in 1977.Randy Clark travels all over the world to conduct healing services and teach people the power of the Holy Spirit. This morning, I went to his website and pulled some witness testimonies to share with you. There are so many; I just chose a few that I thought you would enjoy. The Lord truly is still miraculously healing today, and the more we hear about it, the more we will believe it. I pray when you hear these witnesses, you will know it is possible for you and your loved ones to be healed, too.Lucas was blind in the left eye. completely blind. He was at a healing service, and there was a word of knowledge. He closed his eyes and said Jesus, please open my eyes I want to see. Then, when he opened his eyes, he didn't feel anything, but he could see. They checked back in four years later, and they were told this healing really caused ripples not only there in that state in Brazil but in other states as well,Another man was shot in the chest, and then he had a problem with his spine, and he couldn't walk. He was in a wheelchair. He went to a healing service on a Friday night with Randy Clark. The man prayed over him, and he couldn't feel anything. And then he just stood up and gave them a hug, and now he's walking again. He hadn’t walked for 2 months. When I was healed, I was relieved because I could stand.There was a woman at a healing service with Randy Clark. He had a word of knowledge about a motorcycle. He asked if that meant anything to anyone, and a woman raised her hand. Randy went over to her to pray for her and she was shaking and shaking. She had been in a motorcycle accident, and her foot was so bad the doctor said in one week they would need to amputate it. Her foot was healed. She was up on the stage dancing and jumping around.There was a young girl who was run over by a motorcycle a month and 8 days before the healing service. The paramedics said she was dead for 30 minutes. Everybody around the girl said she was done, and prayer wouldn't help. The mom refused to believe it. She touched her daughter's chest and said I rebuke the spirit of death. She touched her daughter's hand and commanded the Spirit of life to come back into her. Her mom asked the Holy Spirit to please breathe life into her again. As soon as she said that, her daughter took a breath and came back. When the girl went to the healing service, she came in a wheelchair. She had an open wound on her head, she had pain in her head, and she had double vision. After prayer, the wound and her head closed up. She had no more pain in her head; she had no more double vision. She was also able to walk again without the wheelchair.Next, Randy Clark interviewed a man who has seen over 100 resurrections. He talked about the last one he saw. He and his wife went into the hospital, and they saw a woman who was lying there with her eyes open. She had her mouth open too, and she had food in her mouth that she had eaten two days ago, and there were worms all in the food and coming out of her mouth. The man and his wife prayed over her. Then, just as the man was about to go get someone to move this woman's body to the morgue, she coughed out all the food and worms and was alive again.Beverly | Birmingham, AL said, “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 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 such that 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 had stopped preaching and became afraid to teach. SO PRAISE BE TO GOD for the healing. I had been experiencing progressive deterioration for 14 years!”Darenda | Harrisburg, PA – Physical Healing said, “I sat next to a b

God Is Holding My HandIsaiah 41:13 “For I am the LORD your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you.”Since the mentoring theme this month is “Be Not Afraid!” I thought I would look up some verses along these lines and talk about them. Today, I found the one above. “For I am the LORD your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you.” I think we hear this a lot. Either from church or from our loved ones, we hear that God will help us, so we don’t need to be afraid. I wonder how many of us believe this. How many of us believe God is there for us and will help us when we need help?Today’s verse says that He is the Lord our God who takes hold of our right hand and tells us not to fear because He will help us. I like this because it is so gentle. The Lord our God is taking us by the hand and protecting us so that we don't have to be afraid. This morning, I was reminded of a word of prophecy that we received at our prayer group about the Lord holding our hand. The word was received in January 2024. Here is the word, “I am He who can help you each step of the way. You need only to hold my hand, and I will pull you through everything that bothers you in life, no matter what it is. Continue to trust, for I am your God.”God is there for us each step of the way. We don't have to worry about anything. We just need to hold His hand, and He will take care of everything else. God tells us this again and again, but we struggle to believe it. Today, instead of me talking about why we should not fear, I am going to let the Lord tell you. The following words were all received in the same month at my morning prayer group. These were received in May of 2024. My prayer is that one of these words will speak to your heart about whatever it is you are afraid of right now.We all fear something, but it is not the same for each one of us. In these messages, God addresses many different things we might fear. If one or more of these words from the Lord speaks to you, feel free to pause the episode and write them down. There is a transcript of this episode, so you could go there and read them and copy down whichever ones speak to you. Here they are:“Trust more, surrender more, love more, and I will make you stronger.”My Holy Spirit falls upon all peoples of all times. My Holy Spirit seeks a resting place. Open your hearts and souls to provide fertile ground for my Spirit to plant and bring forth fruit for your times. Let go of your wounds and hurts. They are covered by my Spirit who is doing new works in you and for your world.Sacred children made in my image, I love you so desperately. You can never understand the depths of my love. You are mine, mine. I am here with you in this room, in this moment, in this day, hour, minute and second. All will come, I promise you, all will come. You will see. Never feel abandoned, never. It's not possible. I am with you every step. Remember every step. I am a complete God, complete. Fear nothing. My Spirit is your warrior, your strength.Fear not, my children. Move forward. My Spirit will lead the way and He will tell you what to say and what to do. If you move forward, you will find joy. Do not be a coward. Do not lay back. Know that I am the Lord and my Spirit is there to bring joy as you do what He says. Be convinced that I am with you. Fear not. Again, I say, move forward.I got the impression that there are people the Lord is telling them to do something, but they are timid and they are afraid. But the Lord is telling them that He will be their strength and that the Spirit will guide them and there is nothing to fear if they do what the Lord says.I am your daily bread, so you can also be the bread for others. I use you so they may come to me, become the bread of hope, joy and peace to others. Fear not to be broken in pieces so that you can bring my unity to all. My children, I love you and I count on each one of you to become the bread of life to others. As I give life to you, you in turn must share this life with all those you meet.Some of you are too hard on yourselves. Immerse yourself in my all-encompassing love. Walk in confidence. Walk proud. You are children of the King, the sons and daughters of the Most High God. You've nothing to fear. You are sealed in the blood of the Lamb. Your Father loves you. He loves you. You're His babies. His. His. Remember that always. No matter what you face, you are my sweetness. My sweet song of love. Precious children, remain in my love.I keep getting, you are the blessing that I send to the world. Spread my joy. Fear not to partake of all that I offer you so you in turn can share it with others. Again, I tell you, you are my blessing to the world. If you do not move forward, others will not receive the blessing that I wish to partake with others through you.I got the impression that we each, in our way, a blessing. And there are certain things that he wants to use each one of

Don’t Worry, I Will Explain It1 John 3:8 “Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil; for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.”I read this verse and thought, “Nope, I don’t want to go there.” Actually, I read this verse and then read the next two verses after it. 1 John 3:8-10 says, “Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil; for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born of God. The children of God and the children of the devil are revealed in this way: all who do not do what is right are not from God, nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters.” Ok, after hearing all that do you see why I didn’t want to touch this verse? First of all, I didn’t really understand it. If I sin I am a child of the devil? What does that even mean? We all sin, don’t we? Then it says Those born of God do not sin. But wait, I am born of God and yet I do sin? It is definitely confusing and not something I felt qualified to talk about. Secondly, I didn’t want someone to hear this verse , or read it in the transcript and then think they weren’t a child of God because they sin. Because let's all be honest, we all sin. So, I was happy to skip this one and go on to find another verse. I felt the Holy Spirit stop me and ask, what does this verse mean? What if someone already read it and didn’t stop to ask what it means? What if someone is walking around thinking they are no longer my child just because they sin?I am always humbled when the Holy Spirit reminds me of the purpose for this podcast. It is not to talk about all the things I understand. It is not to talk about things I really love talking about. It is to help myself and you, all those listening, to understand scripture a little better. My purpose is to help you walk a boldy with Jesus one verse at a time. The only way to do this is to take difficult scriptures, ones I don’t understand and figure them out, examine them, research them, and then share that with you. I may not alway get it right, but I do try my best and I ask the Holy Spirit to take care of the rest. I am sure I will keep needing to be reminded to stop and examine a verse if I don’t understand it because the enemy loves to try and stop me by telling me I am not qualified to talk about the scripture. He tells me I don’t know what I am doing and so I can’t help others. Do you see how he takes a kernel of truth and twists it? He is right, I am not qualified and I don’t always know what the scriptures mean. However, the way he twists it is because I am not sharing just my thoughts on it. I am researching and looking to those that do know the answers. I am taking the time to explore the meaning and then sharing what I learned from those that are qualified so that you don’t have to take that time. If something I say is confusing, or you still don’t understand the verse, I urge you to reach out and let me know. I would be happy to explore it in more detail with you. Or you can explore it on your own as well. I just type “What is the meaning of 1 John 3:8” or whatever verse I am looking at in the search bar on the internet and usually a list of articles come up. Whatever it is in the Bible we are trying to understand, there are probably plenty of other people that have come before us that have asked the same question. Look for the answers they found. I will put the links to two of the articles I read in the show notes in case you want to read the full articles.Now that I explained all that, what did I discover? What does this confusing verse mean? From what I found, I understand it to mean that when we are sinning we are a child of Satan, meaning he is influencing those behaviors. When we are following God’s ways, God is influencing those behaviors. I feel the Holy Spirit just gave me an analogy that made me smile. It is one that if you have kids you have probably said it and even if you don’t you probably heard your parents say it. When our kids are not behaving I tell Tony they are his kids and when they are behaving I say they are my kids. Of course they are all both of our kids all the time. However, when I say that I am implying that his DNA is what is influencing the kids misbehavior and my DNA is influencing their good behavior. It made me smile when this thought came to me because I could just picture God up in heaven shaking his head, looking at Satan and saying, nope, they are your kids today. I know He doesn’t do this, but it made me smile remember all the times, Tony and I went back and forth, nope, these are your kids. One thing everything I read agreed on is that this verse is not determining your salvation. This verse is not saying because you sin you are a child of Satan and you are g

Mutual AffectionRomans 12:9-10 “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.”This was not the verse I thought I would be using today. I was planning on using the next two verses in this chapter. However, when I clicked on the whole chapter and read these two verses, the last part jumped out at me. Has that ever happened to you? When you are reading a verse, it just jumps off the page or sticks in your head. Honestly, it doesn’t happen that often to me. This is how I knew the Lord was trying to talk to me about this specific verse today.What stood out to me was where it says, “Love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.” I think this part jumped out at me because I have been really thinking a lot about how Tony and I interact, especially when other people are around. I have been noticing lately that he has changed. It used to be that the two of us were pretty sarcastic towards each other and would kinda give each other a hard time. We argued all the time. Sometimes, I think we argued just to argue because it was rarely over something important.I used to think that those who spent time with us must have wondered how long we would stay together. We love each other; I guess we just liked to argue, too. Anyway, lately, in the last several years, I have noticed that we don’t argue as much over silly things. I have also noticed that Tony has changed the way he talks about me to others as well. For the most part, when he talks about me to others, he is very kind and loving. I noticed when I went out with Tony and the people from his work a month or so ago I was still very sarcastic, and it did not come out very lovingly. The reason I am telling you all of this is because I doubt I am the only person who could speak nicer to my spouse or loved one. Maybe for you, it is not your spouse. Maybe you need to work on how you speak to your parents, your siblings, your co-workers, your children, or whoever it is in your life that you spend a lot of time with. The Lord has been putting this on my heart a lot lately, so I wanted to share it with you as well if you are struggling with this.Let’s look at this verse and see what the Lord is telling us. It begins, “Let love be genuine.” This is harder than it may seem. In order to let love be genuine, we have to be our true selves. This means not hiding behind any facade that we may have put up to protect ourselves. This means being the real you with those you love, including God. Why do we try to hide things from the Lord? He already knows everything about us and loves us anyway. People can’t genuinely love us if they don’t truly know us. Genuine love also means that we are honest and truthful.The verse goes on to say, “Hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good.” This can be really hard. The world teaches us to love sin. It teaches us that what we want is good and that we can have all that we want, even if it is not according to what God wants. The Bible tells us differently. the Lord says to “hate what is evil.” Do we do this? Do we hate sin? Do we hate the things that the Lord says are wrong, or do we just accept them as good because the world tells us that they are good?The verse says to hold fast to what is good. What is good? God is good. The things He tells us are good. Loving the Lord our God with our whole heart, mind, and soul is good. Loving our neighbor as ourselves is good. There is a lot of good in the world; we just need to look for it. We need not be seduced by the evil in the world, and we need to look past it to see all of the good.Next it says, “ love one another with mutual affection.”Are we doing this? I know I talked about this one a bit earlier. I also want to say that this is not just talking about your spouse. God wants us to love everyone with mutual affection. The second greatest commandment is to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Are we doing that? Are we loving our neighbor as we love ourselves?I think this commandment gets overlooked a lot. We love God, but we struggle to love Him with our whole hearts, minds, and souls. We also have to love our neighbor, but there are a lot of not nice people out there. How can God expect us to love them? Surely God doesn’t mean I have to love my co-worker who is always throwing me under the bus? Surely, God doesn’t mean I have to love my neighbor who is always stealing my paper and talking about me behind my back. Guess what? It says in Matthew 5:44, “ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” So, yes, God wants us to love everyone, even those we would consider our enemies. Can we love those we meet in life with mutual affection? Can we at least work on it? I am sure we all know a few people in our lives that we struggle to love. God is not asking for perfection. He is asking for progress. Can we at least try to be nicer to them even if we aren’t

