Walk Boldly With Jesus

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

Still Waters Psalm 23 (Part 3)Psalm 23 "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.”Today I will talk about the last part of this Psalm. There is a lot to like about this ending. First. It starts by saying that God will prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. I don’t have to be worried about my enemies as God has got me. He is my shield and my refuge. Now he is saying we will prepare a feast for me. When someone is preparing a meal for us, they are not usually stressed out about it. They don’t worry about all the things going on around them. Picture this, there is chaos all around you, and yet in front of you is this beautifully set up dining room table. You have a seat and God is bringing you a feast one course at a time. He is not concerned with your enemies because He knows they can’t touch you. You are not concerned either because you feel so at home and taken care of. Isn’t that a beautifully relaxing image? Next, the verse says that God honors us by anointing our heads with oil. Did you know that you have an anointing on your life? We all do. Did you know through baptism you were anointed to be priest, prophet, and king? It’s true, just as Christ was all three of these, you are also anointed to be these three things to your community. What does that mean for us? Let’s start with the priest. Drawing on the priesthood of the Old Testament, a priest is one who offers sacrifices (see Genesis 14:18; Exodus 29:38- 42; Leviticus 23:6,8). Some sacrifices are personal, and some are on behalf of others. These sacrifices will look different for each one of us depending on our circumstances. However, sacrifice to some degree should be a part of our everyday life. I have tried to embrace this in different ways over the years. At times I did a bread and water fast one day a week. Other times I would fast from one thing for a whole month. I would switch it up each month, but there will always be something I am fasting from. I believe that this helps me to appreciate things more and it will also show me that I am not a slave to that thing. For instance, if I feel like I just can’t stop eating chocolate, then I will fast from that for a month. By the end of the year, I will have shown God and myself that I do not need these things. I will have also made a small sacrifice each month for 12 months.Next, we have prophet. A prophet is a spokesperson for God or one who speaks on God’s behalf (see Exodus 4:30; Deuteronomy 18:18; Isaiah 42:19). In the Old and New Testaments, prophets called people to a different way of life. Can we be a spokesperson for God by how we live our lives? Can we live in a way that when people see us they think to themselves, “I want what they have?” Can we call others to a different way of life, not necessarily with our words, but with our love? Can we love others as Jesus did? Can we speak love and light into the world, into people’s lives? Can we be prophets?Lastly, we are anointed as kings. What are kings called to do? Usually rule over others. We are called to rule over ourselves first and foremost. We are all responsible for making sure we are living our lives according to God’s laws. Most kings are called to rule over others, however, as Christians, we are called to servant leadership. A servant leader leads by serving others. In other words, servant leaders place the interests and needs of their followers ahead of their own self-interests and needs. Generally, they value the development of their followers, building their communities, acting authentically, and sharing power.Now that we know what each one of these means, hopefully, we can apply this to our everyday life. God has anointed us in our everyday tasks too. For instance, I was anointed to be a mother and a wife. That was where God called me and that is what He set me apart to do. Maybe you are anointed to be a doctor, a lawyer, a pharmacy tech, a garbage collector, a grandmother, a teacher, whatever it is, God has anointed you to do it. Your baptismal anointing is not meant to replace any of those other calls on your life. You are anointed to be a priest, prophet, and king in the life you are already living. Think about your day-to-day life, how can you incorporate sacrifice into your days? How can you be more of a prophet spreading the Lord’s Word in your daily lives? How can you be more of a servant leader right now, right where you are?The verse then goes on to say my cup overflows with blessings. This is also great imag

Still Waters Psalm 23 (Part 2)Psalm 23 "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.”I only really talked about the first few lines of this Psalm in my last episode and there are some other powerful parts to this Psalm. I want to make sure I go through the whole thing so when you are using it against your anxiety you can understand all the various aspects of it. Today I want to look at the very next line. “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”I was attending a conference once, and the speaker mentioned this verse. It was not a spiritual conference, so when I heard it, I figured it was a sign that I should talk about it. The verse says though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. This is hard. It seems like there is so much to fear these days. There is fear surrounding these elections. There is fear surrounding the future of our country. There is fear surrounding so many things.When we read this scripture we wonder how it is possible to fear no evil. How is it possible to fear no evil when you are surrounded by death, or the possibility of death? If you read on it says “for thou are with me; they rod and thy staff they comfort me.” God is with us, we all know this, we repeat this and tell others this, but do we really believe this? Do you believe that God is right there with you when you are in the valleys? We all know how all-powerful God is, so if we believe that He is there with us, it makes sense that we wouldn’t be afraid. How could we be afraid when He is there? He is the Almighty One. So, why do we have so much fear? Are we afraid that He won’t help us? Are we afraid He won’t show up? Are we afraid to die? What is it that we have been so afraid of? Maybe you find yourself worried about a lot of things. Maybe you worry every time there is a storm coming. Maybe you worry about your finances. Maybe you worry about your children, parents, siblings, or spouse. Worry may be a part of your everyday life. I am hoping to change that. It probably won’t change overnight, and it may not be easy, but it is possible. The bible mentions “fear not” 365 times. This is definitely something that God wants us to get. I will be honest, I didn’t get the last part of this verse. “Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” I looked up the meaning of this because I wondered if there was something that I was missing. I am glad I did because there is a great article called “Understanding Psalm 23: What Does the Staff and Rod Actually Mean?(Click Here for article) I highly suggest it as it is good. I will not retell the article, I will just touch