The Fruits of the SpiritColossians 1:9-10 “For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God.”I was at a conference this weekend on Saturday, and the speaker, Walter Matthews, talked about this verse. He started with verse 10, “So that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God.” I like this verse as it talks about bearing fruit in every good work as you grow in the knowledge of God. However, I thought verse 9 was important as it says that they were praying they would all be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. I think this is the key to the verse 10. If we don’t have wisdom and knowledge, then I believe we will struggle to bear fruit with our work. Do you know what it means to bear fruit in your life or in your work? I am fairly new to this concept, so in case anyone else listening is like me, I will explain. Bearing fruit is another way to look at the outcome of the things you are doing. Are they good vs. bad? Are you getting good results at work? Do you feel good, do others around you feel good after interacting with you? What about at home? Are you happy with who you are at home? Are others happy with who you are at home? Is your home and your family growing in a positive way? These would all be good fruits.When we want to judge if something is truly from the Holy Spirit, we look for the fruits of the Spirit in our work. There are nine fruits of the Holy Spirit. These are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. My mom actually got me a box set of books that talked about each of these fruits of the Spirit. It was cool to read about them each in more depth. One day when I was talking to my spiritual director, actually the first day with this spiritual director, he said something that helped me realize I could use these fruits as a gauge to see how I was doing in life. I can’t remember what he even said, and yet I remember a lightbulb went off in my head.I am constantly wondering if what I am doing is pleasing the Lord. Am I getting this thing called life, right? Am I hearing what He is saying to me, and am I doing the things He is asking me to do? These are questions we should all ask ourselves from time to time. I tend to ask myself this often. After speaking with my spiritual advisor, I realized I could look at my life and see where the fruits of the Holy Spirit are showing up. For instance, where in my life can I see love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? If I am seeing the fruits of the Holy Spirit, then I am doing something right. When I look at my life, I do see the fruits of the Holy Spirit. The extent to which we see them in our lives can be an indication of how well we are doing walking with God if we have a lot of love in our lives, a lot of peace and joy, if we have a lot of patience in our lives, along with kindness and goodness. If we have faithfulness, gentleness & self-control, then we are probably doing pretty good. There are things that can also show us the areas we need to work on improving. For instance, lately, I have been struggling with self-control. I used to be doing pretty well, and now I struggle more with it.The fruits of the Spirit are not something that we can earn with our own efforts. The fruits of the Spirit increase when we live according to the Holy Spirit. The more we listen to the Holy Spirit, the more we do as we feel the Holy Spirit is leading us to do, and the more we will exhibit these fruits. So, what does this look like for us practically, that is the question I am wondering right now. How can we increase in these fruits of the Holy Spirit if it is not through our own efforts? First, we rely on the Holy Spirit more. We stop before we do something and ask the Holy Spirit if that is the path we are supposed to go down. Or we ask if there is a problem going down that path. Second, we remember we have the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of us, and it can give us courage and strength to do things we might not do otherwise. For instance, we might speak up against the injustice that we see a little more if we remember that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead lives inside of us.Another way to grow in the gifts of the Spirit is to help others. Jesus told us what we have done for others, you have done for me. In Matthew 25, Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Jesus wants us to help the poor, feed the hungry, and clothe the naked. If we want to grow in the gi

Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose three testimonies from the God Stories Category. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. 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 this testimony, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation, also. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your situation, He can help. I hope you enjoy these testimonies.Sarah-Jane: I’ve been going through many trails the past several months. I faced a breakdown in my marriage due to mental and financial abuse. I was depressed and life in general was getting a hold on me. I started to shut down and isolate from people and life. Best to do things on my own, or so I thought. But it didn’t work out great.I eventually shared my struggles with my close friends and family. They were the ones who cared for me and loved me. I was so ashamed and embarrassed of the situation that I was in.But I am fortunate to have a loving church community that has been on my journey with me. I have handed everything to God. I have forgiven people that have hurt me.I believe that since I’ve opened my heart more to God, He has filled me to overflowing with the Holy Spirit just at the times I needed it. Whether it was through a worship song, a sermon or a Bible verse. He has the spirit pour over me in the past few weeks. One day at church, we were invited to come to the front before the mercy seat, I couldn’t speak, but within seconds, I just lost it and was crying tears of joy and trembling with laughter.God has shown me so much mercy and grace and it is good to know that I’m never alone. I’m forever blessed to have such a loving God who has made me whole, and He has given me peace and comfort in my trials. If God wasn’t in my life, I don’t know where I’d be today. He has opened many closed doors. He provided a nice home and my children visit often. He has helped my anxiety and depression to be manageable. I am a much stronger woman and I’m grateful for God’s love.1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 – “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.”Jenelle: I had the next chemotherapy treatment today. It was number 4. I had a PET-CT scan last week which showed that the metastatic ovarian cancer has reduced in size, and nothing new has grown since the last scan in June. This is the 7th time I have had chemotherapy in 13 years. It has been quite a journey.Because of my experience I can speak with authority to others who are experiencing metastatic cancer and encourage them that God has not forgotten them, and that He always has a purpose for us.Kathie, a fellow traveler, needs prayer. She has metastatic bowel cancer and is questioning not only her doctors, but God. I keep encouraging her to trust God. I have told her that most people don’t consider what will happen when they die. I’ve sent her Bible verses to encourage her. We are the privileged ones because God has given us time.I’ve had 13 years to plan my funeral! This life is just the shadow. We look forward to the real world that will go on for eternity.For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain! For me, Kathie, and everyone who submits their lives to Jesus, cannot lose! It’s definitely a win-win situation! And I for one cannot wait to get to heaven!Jon- My name is Jon, and I want to tell you a story about how the Lord challenged me to trust Him during trials where I frankly thought it would be easier to just end my life. About 15-16 years ago, I blew out a disc in my lumbar spine. At the time, I had never experienced that type of pain, yet I didn’t know it that God was giving me a practice session for what was to come. I was treated and it got better but then it came back with a vengeance, and I was taking pain medication like they were Tic Tacs, just to stay functional.I ended up having surgery and praised the Lord when I woke up, because the pain was gone… Again, the Lord was just giving me a break, before the big game started.Six months later, I was diagnosed with severe Rheumatoid Arthritis. I was in a blue funk for a long time. RA is incurable. They don’t really know what causes it and all the different medications were only to prevent more damage from happening.But God… He used this time to take someone who really had little patience with people and change that. God made me thankful for the blessings that I

God Is In The Practical Things Too!James 1:5 “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.”I read this one and I really liked it because I think wisdom is something that we might not think to request from God. I think we all feel pretty comfortable praying to God when we are sick or when a loved one is sick. I don’t know if it is because we know God can heal people or if it is because we know there is nothing we can do and so we hope God can do something. I think we tend to go to God as a last resort. We try to solve things on our own, and then if we can’t, we turn to God. Why do we save him for last?God can do anything. He created this whole Universe; he can surely help us with whatever it is we need help with. Yet, we don’t always think to ask him unless it is something we know we can’t do ourselves, like healing a sickness. It’s interesting because when you have to rely on God for more, you see him more. My husband and my boys didn’t really see a lot of miracles from God when our kids were growing up. Luckily, my husband had a great job, and he is really good with money. We never really struggled with money, and my kids never lacked anything with regard to food, clothing, or a roof over their heads. We always had great medical insurance. We were blessed with being able to live in other countries and travel to see things. I am grateful that we didn’t have to struggle with those things. I am grateful, and yet, at times, I wish we did not have to struggle. I know that probably sounds strange, and I understand why it sounds strange. Why would anyone want to have to struggle? I don’t think I truly wanted to struggle; I did want the faith that comes with having to struggle, though. I wanted my kids to be able to see that God will always provide for us. I wanted them to know that God would always be there to take care of their needs. My parents struggled when I was growing up. I mean, they had 11 kids to take care of, and my dad had a great job, and yet money only goes so far. Imagine paying the mortgage, electric, and heating bills for a house that fits that many children. Imagine the food bill and then the clothing and the shoes. Think about how much it costs for you to have one child play a sport, do dancing or theatre, and then multiply that by 11. My parents sacrificed a lot to have all of us kids. There were months when they had to decide which bill they were going to pay and which one could wait until next month. My mom was constantly on the phone with the bill collectors, telling them she could send $5 a month or whatever it was she had. I know it was hard on them, and I don’t wish that on anyone. And yet, I do wish everyone could have the faith that they have that God would take care of what they need. They knew without a doubt that they could call on Him for big things and small things. They knew He would help with practical things, like food and a car, just as much as he would heal my sister of a mysterious illness. I know, and God knows, that I didn’t really want to experience the pain of not having enough, but I did want the faith that comes with it. I feel the Holy Spirit is pointing out to me that although I did not have to worry about resources like food, shelter, or clothing, I did have to struggle. My boys were pretty difficult at times and I did learn how to trust that God would be there in all the different ways. I had to trust that God would save my child from being hit by a car when he would run down the middle of the street. I had to trust that God would save my children from each other when they were at their worst. I had to learn to trust that God would not let my children take their own lives. I did have plenty of ways to build my trust, and you do, too.Maybe you don’t have such drastic things in your lives, but we are all struggling with something. What causes you the most struggles, and how can it help you trust God more? Has your faith grown because of those struggles? Can you look back at the past few years and see how God was there for you in the struggles? I can look back and see that God placed the perfect people in my life at each and every base where we were stationed. I was never alone. I may have felt alone in my house, but I always had really good friends who would listen to me, build me up, and support me. They would also take the boys when I needed a break, or they would take me away for the weekend, and Tony would keep the boys. God also provided me with a strong Catholic women’s group or the strength to start one if there wasn’t already one. If you are not part of a Christian woman’s group or men’s group, you should find one. I cannot tell you the strength you get from seeing others living their faith. It is incredible. God can use your struggles to help build your faith; you just have to let Him. If you look closely over your struggles, you will see Him there. You will see He has always

Be Not Afraid!Jeremiah 30:10 “‘So do not be afraid, Jacob my servant; do not be dismayed, Israel,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will surely save you out of a distant place, your descendants from the land of their exile. Jacob will again have peace and security, and no one will make him afraid.”This morning, when I read this verse, the words that jumped out at me were, “Do not be afraid.” The Lord is constantly telling us this, and yet it seems we can’t seem to help ourselves. I get it; there is a lot of scary stuff going on in the world right now. There are countries at war, with no end in sight. They just seem to be escalating. In America, we have an election coming up. It seems no matter what side you are on, Republican or Democrat, you are terrified that the other person will win, and if that happens, it is the end of the world as we know it.If we aren’t worried about politics, we are worried about something. There is so much that we tend to worry about. Many of us have children or marriages we worry about. Some don’t have children or a spouse, and they worry about that, and they worry if that will ever happen. Some worry about their jobs and whether they will lose their job or they worry about changes within their job. Others worry about growing older and all that entails. I know some people who are sick and are worried about what will happen. Will they get better? Will they die? Will they be sick for a long time? Can they handle all the pain and the not knowing how long it will last? As you can see, it seems like we have plenty to worry about.However, The Lord is constantly telling us not to be afraid. He tells us “Fear not” a lot in the Bible, and He also tells us almost every week in our Prayer Group. Here are some examples of what the Lord is telling us in our prayer group. These were all received in just one month, August of 2024.“My children, all I tell you to do know that you can. My spirit empowers you. It puts my words into your mouth so that you can reach the hearts of others. It's not you. It is my spirit empowering you to say what I wish you to say. Do not fear to go out, I keep telling you, fear not. My spirit is with you, and He will provide whatever you need to succeed. I am your God. I am all powerful. There is nothing that I cannot do. Trust in my word. Trust that what I say is true and go about your way and make me known, my children. How many times must I tell you, you can because I send you. You can because I am your God, and I provide the power; whatever you need, I provide. It is as simple as that, my children. Be not afraid to move and do what I tell you.”The very next week, We received the verse that I picked for today, and then we received the following words and scripture.“I just had a deep sense from the Lord that he's saying to us. Well, I guess what he's always said to us is that we have nothing to fear and that we need to put our hope in His word and what He has promised us. No one will put an end to us. He has come to save us. And He will save all of our offspring as well. He's going to call them back from their lands, and we need to keep that in the forefront of our thoughts and our thinking as we thank Him every day for what he's doing because He is the victor of the world.”Then some else said, “I just want to confirm all that's been said so far because I come up with three psalms and each one said the same thing that everyone has said in a different way.”Psalm 91:9-16 “Because you have the LORD for your refuge and have made the Most High your stronghold, No evil shall befall you, no affliction come near your tent. For he commands his angels with regard to you, to guard you wherever you go. With their hands they shall support you, lest you strike your foot against a stone. You can tread upon the asp and the viper, trample the lion and the dragon. Because he clings to me I will deliver him; because he knows my name I will set him on high. He will call upon me and I will answer; I will be with him in distress; I will deliver him and give him honor. With length of days I will satisfy him, and fill him with my saving power.”Then someone different received the word, “There is no fear. We live in fear. We allow fear to creep in. I hear the Lord saying, every time a negative thought, a fear creeps in, send it to the feet of Jesus. Do not allow it to consume you for one second, and when you've done that, call the Holy Spirit into your life to show you how to combat the enemy faster.”Then, another week in the same month, someone received this Word, “I hear your cries, my children. Come to me, come to me in your brokenness. Do not be afraid to come. I will help you. But in my time. Wait patiently, and I will show you a way out. Know that all is possible when you trust and believe. I am here. Do not doubt it. I do hear your cries. I do feel your pain. Continue to trust, continue to believe, and I will help you.”All of these Words from the Lord and the scripture verses were given in the sa

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

No More MasqueradeColossians 3:7-9 "That's how you once behaved, characterized by your evil deeds. But now it's time to eliminate them from your lives once and for all – anger, fits of rage, all forms of hatred, cursing, filthy speech, and lying. Lay aside your old Adam self with its masquerade and disguise.”There were two things I liked about these verses this morning. The first is that they tell us it is time to eliminate certain behaviors from our lives once and for all. These behaviors are anger, fits of rage, all forms of hatred, cursing, filthy speech, and lying. I was drawn to this because those are things I think we would all get rid of if we could. I don’t think any one of us likes being angry or having fits of rage. Many would love to give up hatred, cursing, filthy speech, and lying too. However, it is what we know. We might think it is who we are. If this is the case, then how do we give these things up? How do we stop doing something that we feel has become part of who we are?The first step in changing anything is acknowledging the need for change. If we don’t think anything needs to change, then nothing will change. Once you realize something needs to change, your brain will subconsciously start to think of ways it can help you change. However, that doesn’t mean you will implement these new changes immediately. It often takes us a while to make changes, especially if there are changes in things that we have done or have not done for a while. For instance, I know I need to work out every day. I want to work out, and yet I can’t seem to fit it into my schedule.It takes time to change things about ourselves. We can’t just stop doing the thing we want to change. We need to replace that behavior with another behavior. For instance, if we usually curse when we are mad, we will need to find something else to do instead. This will be much more effective than just trying to stop doing it altogether. My dad used to tell us this when we were younger. He would try to tell us that we should pick a replacement for the bad words we would get into trouble for saying. Then, when we would say the bad word, immediately after saying it, we would say the word we wanted to replace it with. This seemed to work for us, at least a little.How do we stop getting angry, though? How do we stop experiencing rage? I don’t think the people who experience them do it because they want to. I think the people want to act this way; they just can’t help it. I think the solution to this is to live more intentionally. We need to be proactive instead of reactive. We need to go through life deciding how we want to act instead of just reacting to everything that happens.My kids used to push my buttons like it was their job. They knew just what to say to make me yell or get really upset. I would get so mad and occasionally would say things I didn’t mean but felt like I couldn’t help it. However, I finally learned how to resist reacting negatively to their words or their actions that were meant to upset me. If I can do it, you can too. It was not easy, but it is doable! Which thing listed in this verse is something you need to stop doing?The second thing I liked about these verses is when they say, “Lay aside your old Adam self with its masquerade and disguise.” Adam and Eve brought sin into this world, and it was shared with all of us. However, Jesus brought that sin to the cross so that we could be a different person. Why are we still acting like our old selves, full of sin and shame? Also, why are we hiding ourselves? When I saw the last line in this verse today, it made me think of a song. I know you are not surprised, as I tend to always think of songs. However, there is a song that talks about how we are all masquerading and what if we just took our masks off. I believe that is what this verse is calling us to do.The song I thought of is called Cages by We the Kingdom. Here are the lyrics.What if I got real honest?What if I took a risk?What if I opened up my heartAnd let you see in?What if I took my mask off?Trying to fit inI don't wanna be a mannequinWhat if we took our masks off? What if we were just who God created us to be? What if we let go of all the anger, fits of rage, hatred, cursing, filthy speech, and lying? Why do we do those things anyway? Do we enjoy them, or is it so that we will fit in with those around us? Do we do it so we will feel normal?What if I let my guard down?What if I took a breath?What if I wasn't perfect?What if I was just a mess?What if I bled my soul outGivin' all I could give?What if we let our guard down? What if we weren’t always trying to be perfect? What if we just let the world see us for the mess that we really are? Would that really be so bad? Can you imagine how freeing it would be to just feel comfortable being yourself? That is what this verse is calling you to do. Stop pretending and just be you.I'm so tired of pretendingI'm comin' out of my cagesI'm steppin' down from my stagesI'm sick an

Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose four testimonies from the Addictions and Deliverance Category. Today's witnesses are about how people who were addicted to drugs and, through the intervention of God, their lives were changed. I know people who are really suffering right now because of drugs or addictions, and so I thought these witnesses might give all those affected by addiction some hope and encouragement. God is not done in your situation or your loved ones' situation. If it’s not good, God’s not done! 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 this testimony, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation, also. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your situation, He can help. I hope you enjoy these testimonies.First we have Jim: The story I have is 100% God!!! In the darkest days of my opiate addiction, I went to jail. Then, I received a three-year sentence. I had never been in trouble as a teenager or a young adult. At one point, I overdosed and if God had not put air in my lungs, I would have died. Nobody was around and nobody would have been there for days. God knows our hearts and I went to Greater Cleveland Teen Challenge and completed that phase. Then, I went on to Cape Girardeau Missouri where I completed an additional ten-month program. Jesus Christ set me free from the bondage of drugs and alcohol! Thank you, Lord, for your sovereignty and for calling me out of the darkness and into Your marvelous light!Next is Jane: God hears you when you cry out to Him, and I can tell you that it’s true! When I was deep in the trap of addiction to alcohol and cocaine, I would cry out to God in desperation to remove it from me because it was literally killing me. He heard my cries, and in perfect timing, through a car accident, He released me from my addiction! The night of the accident, I wasn’t under the influence of any substances, and the accident was caused by the other driver. We were both injured, but God took away my addiction that night and at that moment! It was a true miracle, and I hope that someone who has these struggles will be encouraged by my story. God is a way-maker, and He will remove your addictions if you keep crying out and believing in the power of Jesus! There have been many more miracles in my life, but I chose this one in hopes of helping a brother or sister in need!The third one there is a story of a girl whose family did not protect her. I grew up in an abusive home where I was sexually trafficked by my mother to other family members. I told my pastor, my teachers, doctors, and nurses. No one did anything. So I grew to believe that I was unworthy, unlovable, and useless unless the person had an ulterior motive. I became seriously depressed to the point that I was diagnosed with medically-resistant depression. I was suicidal and thought of ways to kill myself daily. I sought counseling but it always failed to benefit me. I attended a depression and anxiety recovery program in November 2018. I had a gun in one hand and pills in the other and told God if He didn’t get me in the program that I was done. I met a man named Paul with a ministry called “Straight 2 the Heart” who taught me about Jesus’s suffering and being tempted with my negative thoughts. In the prayer process, receivers listen for God’s still small voice and encouragement. So often that encouragement has come in Matthew West’s songs as God reminds me of my identity and value. I’ve been sober and off of narcotic prescriptions and hard liquor for just over 2 years. Thank you for letting me share.Last but not least we have Karryn: I grew up in a good family, but I’d never felt loved. I didn’t know why. I was also a very good liar since I was young, and I never understood why about that either. I have been listening to Matthew West’s music since the first time I went into rehab in 2015. That was the first time I was introduced to Christianity. I was a bad methamphetamine addict. After rehab, I had my ups and downs. I had two beautiful sons, Jaz and Lucas, but I never put them first. In 2019, I went back into rehab, a Christ centered facility. But, I ended up leaving to be with my boyfriend, Dallas, whom I really loved. He was about 700 miles away from me. I got pregnant soon after we reunited, but we continued to use drugs. We lost everything. We were living in a tent, and were hurt both physically and mentally by the people in that scene.

How Fleeting Life IsPsalm 39: 4-6 ““LORD, make me to know my end, And what is the measure of my days, That I may know how frail I am. Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths, And my age is as nothing before You; Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor.” Selah “Surely every man walks about like a shadow; Surely they busy themselves in vain; He heaps up riches, And does not know who will gather them.””This was a verse that was received during my prayer group last week. I wanted to get a deeper understanding of what the verses meant, so I went online to the Enduring Word Bible Commentary that I learned about not that long ago. I believe it is a minister who has compiled a commentary on the different books of the Bible. He helps to explain it so we can all understand what is being said in a little more detail. Sometimes it is nice to know what certain things meant back in the time when they were written. Yes, the Bible is a living Word that is just as true today as it was the day it was written.However, sometimes it is nice to be able to understand why they chose to use certain words or if those words had a different meaning back when the Bible was written. Also, the Bible was not originally written in English, so sometimes the word that was used in the Greek or Hebrew edition is not an exact translation into English, and I love to hear what the word they actually used meant and how it is different than the English word. This stuff is discovered by theologians who study scripture and the ancient times and fill us in on all that they learn. I love learning more in-depth explanations of what the Scripture is really telling us. Today I will share with you the explanation I found on the enduring Word Commentary website as I think He explained it very well.First, it says, LORD, make me know my end: David’s silence was broken in the best way – by humble prayer to God. He would not speak his fears and doubts before the wicked, but he would pour them out before His God. Here, David asked God for wisdom – specifically, the wisdom to know the shortness and the frailty of his life (that I may know how frail I am).We might have expected David to break his silence by telling off his enemies or by defending his own righteousness. He did neither; he sought God for wisdom. “It is well that the vent of his soul was Godward and not towards man. Oh! if my swelling heart must speak, Lord let it speak with thee.” (Spurgeon)Next it says, Make me to know my end: “This was not a prayer inspired by a desire to know when life would end; it was not a request to be told the date of death. It was a prayer for an accurate apprehension of the fact that life quantitatively – that is, as to the number of its days – is as nothing.” (Morgan)Then, You have made my days as handbreadths: “He compares it to a ‘handbreadth,’ one of the smallest units of measurement in ancient Israel. It is equivalent to a couple of inches.’” (VanGemeren)“Life is very short, but a great deal may be done. Our Lord Jesus Christ, in three years, saved the world. Some of his followers in three years have been the means of saving many and many a soul.” (Spurgeon)Next, Certainly, every man in his best state is but a vapor: David was a champion, an accomplished Special Forces warrior, a leader, a celebrity, a skilled poet, a musical genius, a survivor, and a king. If anyone might have thought more highly of himself, David had the right to. Yet he understood that he, like every man, is – at his best state – merely a vapor, a puff of steam or smoke.“He learns that, since life is short, the only real meaning of a man or woman’s existence must be in his relationship to God, for God is eternal.” (Boice)Next, the word Selah: The idea in Hebrew for this word (occurring 74 times in the Old Testament) is for a pause. Most people think it speaks of a reflective pause, a pause to meditate on the words just spoken. It may also be a musical instruction for a musical interlude of some kind.This Selah is an appropriate call for each one to pause and think of the shortness and frailty of his life. It should drive us to great dependence upon God and great earnestness about life and doing good in the short time we do have.It goes on to say, Surely they busy themselves in vain. Sounding very much like the later Book of Ecclesiastes, David thought about the mass of humanity who lived, ignoring the shortness and frailty of life.· Each of them walks about, but like a shadow, living a life with no substance.· They are busy but in vain, being blind to eternal things.· Each of them works hard and heaps up riches, yet does not think beyond his own short and frail life.This is the land of shadows. Heaven is the land of reality, of true high definition.“Every man that exists is vanity. All his projects, plans, schemes, etc., soon come to nothing. His body also molders with the dust, and shortly passes both from the sight and remembrance of men.” (Clarke)I know today was a bit more tech

Keep A Tight Rein on Your TongueJames 1:26-27 “Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”There were two things that really stood out to me in this morning’s verses. The first one is when it says, “Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless.” I think we all know people who claim to be religious and yet say all sorts of unkind things about other people. Sometimes, I don’t think they even know what they are saying is wrong.They may think they are just saying things that are true, so it is not a big deal. However, sometimes that is gossiping about others. We need to stop and ask ourselves, does this person need to know this thing about the other person? Why am I telling them them? Is it so they know this person a bit better? Is it because I don’t agree with it, and I want others to reassure me that I am right and this other person is wrong? Am I just talking about this other person because it makes me seem like I know things others do not know?We might get caught up in gossip not because we want to but because everyone around us is gossiping, and we don’t know how to avoid it. I have been in this situation before where those around me were talking about someone, and I didn’t want to participate, and yet I also felt like I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t want to seem like I thought I was better than anyone else, and I didn’t want to speak up and then make them feel judged. However, what I am realizing right now is that it is more important for me to think about how God is thinking about me than it is about those who are around me. Also, I am doing them a disservice if I don’t speak up, as God is not happy when we gossip. If we love our friends and family, we should do all we can to get them into heaven. This means if we see that they are gossiping, we can let them know that we don’t want to participate and that God doesn’t want us to gossip.I do think how we tell them this is important. I think whenever we see something, and we feel called to speak up, we must always speak up out of love and genuine concern for their soul. We should speak with nothing but love in our voices. We shouldn’t be filled with judgment or condemnation. When Jesus was here on Earth, He saw all sorts of wicked things, and yet he didn’t condemn people; he convicted them, and many of them changed their ways. He did not talk down to them, although He could have because he was fully God and fully human. He did not make them feel bad about what they were doing. He made them feel loved. Jesus loved them completely just as they were, and that was something people had never felt before. They did not change because He yelled at them and told them what they were doing was wrong. They did not change because of his judgment or condemnation. They changed because of His love for them. Those around you deserve the same. They need your unconditional love for where they are right now, and then they will begin to move towards where the Lord wants them to be!The second thing that stood out to me in this verse is the last line. “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” I love this because it reminds us that religion is not just a set of beliefs. It is a way of life. It is not just a set of words and prayers, but it is action as well. We can’t just talk a good game and not live it out. We can’t talk about how important it is to take care of those who don’t have anything and yet do nothing to help those in need.The verse says, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by this world.” We have to take care of the orphans and the widows in distress. What does this mean? Does this mean if we see a homeless kid on the street we need to pick him or her up and take them home? No, but it does mean we should do something, not just walk buy and pretend we don’t see them. That seems to be what most of us do. It is too hard to look at them. We don’t have to give them money because we heard that is bad because they will just use it for drugs. So, we don’t know how to help them, and so we ignore them and pretend we don’t see them. This hurts them. Have you ever had someone walk right by you and pretend not to see you? It is not a good feeling.There are plenty of ways we can help those in need. We can physically go out and help them. For instance, I have a few friends who go out to the streets and talk with the homeless. They learn their names, spend time with the

The Lord Is My RefugePsalm 91:9-13 “Because you have made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent. For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone. You will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot.”These verses were given at one of our evening prayer group meetings last month. When I saw it in my notes and looked it up this morning, I thought it was a great verse to talk about today. The first line is great. “Because we have made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent.” This is amazing. Yet it also makes me wonder, have I made the Lord my refuge? I feel like I have had evil befall me, so what does that mean? Does that mean that I haven’t made the Lord my refuge?I think when we read certain passages in the Bible, we can wonder things like this. This is why it is super important not to take verses out of context. It is also important to look at everything the Bible says as a whole when trying to understand scripture. Psalm 91 speaks about God's protection, but it doesn't suggest that believers will never face hardship or experience evil. Instead, it emphasizes God's presence, care, and protection in the midst of difficulties. Verses like Psalm 91:2-3 declare:"I will say of the Lord, 'He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.' Surely he will save you from the fowler's snare and from the deadly pestilence."However, this protection doesn’t mean that nothing bad will ever happen. Instead, it points to God being a refuge during difficult times and offering ultimate protection, even when facing dangers or evil. The psalm uses symbolic language to show how God can shelter and protect from harm, but that doesn't imply that no adversity will ever come into a believer's life. In fact, other parts of Scripture acknowledge that faithful people can suffer (e.g., Job, Jesus' teachings, and the Psalms of lament).Psalm 91 reminds believers that even when evil befalls them, God is their refuge, and they can trust in Him for strength, comfort, and, ultimately, deliverance. It also speaks of spiritual protection—preserving the believer's soul, even when physical or material harm occurs. Therefore, facing adversity doesn't mean God is not your refuge, but rather it may be a time to deepen your trust in Him.Next, the verse says, “For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands, they will bear you up so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.” Can you even believe that God commands his angels to guard us in all our ways? I have heard many stories of when people have been saved by angels. One of them was from someone in my prayer group. She was out driving her school bus in a snowstorm when her windshield wiper stopped working. She pulled over to the side of the road. She didn’t have any kids on the bus because she was about to park the bus for the night at the bus lot. She didn’t know what she was going to do because she couldn’t drive without windshield wipers, and the snow was really coming down. She prayed for the Lord to help her.Right after she finished praying, she saw lights in her rearview mirror. Another bus had pulled in behind her. The driver got out and fixed her windshield wipers. They both got back on their way. When my friend got to the lot to park the bus, she asked them who the driver was and who stopped and helped her. They said there were no other drivers. She was the only one still out. She said she knew it was an angel that helped her. Here are a few that I found online:A young woman was saved from a home invasion when something prevented the attacker's hands from touching her. A hospice social worker was able to avoid a large van with a metal ladder on top after hearing a voice say, "Both hands on the wheel." A mother was praying in her room when she read a verse that said, "And the Lord will provide your wages." A young lady knocked on the door and handed her an envelope containing a good amount of cash. A couple were about to miss their flight to Bermuda when an attendant found a packet of landing papers on the counter. The attendant called the plane back to the gate, and the couple was able to board. A man on a bicycle almost hit someone walking down a hill in Jerusalem, but his bike seemed to hit an invisible wall, and he fell over. I think sometimes we think our problems are too practical for God. We don’t ask for things because we can’t see a way that He could help us. We think He is up in heaven, and sure, He can orchestrate big things to happen, but He can’t really help me with my practical problem of needing $50 right now so I can pay my bill. I believe He can help me find a job, but how is He able to make sure my car

Today, I want to tell you about the retreat I had a few weekends ago. I felt like I would have more people at this retreat than last year. I did have many more people I invited who said they were interested in coming. However, most said they wanted to go but could not make it for the weekend that I booked the retreat house. Three weeks before the retreat, I asked the retreat director, Nancy, a question, and at that time, I only had four people signed up. She told me that she could not pay her staff to come in for just four people. I totally understood this and yet was devastated that I may have to cancel the retreat.Nancy was super sweet and said that I could still use the retreat house to have the retreat, I would just need to provide the food. She said she would reduce the amount of money that I needed to pay to use the retreat house and that she and her husband would take care of reheating the food, picking up takeout, or helping with whatever we decided to do for food for the weekend. She said she didn’t want me to have to cancel on those who had already signed up. I prayed about it and felt like the Lord still wanted me to have the retreat, even if it was just for four people.Over the course of the next few weeks, I had four more people sign up, so we were up to 8. Then, two of them had things come up, and they were unable to come. We were down to 6, but with me, that was seven, and I thought that was an ok number. I had wanted more to come, but I understood that people had things going on that weekend. About a week before the retreat, I talked with a friend of mine, and she said she was able to come. This brought us up to 8, including myself. I thought that was a pretty good number. Then, the Wednesday before, another friend asked if she could come. She said she didn’t originally sign up because she needed to cover for someone at church, but that person came home from her trip early, and she was free to come. Then, on Friday morning, another friend called up and asked if it was too late for her to come. She really needed a retreat weekend and was wondering if she could come. I checked with the retreat house, and Nancy said it was not a problem. So, the final count was 10 of us at the retreat. I thought this number was small, but those in attendance were happy that there weren’t too many people because it meant they didn’t have to be nervous spending the weekend with 40 other women that they didn’t know. They all got to know each other pretty well. By the end of the weekend, they were hugging each other, exchanging numbers and Facebook profiles, and promising to keep in touch. It was such a great weekend, and it was really great to see the beginning of what I know will be some amazing friendships. I think that is part of the magic of retreat. There are so many nice parts about the retreat: the talks, the activities, and the food, but one of the best is the fellowship with others going through the same kind of stuff. We may not all be going through the exact same stuff, but we are all going through stuff, and to get the opportunity to spend a weekend with other people who are going through stuff and who also love Jesus is a great thing!Remember above when I said Nancy said I could still use the retreat house, but I would need to provide the food? I was trying to think of what I should do for food. I thought maybe I could do takeout, like pizza and pasta, or maybe grinders. However, now there were ten people, and takeout would get expensive. And what would I order that everyone would like? I decided it would be good to do casseroles. This way, I could make them ahead of time throughout the week, and it wouldn’t be a lot of work for Nancy and her husband. They could just put them in the oven to reheat them.I spoke with my sister Liz, who is a master party planner. Well, her day job is as a counselor, but her passion is party planning, and she is so good at it. She also loves meal planning and meal prep. She said she could come over the weekend before, and we could make stuff and freeze it. She and another sister, Dee, came over the Sunday before, and we made four quiche, two nondairy egg casseroles, beef stew, chicken noodle soup, and two ranch chicken and potato casseroles. It was amazing because it only took a few hours, and yet we had both days of breakfast taken care of; we had one dinner and one lunch taken care of. I had decided the other dinner would be a chicken and stuffing casserole that I couldn’t make in advance because it is not great to freeze stovetop stuffing. I was also going to cook up some hamburger meat for the second lunch so we could have tacos. What seemed like it was going to be really difficult turned out to be really easy, and everyone ended up really happy with the food.When it finally came time for the actual retreat, it was amazing! Everyone hit a lot of traffic, so we started late, and yet no one seemed to mind. We started with introductions, and then we ate dinner together.

Consider Life's Challenges A GiftJames 1:2-4 “Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.”I love how God works. Sometimes, I just laugh at how he orchestrates everything and how He just knows what we need to hear. It’s like He keeps telling you something in a bunch of different ways until we get it. If you have been listening to this podcast for any amount of time, you probably know how much I love talking about healing. I love praying for people for healing. I believe with my whole being that God can heal everyone, and I will pray with anyone who will let me for God to heal them. As you can probably imagine, not everyone I pray with for healing is healed. This confuses me as I don’t understand why this is.I know that God’s ways are higher than our ways and that God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts. I know that God knows infinitely more than we do and that He sees the whole picture when we only see a tiny part of the picture. I know that He knows the future and that He knows what He is doing. I know all of this, and yet I still don’t understand why some people have healed on this side of heaven and some are not. I don’t understand why some people are healed instantly and some take months or years. God and I chat about this often, and He keeps trying to explain it to me, and I don’t seem to be getting it.This month’s theme is the dark night of the soul. If you are unfamiliar with this, the "Dark Night of the Soul" refers to a spiritual crisis or period of deep inner struggle and desolation, where a person feels distant from God or disconnected from their sense of purpose and meaning. It often involves intense feelings of doubt, confusion, and loss but is ultimately seen as a necessary stage in spiritual growth or transformation. The term originates from the writings of the 16th-century mystic St. John of the Cross, who described it as a painful yet purifying experience that leads to a closer union with God. I had heard of this before. However, I did not know much about it. However, this is what a few people in mentoring wanted me to cover, so I did some research and learned a lot about it.Yesterday, I decided to get an audiobook by Thomas Moore called, “Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life’s Ordeals.”In this book, Thomas Moore talks about how we are always trying to end difficult times quickly. If we are sick, we want to be healed immediately. If we are struggling emotionally, we want the struggle to end quickly. If we are uncomfortable in any way, we want to do whatever we need to do to get comfortable as quickly as we can. Thomas said in his book that we are doing ourselves a disservice when we do this. Instead of trying to escape our misery, what if we approached it with curiosity? What if we tried to understand it and what it was trying to teach us? This seemed to stand out to me because I was just talking to a friend the other day about how I just wanted her trouble to end. She was saying that she could see how she would be so much stronger when she was on the other side of this, and I was just thinking, God, can you stop these bad dreams now? Why wait, why keep struggling?Now, to be clear, although God could stop these bad dreams now, He hasn’t chosen to do so. It is not as if she hasn’t prayed for them to stop. It’s not as if plenty of people haven’t prayed for them to stop. So, it got me thinking maybe Thomas Moore is on to something here. Maybe I am just in a rush to have God heal these people because then they will be more comfortable or out of pain or misery, and yet God knows that the uncomfortable feelings that they feel now are nothing compared to the glory they will feel if they just hold out a little longer.I have been talking to the Lord for a long time now to try to understand why He does what He does, especially with regard to healing. When I heard this explanation from Thomas Moore, I felt like the Lord was talking directly to me. Then I went to a meeting at Encounter last night where about 16 of my graduating class got together. We try to do this once a month. The topic for last night was a renewal of the mind. We all asked Jesus to show us one place where He would like to renew our minds. This is what I felt like I heard the Lord say, “I would like to renew your mind around healing. Not every person needs to be healed. Sometimes, I do work within the illness I will highlight those I want to be prayed over.” Next, I asked Jesus how He wanted me to think about this mindset. This is what I thought I heard, “I want you to think like I do I want you to know I have my own ways of thinking and reasons for healing that have nothing to do with your ability to pray over people. You are not

Set Your Minds On Things AboveColossians 3:1-3 “So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”When I read this verse this morning, what stood out to me was when it said, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” This seemed to jump off the page for me. I think the reason for this is because Tony and I have been watching a new series lately. Well, it is actually an old series, but we just started watching it together recently. It is called The Mentalist. It is a really good show that we both really like. The problem with me getting involved in watching a series that I really like is that is all I want to do. I just want to watch the show all the time. However, that isn’t good when I have a job and a house to take care of. Tony and I did a good job of getting out of the house and doing yard work on Saturday. But then we were exhausted and watched about 4 hours of TV after that.I don’t think watching TV is bad.I think we could all use a break from life at times to just sit and watch something that takes our mind off of life. However, I wish TV was like it was back in the old days when you could watch one episode a week and then you had to wait a week for the next episode. I feel like that lends to moderation much better than streaming does. If you are streaming a show, it is so easy to get addicted and just watch that show and do nothing else for a week or longer. This last time I got COVID, I was stuck in my room for more than a week just to make sure I didn’t get the rest of the family sick. Tony was super sweet and made all the meals and took care of driving the boys to wherever they had to goThe first few days, I was pretty sick, and I had to sleep a lot. I was able to watch some TV, but mostly, I needed to sleep. However, once the first few days passed, I felt better, and I could have used that time in quarantine to get a lot of work done on my book or on something else. I could have cleaned the attic, which always seems to need cleaning. However, I just watched TV the whole time.I had gone to visit my brother in FL a few weeks earlier, and he and his wife were watching a TV show that looked really good. I thought it was just a few seasons, and I thought it had about 10-12 episodes a season. However, I was wrong. It has six seasons, with most seasons having 20-22 episodes. Each episode is 45 min long. Once I get started in a show, I get so involved all I want to do is watch the show. So, instead of doing something productive while I was sick, I just watched TV from when I woke up to way after I should have been asleep.I say all of this to explain why I think the words “Set your mind on things that are above” jumped off the page at me. Although I don’t think there is anything wrong with watching TV in moderation, I do feel binge-watching TV for hours upon hours is not good for us. Also, I think what we watch is important too. For instance, if I was binge-watching The Chosen or some TV show/movie about the Saints, then I think it would be better because it would help me grow closer to the Lord. Tony and I went to see the first few episodes of The Chosen, season 4, in the movie theater. We both really enjoyed it and yet we have yet to finish watching Season 4 because we are busy watching other things. Things that are not helping bring us closer to the Lord.There was a time several years ago when I was very disciplined. I made up my mind on something, and I would follow through. I seem to struggle with that these days. However, back then, I had decided I was watching too much TV, and it wasn’t helping me to be the person I wanted to be. The person God wanted me to be. So I decided I wouldn't watch TV or movies unless it was helping me grow closer to the Lord or unless it was spending time with my family.This was hard for me as our family was going through some very hard times and there were lots of times when I wanted to escape life and just veg in front of the TV. However, I had made a promise to myself that I wasn’t going to do this. I started watching movies, or episodes on the streaming platform called “Formed.” It is like Netflix, but it only has religious movies or shows. A lot of parishes will purchase a subscription for their whole parish so that all the parishioners can get a code and use it for free. I listened to some great audio teachings, and I watched some great movies about the Saints. It was a really good use of my time and it helped me grow closer to the Lord.What is the thing that is keeping you away from the Lord? Or, maybe it’s not keeping you away from Him, but it is keeping you from being as close as you could be to Him. Is it keeping busy, filling your schedule with so much stuff that you don’t have time to spend with the Lord? Is it Facebook o

My Help Comes From The Lord!Psalm 121:1-2 “I lift up my eyes to the hills—from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”I was going to do another part of this verse this morning, and then the song The Lord woke me up happened to be all about the beginning part of this verse. I will cover the other verse in a later episode. I really like this song because it reminds us of where our true strength comes from. It reminds us that no matter the situation we are in, our Lord is there, and He is looking out for us. We can often look to the world for the answer to our problems. We can look to the world for strength, and yet that is not where our strength is found. It says in Philippians 4:7, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” The Lord is where our strength comes from, not anything of this world. This is what the song reminds us. The song is called “Shoulders” by For King and Country.It begins by saying:… I look up to the mountainsDoes my strength come from the mountains?No, my strength comes from GodWho made heaven and earth, and the mountainsThis reminds us that our strength doesn’t come from the mountains it comes from the one that made the mountains. The one who made heaven and earth. Our strength comes from God, who is always there for us. He created everything, including us, and He is always with us.Next the song says:… When confusion's my companionAnd despair holds me for ransomI will feel no fearI know that You are nearGod is always near us. The enemy likes to use tactics like confusion on us because it can get us thinking about everything else other than God. He likes to get us focused on specifics and lost in all the weeds instead of focusing on what is most important. Which is that the Lord loves us and just wants us to love Him back. How we love Him can be different for each one of us. The enemy wants to get us confused and focused on all the wrong things. I like how the verse says, “And despair holds me for ransom.” Isn’t that a great visual of how despair works? When you feel despair, you feel hopeless. You feel like nothing will ever change, and you feel like you are held hostage by your feelings and your thoughts. However, you aren’t hostage. That is a trick from the enemy. The Lord wants you to be free. We don’t need to fear. We just need to remember that the Lord is always near us and that He is where our strength comes from. Whenever we are struggling, we can turn our eyes to the Lord and He will give us the strength that we need.The song goes on to say:… When I'm caught deep in the valleyWith chaos for my companyI'll find my comfort here'Cause I know that You are nearHow many of us have been caught deep in the valley? It wasn’t one we thought we would be in, it just kind of snuck up on us. I think we have all been in a valley at one time or another. Some valleys might be deeper than others, but we have all been in a valley. When we were in that valley, we had chaos for our companion. We were so confused because we knew God, we loved God, and yet we were in this valley and didn’t understand how we were there if we knew God.If you are in a valley right now, I want you to know that God is right there with you in this valley. I am not sure why He is allowing you to go through this valley, but I do know you are not alone in the valley. I know you may feel alone; that is what the enemy wants you to think, but you are never alone. God is walking right there by your side. In the chaos and the confusion of the enemy, you may not see or hear God, just know that He is there. Reach out to Him and talk with Him. I guarantee He is there with you! You are never alone! Not even for a second.Next the song says:… My help comes from YouYou're right here, pulling me throughYou carry my weakness, my sickness, my brokennessAll on Your shouldersYour shouldersThis reminds us that God is our help. He is the one who is right there by our side, pulling us through when we don’t think we can make it another day. Have you ever made it through something and wondered how you made it through? It was because God was pulling you through. He was making sure that the thing He was allowing to happen did not swallow you up and take you out. He knew you needed to go through it, but not so you could get lost in it or be defeated by it.It says, “You carry my weakness, my sickness, my brokenness all on your shoulders.” God does this for us. He doesn’t make us carry it alone. He takes our problems, our illness, and our brokenness and carries it on His shoulders to make our burdens a bit lighter. If you haven’t invited God into your current situation can I invite you to do so right now. You will be surprised how much lighter your burdens feel when you invite the Lord in to help you carry them.… My help comes from YouYou are my rest, my rescueI don't have to see to believe thatYou're lifting me up on Your shouldersYour shouldersAgain, this is reminding us that God is our rest and o

Be Strong & Courageous, for the Lord is With YouJoshua 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, there is a new page with a new picture. The photos are of amazing scenery worldwide, and each day has a different Bible verse on it. 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 going on in the world right now, both in our own families and our own houses and in 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 who is living in her car right now and is tired of not having a safe place to sleep at night. I know someone else who is scared all the time, and she is not sure why. As you can see, there are a lot of 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 that He will take care of all things. 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 we 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 was, 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 just need to 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 there next to 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 so 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 she 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 ally that same night. She went to the police station to help ID the man

Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose a recorded testimony from the God Stories Category. Today's witness is about how two people met on an airplane and their lives were changed forever. God is so good when he orchestrates meet ups like this. 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 this testimony, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation also. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your situation, He can help. I hope you enjoy this 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" 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

Wisdom for Beginners (Part 5)Sirach 2:10-11 “Consider the generations of old and see: has anyone trusted in the Lord and been disappointed? Or has anyone persevered in the fear of the Lord and been forsaken? Or has anyone called upon him and been neglected? For the Lord is compassionate and merciful; he forgives sins and saves in time of distress.”This is the last verse in the section called Wisdom for Beginners. I think that it is fitting that it reminds us of how faithful our Lord has been. It begins with “Consider the generations of old and see: has anyone trusted in the Lord and been disappointed?” This is such a great thing to get in the habit of doing. When we are worried, stressed, or think the Lord has abandoned us, we can look back at our own lives and those who came before us and see if the Lord ever abandoned them. Has He ever abandoned us in the past?Has there been a time when we trusted in the Lord and He let us down or disappointed us? Has there been a time when we trusted in the Lord and yet after we did we realized that we shouldn’t have put our trust in Him? Romans 10:11 says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” You can trust in the Lord. You can believe His promises. You can trust that He will always be there for you.Next, it says, “Or has anyone persevered in the fear of the Lord and been forsaken?” We just talked about fear of the Lord the other day and how that doesn’t mean that we are afraid of the Lord; it means that we look up to the Lord with awe and reverence. It says in Psalm 111:10: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” It also says in Proverbs 14:26-27: "He who fears the Lord has a secure fortress, and for his children it will be a refuge.” When we have fear of the Lord, we are protected by Him. He is not only looking out for us, but He is looking out for our families as well. Our faithfulness and fear of the Lord will bear fruit for many generations.Next, it says, “Has anyone called upon Him and been neglected?” What about this one? Have you ever called out to the Lord, and He just ignored you? Have you ever needed Him, and He left you abandoned? The Lord does not do that. When we call out, He comes running. He sends His angels to fly to us at light speed. He does not leave us out in the cold. He does not hear us call out to Him and yet ignores us because He has more important things to do. God has nothing more important to do than to come when you call.I want to take a minute to talk about something because we must realize this. God is not limited by the same constraints of time as we are. I have been talking with someone recently who doesn’t ever want me to pray over him for healing. I was saying that I didn’t think this person believed that they could be healed by someone praying over them. They said that wasn’t true. They said it was just that they didn’t feel worthy and that God had other more important people to heal.I understand what this person was saying, and if this is what you are thinking too, then I want you to hear me when I say, “God has nothing more important to do than to heal you, or be with you, or answer your prayers.” God can be with each one of us fully and completely, and it won’t take away from anyone else. I first realized this when I heard a priest tell a story at a retreat one time. He said he was at a football game, and someone took a photo of him saying the rosary at a football game. The caption for the photo was something like, “Father is praying for the football game when there are bigger things we need to pray for, like people dying of cancer.”The priest said that if we think our God can’t be there at the football game and healing people with cancer at the same time, then our view of God is too small. When we limit God like this, we are putting Him in a box and saying that we don’t believe He is all-powerful. Either He is omnipotent and omnipresent, or He isn’t. An omnipresent god is a god with the ability to be everywhere all at once. If we believe that God is omnipresent, then He can be everywhere all at the same time. He can be healing you or answering your prayers wherever you are located, and He can be on all the other continents, healing people and answering your prayers, too! An omniscient God is a God who knows everything. Such a God would have the power to know the future, the present, and the past. God knows what you are going through, He knows what you have been through, and He knows what you are going to face in the future. God knows everything about you. An omnipotent God is a God with unlimited power. This means God has the power to heal you and everyone else that needs to be healed. It means that healing you doesn’t take away from anyone else’s healing.I think it is so important to understand this because we might think we are being humble by not asking God for healing. We think we are being selfless and giving up our healing so that someone else who needs healing can get it. However, what we are actuall

God’s Foolishness Is Wiser Than Human Wisdom1 Corinthians 1:25 “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”When I read this verse this morning I thought it was very interesting and so very true. It is something I don’t thing we often think about. It is one of those things that when you hear it, you know it is true, but it might never have occurred to you. I think it is pretty obvious that God is wiser than we are and we know he is stronger than us. It would not be hard to find evidence to support this and yet I still don’t know if I would have thought of it like this before. His foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and his weakness is stronger than human strength. When I find a verse to use, I try to look at the verses around it to get the context and too see what else God wants to tell us. The verses right after this one are pretty good too. 1 Corinthians 1:26-31 says, “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” One of my favorite verses/sayings is that God’s ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts greater than our thoughts. God does not think like we do and He does not do the things that we would do. If we really need a prayer answered, or a healing to occur, who do we tend to ask first? I tend to ask my dad first, as I know he prays a lot and I feel his prayers are answered quickly. I also tend to ask the ladies in my prayer group because again, I feel their prayers are heard. Many would go to a priest first. We tend to go to the people that we think are “holier” than we are. When someone needs a healing, they tend to want a priest to pray over them as they are very “holy.” We want the best of the best as we know the stakes are high for some of our prayers. What I felt the holy Spirit tell me when I began this verse is that is not how the Lord thinks. Jesus did not come to earth and ask all the teachers, or the priests at the time to be his apostles. He was not looking for the best and the brightest. He came and called many who were considered foolish, outcasts, or weak to the rest of the world. Some of us may feel we have a calling and then we start to think about all the ways we aren’t good enough to answer that call. We aren’t smart enough, we aren’t strong enough, we aren’t old enough, we aren’t young enough, we aren’t holy enough and so on. We list all the reasons why we can’t do the thing that God is calling us to do. Did you hear that last part, the thing God is calling you too. Why do we question our call when God is the one doing the calling? Don’t we know He is smarter than we are? If he says we are good enough, then we are good enough. If He says we aren’t too young, too old, to foolish, to sinful, then we aren’t. It’s crazy how if you asked us if God was wiser than we were we would say yes without any hesitation. Yet, when we question our worthiness of the call He has given us we are saying the exact opposite. We are saying that He must be wrong and that we know better than He does. When we start to question our calling and when we start to think of all the ways we are not enough, we should stop and think about all those that came before us. Were they the smartest people around? Were they the most holiest people around? Were they the ones you would have chosen? St. Catherine of Sienna is a doctor of the church and yet when she was a child she had great difficulty learning to read and did not learn to write until she was an adult. There were plenty of religious leaders at the time that Jesus came and yet He did not call the religious leaders to be his disciples, he called every day normal people like you and me. He also called people like Matthew, who was a tax collector. That is not someone any of the other apostles would have chosen. God knows what He is doing. He has placed a call on each and every one of us and it is a call He chose specifically for us. It is perfectly suited for our strengths and weaknesses. He knows us better than we know ourselves. Trust in Him and his ability to know you and what you can and can’t do.Right at the beginning of writing this episode I felt like the Holy Spirit was telling me that this is a two way street. He wants us to believe in our calling and also to believe in other’s calling as well. The same things I just said about your calling apply to others as well. Trust in the Lord’s ability to call others as

Truth, Wisdom, Instruction & UnderstandingProverbs 23:23 “Buy truth, and do not sell it; buy wisdom, instruction, and understanding.”Well, this is an interesting verse. I wonder how we would sell truth? I wonder why God needs to tell us to buy truth and do not sell it? Then He also says to buy wisdom, instruction and understanding. I was stumped on what this verse meant or what God was trying to tell us with this verse. However, when it is put into context of our prayer group it makes a little more sense to me. During prayer group the leader talked about how sometimes we think about all that we are lacking and we may even ask God what it is that we lack. This is because we are looking to ourselves to gain eternal life. We are looking to see what it is that we can do to get ourselves into heaven. The leader talked about how we need to trade our self reliance in for reliance on God. There isn’t anything we can do to get ourselves into heaven. We will get into heaven only through God’s grace. After the beginning part of our meeting we also had several words of prophecy that talked about how we are looking for God in all the wrong places. We are looking for Him in places that He does not dwell. He dwells deep within our hearts. He also said that He is there for us, but we are not looking to Him to solve our problems, we are looking to ourselves to solve our problems. He is asking us to turn our problems over to Him instead of trying to solve them on our own. In this context I can see how God would want us to buy truth, wisdom, instruction and understanding. We need to see the truth that we can’t do anything on our own and yet we can “do all things through Christ who strengthens me” Philippians 4:13. We need to not sell this truth for all the things the world tells us. We need to not sell this truth in order to believe that we can do things on our own. We need to not believe that God is too busy to help us. We need to not believe that God helps others but not us. We need to buy the truth and not sell it for any of these other false truths that the world is trying to sell us.Next, we need to ask God for Wisdom to know the difference. Wisdom is a gift from the Holy Spirit and according to the Catholic Church wisdom is the first and highest gift of the Holy Spirit. We believe that wisdom leads to an intimate understanding of God’s Word and His commandments. When we develop an intimate understanding of God’s Word and His commandments then we can better live out our faith. I believe this is why the verse above mentions truth and then puts wisdom, instruction and understanding in the same line. I believe wisdom leads to instruction and understanding. God has given us a lot of instruction in the Bible on how He wants us to live. There is no question as to what He says in the Bible. I think the question comes in when we try to interpret what He says in the Bible. The Bible was written almost 2,000 years ago. Well, the old testament was written long before that I believe. So, reading the bible is not like reading something that was written 10 years ago. Times have changed a lot. Although as I write that I wonder, have they? I mean yes technology has changed a lot, circumstances may have also changed a lot, but have we as people changed a lot? That I am not sure of. I think we tend to struggle with the same basic things as people struggled with back then. The same underlying sins are there, we just have a different spin on them. That is just my opinion.So, when it comes to reading the Bible, sometimes we can get caught up in the actual words of the Bible or the situation that they are talking about. We can read something and think that it doesn’t pertain to us because our situation is so different than that of the person of the Bible. We can’t really see any connection between how they are living and how we are living. This is why we need wisdom, instruction and understanding. We need wisdom to see how the situations in the Bible relate to our own situation. We need instructions on how we are to live our life right now in this century. We need understanding to know what is meant for us to read literally and what is meant as a story to teach us a lesson.There are different writing styles in the Bible. There are things that are a historical recount of what happened during that time. However, Jesus also teaches a lot of lessons through parables. There are also stories meant to teach us a lesson. If we have a deeper understanding of God’s work we would know the difference. Wisdom can come in many different ways I think. For instance, we don’t have to gain this understanding all on our own. There are many people who have studied the Bible for years and are happily sharing all they know about it. You can learn from them.I don’t think anyone gains the wisdom to understand everything all at once. For instance, I don’t think you will go to bed one day and then wake up the next day with all the wisdom you have ever wanted. I think

Today I decided I would do the Witness Wednesday as it has been a while since I have done one and God has definitely been working in my life. I think it is just as important to talk about the little ways God is working in our lives as it is to talk about the big ways He is working in our lives. Today I will give you an update on how I can see Him blessing me and my life.First, I will start with Noah going off to school. Noah applied to schools pretty late in the year compared to when I remember applying to schools. He also didn’t apply to a lot of schools. He knew where he wanted to go, so he just applied to a handful of schools. Noah’s dream was to go overseas, and so most of the schools he applied to were in the United Kingdom. (England, Scotland, & Wales). Noah decided to go to Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland. He found this out at the beginning of June. This meant we had three months to get all of the stuff in order so he could get there on time.Going to school in another country is a lot of work, at least initially. We had so many hoops to jump through. We had to do all the regular stuff like find a place to live and register. However, it just seemed so much harder than I remember it being. He also needed to do things I didn’t have to do when I went to school in the states, like get a visa. It was a long and tiring procedure, but the Lord was with us through all of it.For instance by the time we figured everything out and were able to apply for his visa it was August 14th. However they said the visa could take up to 15 working days to come in. If it took 15 working days then he wouldn’t be able to arrive in country until his first day of classes. This would have been ok, but he would likely have missed at least one day of classes while we got him settled in. However, thanks to the Lord, and the good people at the passport place, we got his visa back in about one week. We were not able to buy plane a plane ticket until we had it back. So once it came were were able to find pretty affordable tickets as well.I got to go with Noah to get him settled into school. I was nervous about leaving Noah in another country where he didn’t know anyone. I am sure most moms feel this way when their kids go off to school. However, I had the added worry of it being in another country. Thanks to the Lord, I was able to mostly focus on the fact that this was an awesome adventure for Noah and that he was going to have such a great time. However, I still hated that he was all alone. The second day we were there we went to their “Walmart” like store where they have a post office. We had to go here to try and pick up Noah’s residency permit. While we were shopping around we met another student there. He happened to also be going to Napier.He and Noah talked and they are both engineering majors. Not the same type of engineering, but that meant they would both be walking to the same campus from their dorms. They also found out of all the doors they have at Napier they would be living in the same building, just one floor apart. It was pretty cool! We also met his parents and exchanged info. Now, suddenly I wasn’t doing all of this alone. They were there to help along the way. We both sent text messages at the end of the day with what we had accomplished that day and any new information we found out. It was super helpful. Thank you Lord.Noah moved into his dorm on a Saturday and I went home on Monday morning. Saturday morning we took and Uber over to the dorm and moved his clothes and stuff he brought from home in. Then we spend the day shopping and getting the rest of what he needed. Then we went out and got some food also as he is living in an apartment and there is no meal plan there. The next day we went to lunch and more grocery shopping. Then I had to say goodbye. That was hard, and yet I know the Lord is with Him and that this is going to be an amazing year for him, and I am so excited for all he will get to experience.Next I want to tell you all about my new jobs. It is funny how the Lord works, because I knew this fall was going to be some kind of breakthrough. I knew something was going to change, I just didn’t know what. I had been praying about going back to work outside of the home. I decided I would go back to substitute teaching a few days a week. It would be a way where I could help contribute to the family income more than I have been and with Noah in school and Sam having his license, I only really have to drive Ryan around these days.One morning I was out to breakfast with a friend of mine and she mentioned she was looking to hire more coaches at her job. She told me about the job and it sounded great. I would be coaching people with autism. It was perfect for me as I love coaching and I love helping people. It felt like an answer to prayers as I really didn’t want to give up coaching and get having your own coaching practice takes a lot of time to build and over the last few years I decided I wanted to s

Wisdom For Beginners (Part 4)Sirach 2:7-9 “Fear the Lord. His mercy is never far away. Don't wander off and get lost. Fear the Lord, but believe in him; your reward is safe with him. Fear the Lord, but look on the bright side; there'll be blessings and mercies galore. You who fear the Lord, love him. He'll light your candles.”This is a continuation of the section called Wisdom for Beginners in Sirach. I was going to do this verse yesterday, and then I felt prompted to use the line right before this and talk about the various ways the Lord is speaking to all of us. I hope you will spend some time this week talking with the Lord and listening to what He has to say to you. Today I want to talk to you about fearing the Lord. Do you know what that means?I was confused for a long time because I didn’t fear the Lord, and I didn't want to. He is my father, why would I fear Him? Why is the Bible telling me to fear Him? It didn’t make any sense to me. However, when I joined the Charismatic prayer group, they did a teaching on this one day, and I have talked about it several times since then. Fear of the Lord means having awe in the Lord. We are in awe because of who He is and what He does. When I googled what “fear the Lord” means, one of the things that came up said that “Fear of the Lord” is a virtue that results in humble, loving obedience to God because of who he is. That sounds pretty good, too!When the verse above is talking about fearing the Lord, it is talking about having awe and reverence for God. It is not talking about actually being afraid of Him. We don’t have any reason to be afraid of God, and that is not what God would want either. However, we have plenty of reasons to be in awe of God and the amazing things He does every single day!The verse above starts out by saying, “Fear the Lord. His mercy is never far away.” I wish everyone knew this. God’s mercy is never far from you. I know AI had it’s downsides, but I am loving its ability to search the whole internet and answer a question in just a few seconds. Here is what it says about God’s mercy “God's mercy is God's compassionate and loving nature to act on behalf of those in need, even when they may not deserve it. The Bible describes God's mercy in many ways, including: God withholds punishment that people deserve for their sins. God provides what people need, such as food, forgiveness, and discipline. God shows mercy by healing and comforting those who are suffering. God's greatest example of mercy is sacrificing his son, Jesus Christ, on the cross to pay the price for people's sins. Could you use some of God’s mercy today? It is right there, ready for you to come to the Lord and ask.Next, the verse says, “Don’t wander off and get lost.” I love this because it is such a good reminder. Don’t we just love to wander off and get lost? We like to go down all these random paths even though we don’t know where they lead. We might follow this new idea or that one. Maybe something gets our attention and we don’t think it will lead us away from the Lord and then before we know we are lost and need to find our way back. It’s always nice to have the reminder to not wander off.Next, it says, “Fear the Lord, but believe in him; your reward is safe with him.” In another version, it says, “Your reward will not be lost.” We can trust the Lord with everything. We can trust that what we are not rewarded for in this lifetime will be in the next. We can trust that God sees everything. He knows all that we are doing, even the things we think no one saw. He knows how hard you are working. He knows how much you are struggling. He saw you help that person who was in need. He sees you and your reward is safe with Him. We can trust Him!Next, the verse says, “Fear the Lord, but look on the bright side; there'll be blessings and mercies galore.” The Lord has so many blessings in store for us. He has so much mercy for us. God is always telling our prayer group that He has so much more for us, but we are not asking. So, maybe a part of wisdom is asking the Lord for what you need. I talked with someone last night who said he has so many areas in his life where he could use the Lord’s help, and yet He just isn’t asking Him. This is all of us. We know the Lord can help us, and yet we figure He will just jump right in whenever He wants to.From what I have learned about the Lord, this is not the case. He waits for us to invite Him into a situation before He will jump in and take care of it. If you want to do things on your own, the Lord will let you. Would it be easier and quicker if we asked for help, absolutely! Would we feel better if we asked for help, yup! And yet, for some reason, we don’t. It is the same with God’s blessings and mercies. We don’t ask for them because we don’t want to bother God. He is busy and has much more important things to do. It may also be that we think we don’t deserve His mercy or His grace. There are so many others out there that are more deserving. T

God Is Talking To You, Are You Listening?Sirach 2:6 “Respect God and expect one beautiful friendship.”I love the first sentence in this verse. Respect God and expect one beautiful friendship. Did you know you could have a beautiful friendship with the Lord? Did you know you could sit and talk with Him, and you can listen to Him as well? I think this is something we should spend some time talking about today as I think this is something many people struggle to believe. God is talking to each one of us. I have been told that I am lucky because the Lord talks to me. I want you to hear me when I say He wants to talk to you, too. I know that is hard to believe. I know you are saying to yourself, “Who am I that God would talk to me?” You are a son or daughter of the one true king, that is who you are! Can you imagine having a son or daughter and not wanting to talk to them? God loves you and He wants to have a relationship with you. He wants to have a beautiful friendship as this verse says.Let’s take a look at some ways you can hear the Lord because I know if you try to hear the Lord, you will hear the Lord. I also know that we can get very caught up in our own heads and dismiss ourselves from hearing the Lord because we don’t think we are worthy or we don’t think we are holy enough. Jesus died on the cross to make us worthy, and we don't have to be holy to hear the Lord, but we do become more holy when we spend time listening to Him. He leads us to holiness.The first way I will talk about is how many people “hear” the Lord, and that is by getting a thought in our heads when we are talking to the Lord. For instance, you might be sitting and talking to the Lord, and you ask Him a question. If you stop and expect Him to answer you, the next thought you have in your head is probably from the Lord. It won’t sound like the Lord, and I mean this in two ways. First, most people do not audibly hear the Lord. Some have, and if you do, that is amazing! However, most don’t hear an audible voice it is more of a thought/answer that pops into their head when they have asked the Lord a question. Second, the answer that comes to you might not be in the language you think the Lord would use. It might sound like something you would say. For instance, when the Lord is talking to me, sometimes He will say things are amazing or awesome. It is ok if what you hear sounds a bit like something you would say. The Lord is communicating with you in a way you will understand. It is normal.A second way that the Lord may communicate with you is through visions. For instance, you ask Him a question, and then a picture comes into your mind that answers your question. Sometimes, it is just a still image, and sometimes, it is like a scene in a movie where things are movie, and it is not just a quick screenshot but rather a scene that plays out for a few seconds. Many people in my prayer group get visions and it is amazing to listen to them describe what they are seeing. I have gotten a few visions but that is not they way I usually communicate with the Lord.A third way the Lord may communicate with you is through your feelings. You may be trying to make a decision about something, and you ask the Lord which thing you should do. Then you notice that you feel strongly about one over the other. That could be the Lord guiding you. Also, sometimes the Lord will fill you with peace about a certain decision, whereas the other one you don’t have peace about. The Holy Spirit we have living inside of us is often the still small voice we hear when we are trying to make decisions. Take a minute and think back to a time when you “just had a feeling” about something. It is likely that it wasn’t just a feeling, it was the Holy Spirit leading you to where you needed to be.Another great way that the Lord talks with us is through Scripture or other things that we read. Did you ever have something weighing on your mind, and then when you read your Bible, you had more clarity on it, or you felt better about it? We can find answers in scripture. The Bible is a living document. You can read the same passage today, two months from now, and two years from now, and each time you read it, you will get something different from it, depending on what is going on in your life at the time. God is so good; He can personal it for each one of us. The next time you have a question or you want to spend some time talking with the Lord, open up your Bible and ask the Lord what He wants to tell you. I know you will be amazed at what He shares with you when you are open to hearing Him!The last way I will talk about today, although there are probably others, is that God can talk to us through other people. Have you ever been talking with someone, and something they say feels like an answer to something you have been talking to the Lord about? Isn’t that crazy when that happens? I have a friend, Anne, who knew the Lord was calling her to move, but she didn’t want to move. I mean, she wan

Wisdom For Beginners (Part 3)Sirach 2:4-6 “Accept whatever is brought upon you, and in changes that humble you be patient. For gold is tested in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation. Trust in him, and he will help you; make your ways straight, and hope in him.”I thought I would continue on in Sirach and cover the whole Wisdom for Beginners Section. It’s interesting because today, I was going to use the Message translation. However, It is not great about numbering the verses; it gives more of a range, and I wanted to let you know exactly what verses I was using. I went on biblegateway.com and it happened to be set for Revised Standard Version (RSV). This translation does not call this section “Wisdom for Beginners,” It calls it “Duties toward God.” I like the first title better so I am glad I started out with the Message Translation!This verse begins with “Accept whatever is brought upon you, and in changes that humble you be patient.” That first part is very broad and very difficult. It is not easy to accept whatever is brought upon you. Especially if what is brought upon you is different than what you thought would be happening. If you prayed for children and yet you have been unable to have them, this is very difficult to accept. If you prayed for a promotion at work and yet you didn’t get it, that is very difficult to accept as well. I can see how it would be wise to accept whatever is brought upon us and yet I wish it gave a bit more instruction. This is one of those times when we need to look at the whole verse and not just part of it. I will explain how and why it is so important to accept whatever is brought upon you in a few minutes.First, let's look at the rest of this first sentence. It tells us to be patient in changes that humble us. This is really not easy. I looked up what “changes that humble us meant,” and this is what I found. "Things that humble you" means things that make you realize you are not as important or special as you thought. For example, you might describe an experience as humbling if you work with talented people and feel a sense of awe or admiration. Here are some other examples of things that can humble you: Seeing people be positive about life when they have little, finding someone's heroism humbling, being rejected from jobs and realizing you need to start at the bottom, realizing that your charisma doesn't always cut it in a business, realizing that you need to improve your knowledge base. Do you see why I said this can be really hard. Patience is a virtue that most of the world needs to grow in. It is not one of the easier virtues. Well, I am not sure there are any easy virtues, but most of us struggle with patience. Especially in this fast-paced world we live in. We always want to be going somewhere fast.Also, any kind of change is really hard. However, if it is a good change, it is a little easier. For instance, if you are moving to a house you really like or a job you really like. Those are both good changes and so it makes the difficulty of moving easier because you know you will be happier in the long run. However, changes that humble us aren’t always good changes. They may be good for us in the long run, but they certainly don’t feel good at the moment.So, how do we accept whatever comes our way and be patient with the changes that humble us? This is where the next part of the verse comes in. It says, “For gold is tested in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation. Trust in him, and he will help you; make your ways straight, and hope in him.” The first part doesn’t tell us how to do it, but it does tell us why we should do it. “For gold is tested in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation.” We need to accept what comes our way because God is testing us and helping us grow into the person we are supposed to be. When gold is tested in the fire, it is melted down to separate it from any other metals or impurities. How does that relate to us? God might be helping us to separate from other false Gods, idols, or any other things that might be getting in our way of being closer to Him. Humility is a great way to grow closer to the Lord! If we are humble, then we realize that all we have is because of God. We give Him all the glory. However, often, we put other things above God, and we crave all the things of this world instead of craving the Lord and all He has to offer us. Also, when we are not humble, we can think that all we have is because of us. We might think we are successful because of our good fortune. We might think we are the reason for all we have.This is dangerous thinking because if we think we don’t need God, we will stop inviting Him into our lives and into our situations, and that is when things get really hard. The last line of this verse says, “Trust in him, and he will help you; make your ways straight, and hope in him.” That right there is the answer we have been looking for. The first part of

Wisdom For Beginners (Part 2)Sirach 2:1-3 “So, my child, you want to serve God? Then get your life in order, respect others, and prepare your soul for the trial that will surely come. Tell your heart what to think; don’t go to sleep on the job. Bend, your ear; listen to your mind. When times get rough, keep your cool. Take a tip from God. Join hands with Him. Don’t slip-slide. Don’t go it alone. Do the wise thing; make wise choices.”Today, we are going to continue to look at the verse we looked at on Tuesday. We didn’t really have time to look at all of it up close, and it had a lot of good things to say. Wisdom is a great thing, and if we can get some tips on how to grow in it, then it’s worth slowing down and taking the time to examine them. Starting where we left off yesterday, the verse says, “Bend your ear; listen to your mind.” I hear that we need to open our Spiritual ears and listen to what the Lord is telling us. We talked yesterday about telling our hearts what to think. This is because our emotions can sometimes lead us astray. Sometimes, we may not want to do the right thing and yet if we listen to our minds we know we should.The Lord can talk to us in any number of ways. The most prevalent way for me is in my mind. I ask Him a question, and He answers it by putting the thought in my mind. For instance, I may ask him how I should pray for my kids better. Then I sit quietly, and all of a sudden, there will be all these thoughts as to how I can pray for my kids better. You might hear the Lord this way, or you might ask Him a question, and then you might get a strong feeling in your body that you know the answer, but you didn’t hear anything. You might also be led to Scripture after you ask the Lord a question, and you realize that the Scripture is the answer to your question. God is trying to talk with you, your job is just to listen. And sometimes that means listening to your mind.Next, it says when times get rough, keep your cool. This can be much harder than it sounds, depending on how rough things get. One great way to keep your cool when things get rough is to pray for the peace of Christ. You can actually ask the Lord to fill you with the peace of Christ. I have prayed this over many people, and you would be surprised how peaceful they felt. Some of them were in situations where you wouldn’t think peace was even possible.That is what is so amazing about the peace that we get from the Lord. It says in Philippians 4:7, “And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” God’s peace surpasses all understanding. I like how it also says it will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. This is so important. If we can keep our hearts and minds focused on Jesus, we are all set. It’s when we take our focus off of Jesus and we start to think more about how big our problem is. We spend our time thinking about all the ways things can go wrong instead of thinking about all the things that could be right.We think about the fact that we can’t see a way out instead of focusing on the fact that God doesn’t need us to see the way out or that fact that God doesn’t need there to be a way out. He is a way maker. He can make a way even if there is no way out. He can blast a hole right through your problems. We have a God that can do impossible things. Nothing is too big for Him. Just yesterday, during witness Wednesday, we learned about how God gave a brand new heart to someone. His heart was damaged, and he needed to have stents put in or maybe even a bypass, they weren’t sure. Yet, when they went in to take a closer look, he had a brand new heart. God is bigger than you think He is, and He is definitely bigger than your problems. We can remain cool when things get rough if we keep our eyes fixed on the Lord.Next, it says, “Take a tip from God. Join hands with Him. Don’t slip-slide. Don’t go it alone.” This is super important. I know I say this all the time, and you may be sick of hearing it, but it is true, and I don’t think we all understand the necessity of inviting the Lord in. If you want to go at this life alone, the Lord will let you. He believes in free will, so He doesn’t enter situations that He is not wanted or invited into. I love how this verse says to take a tip from God. How do we take a tip from God? I can think of two ways. First, stop and listen to Him like I talked about earlier. The second way would be to read scripture and apply it to your life. Scripture is God’s love letter to you. He is speaking to us through His Scripture. It is a living Word that answers our questions and can speak to us if we listen to it. I know many people who find their answers to life’s questions in the Bible.I also love how the verse says to join hands with Him. I love that visual. I envision myself as a little girl, and I grab hold of Jesus’s hand, and we are just walking through a green field. This line shows us that God is not a distant God. He i

Today’s witness was found online. Someone close to me is having some issues with his heart and so I wanted to find a healing story that had to do with the heart. When we can hear that others have been healed of a similar thing that we are praying for then our faith is built up that we or our loved ones will be healed too. Today I am sharing the story of David and what happened when he went to the doctor for his heart.I pray this story gives you hope that God will answer your prayers too! Here is his story in his own words.I don’t know if you have personally experienced a miraculous healing, but I have. I was fifty-six years old, and every Friday afternoon that autumn, I worked out with a trainer. Like many personal trainers, Vileka Fisher started each session by checking my weight and blood pressure. Some variations are normal. My blood pressure, however, climbed for seven weeks straight, topping out at 203/143. At that point, she fired me. Literally.“I’m not going to have you die on me,” Vileka told me. “You have to go to your doctor immediately.” In turn, Dr. Guesly Dessieux quickly ordered two sets of tests. The next day, they took extensive, continuous images of my heart at rest. The following day, they took extensive, continuous images of my heart after a lengthy and very fast-paced run on an industrial-sized treadmill.The Dreaded Post-Exam Phone CallOn Friday, October 23, 2015, I received the proverbial day-after phone call. On Tuesday, October 27, I met with my “new best friend,” interventional cardiologist Dr. Barath Krishnamurthy, to find out how extensively my heart was damaged and what next steps were ahead for both of us. The damage to the front middle and front lower-right areas of my heart, he said, was significantly worse than expected for a man my age.Dr. Krishnamurthy scheduled me to report to Salem Hospital as soon as possible. He said he would start with an angiogram. If the damage wasn’t too severe, he planned to insert stents. Then again, if the damage was severe, he planned to perform double bypass surgery.“When would you do that bypass surgery?” I asked, feeling more anxious and nervous than I’d felt in a long time.“Right then and there,” he replied. “There’s no time to waste. You could have a heart attack any day.”That last comment wasn’t reassuring, but he had my attention!Afterward, I remembered how good it is that we can thank God daily for His sovereignty (greatness), providence (goodness and guidance), holiness (glory), love (graciousness), and mystery (“God alone knows”).Most of the time during those next few days, I was prayerful and at peace. Then again, I couldn’t forget Dr. Krishnamurthy’s comments that recovery from an angiogram and stents would take a few days. Recovery from double bypass surgery, though, could take six to eight weeks, maybe longer.By phone, Facebook, and e-mail, my wife (Renée) and I asked those close to us to pray for a routine, boring, and ultimately successful angiogram.A couple of hours after checking into Salem Hospital on November 5, 2015, I was wheeled into surgery. According to plan, I lost consciousness shortly after meeting the five members of my cardiologist’s team.Miraculous News Came after SurgeryWhen I woke up in recovery, my cardiologist walked in looking stunned. “This never happens,” he said. “You heart looks great. I couldn’t find any damage anywhere. Not even plaque.” It rarely happens, he explained, that two separate days of radioactive imaging would clearly, and yet incorrectly, show substantive damage in two separate areas of the heart.Bottom line: no damage, no stents, and no double bypass surgery.Renée was quick to call it a miracle. When I confided that I wasn’t ready to use that word, she asked why. “Well, I had just woken up in recovery. What if I misunderstood what Dr. Krishnamurthy told me?”On November 25, I returned to Salem Cardiovascular to meet with my cardiologist. He had been called away for an emergency heart procedure and asked one of his associates, Masen Martin, to meet with me. I explained the purpose of my visit. Then I told Masen (as she prefers to be called) that when Dr. Krishnamurthy talked with me in recovery, he looked pretty much stunned.“Stunned?” she exclaimed. “You were the surprise of the year!”She paused and then went on. “Frankly, it left all of us here pretty rattled. The imaging is proof positive that you needed either stents or double bypass surgery. But the angiogram imaging a few days later is proof positive that your heart has absolutely no damage anywhere. Not even a trace of plaque anywhere in or around your heart.” I had the heart of a teenager again. Medically and scientifically, that’s not supposed to be possible.In other words, Renée was right. It truly was a miracle. Then again, it was a miracle that caught me by surprise. Yes, hundreds prayed, but not for this outcome.Louise the Prayer Warrior and Her God-Sized PrayersThat next Sunday, November 29, a super quiet, very introverted, yet lo

Wisdom For BeginnersSirach 2:1-3 “So, my child, you want to serve God? Then get your life in order, respect others, and prepare your soul for the trial that will surely come. Tell your heart what to think; don’t go to sleep on the job. Bend, your ear; listen to your mind. When times get rough, keep your cool. Take a tip from God. Join hands with Him. Don’t slip-slide. Don’t go it alone. Do the wise thing; make wise choices."The title of this episode is the title of the section where this verse is found in the Message Translation of the Catholic Bible. It immediately resonated with my heart. I definitely feel like I am a beginner when it comes to wisdom. I thought this verse laid things out so easily and helped us to see what sort of things we can do if we want to serve God. I felt as though they are good reminders as to what we should be doing everyday anyway.Let’s look at them individually. First, it says that if we want to serve God, we need to get our lives in order, respect others, and prepare our souls for the trials that will surely come. When it says, “get our lives in order,” to me, that means we need to know what we are doing. We need to be living intentionally and not just going about our day haphazardly with no plan and no idea of how the day will unfold. If we say yes to the Lord He will use us and when He does it will take time to do what He is calling us to do. If we are not living intentionally it might be hard to find the time to do all He is calling us to do.I also think it means that we should get our lives in order before we can go out and make a difference in other people’s lives. If we are struggling to take care of our house, our family, and our friends, then it might not be the right time to go out and try and take care of other people. Sir Thomas Browne said, “Charity begins at home.” Mother Theresa says, “Love begins at home.” It’s not ok to be unkind to your family and then go to church on Sunday and treat everyone else as sweet as pie. If we want to serve God first, we must get our own lives in order. Then the Lord will send us out to help others.Next, it said, respect others. It makes me sad that we would still need to be saying this. There is such a culture of disrespect right now, and it makes me so sad. When I listen to not only my own kids but the kids at the various schools where I sub, or I read comments on social media from other adults, I am in shock at the lack of respect. If we want to serve the Lord, we need to respect all of His children, not just the ones who look like we do, believe as we do, and love as we do. God made all people, and we must respect all people, whether we agree with them or not. We are called to love our neighbors, and that begins with respect.This next one was something I was a bit worried about when I was going through the Life in the Spirit seminar for the first time. The people who had been in the Charismatic Renewal told us to be careful what we asked for because if we asked for the Holy Spirit to use us, He would, and we might use it in some ways we didn’t expect. They said sometimes it is a wild ride when the Holy Spirit is leading. The verse above says, “Prepare your soul for the trial that will surely come.” This would also frighten me. I didn’t want to endanger myself or my family by working for the Lord. Although the enemy will indeed attack you when you are working for the Lord, you also have the Lord protecting you.You have the Lord building you up and giving you the strength to make it through whatever the enemy is throwing at you. Sometimes, He will allow the enemy to come at you, but He will never let you face it alone. He is always right there with you, helping you withstand it. Give you what you need. It says in 1 John 4:4, “Little children, you are from God, and have conquered them; for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.” Yes, the enemy may come after you or your family but the Lord won’t let Him destroy them.I feel the enemy has come after my family because He knew I wouldn’t believe His lies. He knew I had the armor of God on, and when we know who we are in the Lord’s eyes, the enemy can't hurt us. However, I do feel he has attacked my family with drug addiction, depression, anxiety, anger, and so much more. However, I know that the enemy will not win. My children will be saved, my family and my marriage will be saved. My marriage was already saved. We were so close to splitting, and the Lord came in and gave us renewed minds and hearts for one another. God can do this for you too!We don’t have to be afraid of what the enemy might do to us or our family if we are serving the Lord, but we do have to prepare for it. We do need to be on the lookout for it so that when we see something happening to us or those around us, we can call upon the Lord to come and protect us and give us the strength to get through all that is happening.Next, it says, “Tell your heart what to think.” I love this because ou

All The Guilt And Power Of Sin Has Been Cut AwayColossians 2:11 “Through our union with him we have experienced circumcision of heart. All of the guilt and power of sin has been cut away and is now extinct because of what Christ, the anointed one, has accomplished for us.”I really like this verse and thought it was a great reminder for a Monday morning! Who wouldn’t want to start their week off with the reminder that all of the guilt and power of sin has been cut away and is now extinct because of what Christ, the anointed one, has accomplished for us? That is amazing. Christ is so good. He came down and died a horrible death just so that we could be free from sin and shame.What keeps coming to my mind is, then, why do we all have so much sin and shame in our lives? This verse doesn’t say that there will no longer be any sin in this world. We are human, we are flawed, and we will continue to sin. However, this verse says that the guilt and power of sin have been cut away. The verse starts by saying that through our union with him, we have experienced circumcision of the heart. This means that our hearts have been changed. They are no longer like they once were. Before Jesus died on the cross, we had shame and guilt for our sins. Before He died on the cross, we were separated from the Lord because of our sins. After He died on the cross, we were reunited with the Lord.The verse goes on to say that all the guilt and power of sin has been cut away and is now extinct because of what Christ did for us. You may be looking at your own heart and seeing that you still have some guilt from past sins and may be wondering why. Why do I still have guilt when Jesus cut it away with His sacrifice? Why do I feel guilt and shame over my sins when Jesus took that guilt and shame to the cross and then to the grave with Him? The reason for this is that we need to let go of it. We need to release this guilt and believe that Jesus truly died for our sins and that His death was enough to cover our sins.God gave us free will. He did not want to create creatures that had to love Him. If we didn’t have a choice whether or not to love Him, then it wouldn’t truly be love. He wanted us to choose freely to love Him. Some of us think that is where free will stops. We think we have the choice to love God or not, and he governs all of our behavior outside of that. This is not the case. God takes our free will seriously. This means He does not come into a situation that He is not invited into. If you want to handle everything yourself, He will let you. Not because He likes to see you suffer because He doesn’t. I am sure it breaks His heart when He has to watch us suffer when He knows it would be so easy for Him to help us. The reason He lets us do things on our own is because He doesn’t want to overstep. He doesn’t want to enter a situation He hasn’t been invited into.Giving us free will and watching how we use it must be so hard for the Lord. I think back to when my kids were little, and they were in that stage where they wanted to do everything on their own. Watching them is painful sometimes because you know it would be so much easier to do it for them, and yet you know they want to do it by themselves. Especially when they are learning how to walk. You know they are going to fall down several times before they get the hang of it, and yet you let them because you know it is the only way they will learn to walk on their own. However, we are usually right there by their side so if they do reach out their hand we are there to grab it and help them.This is similar to the Lord. He watches us, walks right next to us, and yet He waits patiently for us to reach out our hands and ask for help. I think this must be especially hard for Him when it comes to our guilt and shame over sin. I can imagine it breaks His heart when we allow sin to have power over us. God sent His only son to earth to die a painful death for us, and yet instead of embracing this freedom, we act as though His sacrifice wasn’t for us. We don’t believe the Lord when He says that sin has no power over us anymore.What it really should say is that sin has no power over you anymore unless you let it. If you let guilt and shame live in your heart, then it will gain power over you. The enemy is going to try to get us to believe the lie that we should feel guilt and shame for our sins. He is going to try to get us to believe that we are unredeemable and that our sins are too bad. The enemy won’t deny that Christ died on the cross for the sins of humans, but He will try to convince us that our sins are too bad. Yes, He died for some people’s sins, but not for ours. He tries to convince us that we can never be forgiven. And unfortunately, we often buy into these lies.I learned a saying in Encounter that I love because it is so powerful and it is so true. When you believe the lie, you empower the liar. When you believe the lies of the enemy, you give Him power over your life. When you b

Tapestry of LoveColossians 2:2-4 “ I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God. Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ, God’s great mystery. All the richest treasures of wisdom and knowledge are embedded in that mystery and nowhere else. And we’ve been shown the mystery! I’m telling you this because I don’t want anyone leading you off on some wild-goose chase, after other so-called mysteries, or “the Secret.”I chose this verse for today because it is sort of a continuation of yesterday’s verse. Yesterday, we talked about the secret surprise and how that secret was Jesus living within us. Today, we are talking about Jesus again. I also chose this verse because I loved the language used in it. I was going back and forth between this translation, which is the message translation, and the passion translation like I used yesterday. I think, overall, this translation explains this in a way that is easier to understand. The first sentence is the one I loved the most. Here is what is said in the passion translation, “I am contending for you that your hearts will be wrapped in the comfort of heaven and woven together into love’s fabric.” Isn’t that a beautiful image? Our hearts are wrapped up in the comfort of heaven. That is wonderful.The message translation says, "I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God.” I loved this one, too, as picturing a tapestry of love is great imagery. It was also similar to the passion translation, which said, “woven together into love’s fabric.” So, besides nice language and fancy imagery, what does this all mean? It begins by saying that we are in touch with everything there is to know about God. So, no big deal, right? I don’t think he means that we need to actually know everything there is to know about God, as that is impossible. None of us could possibly know everything there is to know about God.The next line clarifies this a bit. It says, “Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ, God’s great mystery.” Do you know who God is? Have you spent time in the scriptures, have you paid attention at church when they are reading the sacred Word of God? When you know who God is, you can be confident and at rest with the knowledge you have. You are confident because you know the truth. You can be confident because your eyes are focused on Jesus Christ. God has revealed this mystery to you and you are confident in this knowledge.This verse confirms that God’s great mystery is Jesus. Just like we heard yesterday. The next line says, “All the richest treasures of wisdom and knowledge are embedded in that mystery and nowhere else.” This is an important one for us to hear and remember. All the richest treasures of wisdom and knowledge are embedded in Jesus and nowhere else. This is important because we tend to look everywhere else. How many times have we looked to the world for wisdom and knowledge? How many times have we read books that have nothing to do with Jesus in search of wisdom and knowledge?I have found in my own life that I go to the Lord if I need prayers for something. If I need a miracle to happen, a mountain to be moved, someone I love to be healed, or things to go smoothly, I turn to the Lord and pray for His help. However, when I need wisdom and knowledge, I turn to books, and my go-to is not usually scripture. I will search online for books that have to do with the topic I’m struggling with. I ask friends or family what they think I should do. I didn’t know that I could go to the Lord when I needed knowledge or wisdom. That may seem silly to you, and yet I don’t think I am the only one that didn’t know this.It wasn’t until I went to the Encounter School of Ministry that I realized that if you needed wisdom and knowledge, you could go and sit with the Lord, and He would give it to you. What really cemented this in my mind was when I started to examine some of my favorite Saints. Saint Catherine of Sienna is a doctor of the church, and yet she did not have any formal education. She was one of the most brilliant theological minds of her day, and through her personal influence, thousands of people returned to the church. She did not spend time studying theology. She didn't spend time online researching all she could about the Lord and about Jesus. She went right to the source. She spent time with Jesus himself in her prayer time. She spent a long time in her room, just her and the Lord. St Thérèse of Lisieux was unable to attend a university or engage in systematic study. She died young; nevertheless, from this day forward, she will be honored as a doctor of the Church, an outstanding recognition that raises her in the esteem of the entire Christian community far beyond any academic title. She loved Jesus; she spent time in prayer with Him. She went to the Lord to gain all the wisdom and knowledge she needed. She relied on Jesus for eve

A Secret Surprise!Colossians 1:26-27 “There is a divine mystery – a secret surprise that has been concealed from the world for generations, but now it's being revealed, unfolded and manifested for every holy believer to experience. Living within you is the Christ who floods you with the expectation of glory! This mystery of Christ, embedded within us, becomes a heavenly treasure chest of hope filled with the riches of glory for his people, and God wants everyone to know it!”Have I mentioned lately how much I love the passion translation? It brings out the passion in the Scriptures. I love how this begins by saying there is a divine mystery- a secret surprise that has been concealed from the world for generations, but now is being revealed.” Doesn’t that make you sit forward a bit more in your seat so you can pay better attention? Doesn’t it make you wonder what this secret surprise is and why haven’t you heard about it before? I can’t imagine it is just me that feels this way. Who doesn’t like a surprise? Who doesn’t like to feel like they know something that others don’t know? I love to feel like I am on the inside. Like I am “in the know” as some would say.I remember this is how I feel sometimes when I am sitting in Church and I hear a reading that I learned about in a Bible study. I love it when I learn more about Scripture in Bible study. I love when the person leading the Bible study tells us what the words were in their native language like the Hebrew word for peace is Shalom. Or when they explain that even though the word in the Bible has this meaning to us, back when the Bible was written it really meant this other thing. When I am sitting in Church and I hear a scripture verse that I learned more about in a Bible study I instantly want to share what I know with all those around me. I want to tell them all the extra info I learned. I feel like I have a secret and I want to share it with everyone else. I don’t want to keep it to myself. Have you ever felt this way, or is it just me?This is probably why I loved this first line so much. It is setting us up with excitement that we are going to learn something that has been concealed from the world for generations. Not just from a few people but from the world. Not just for a little while, but for generations! We get to know the secret. Aren’t you excited? I like how is says, “but now it's being revealed, unfolded, and manifested for every holy believer to experience.” I like this because it shows the gentleness of God. He is not just dumping this big secret on us. He is slowly revealing it. He is allow it to unfold in our lives and He is manifesting it for each one of us to experience.What is this secret surprise? “Living within you is the Christ who floods you with the expectation of glory!” Jesus Christ is living within you. Did you know this? We are lucky because we have the Scriptures to read about. We get to learn all about Jesus and what he did while He was here on earth, what He did for us, and who He sent to us after He left. However, what about the early church? They had to learn about Jesus slowly. They had to have the stories and testimonies told to them over time. I am sure it took time for the news of Jesus to spread. I am sure it took time for the apostles to spread the Gospel to all the corners of the earth.I feel like the Holy Spirit is telling me that even though we have the Bible, even though we have heard about Jesus, and we know who He is and what He has done, this secret is still being revealed to each one of us slowly and more fully over time. God is revealing Christ within us individually to each one of us. He is allowing this discovery to unfold and manifest it in each of our lives in a different way and on a different timeline. Even for those in the Bible, each one had their own experience. Peter was learning more and more about Christ over the three years He was walking with Him. It took Him time and there was some back and forth with His belief. One minute He understood what Christ was saying and the next minute He wasn’t sure. However, with Paul, He knew immediately after his blindness was cured who Jesus was and that He wanted to follow Him.Every one of our experiences will be different. We are all on a different journey and we will all discover Jesus and the truth that He lives inside of us. In God’s timing, this secret and what it means for us and for our lives will be revealed to us and manifested in our lives. I was confused about the meaning when it says, “The Christ who floods you with the expectation of Glory,” I had no idea what this meant. I had the inclination to skip it and move on. Every time I have that feeling I have learned to stop and look it up as I think we all really want to understand all of scripture. I think we want to really understand what it means, not just kinda get it. Here is what I found when I looked it up. A believer can be confident of eternity with Christ in heaven when he or she knows that C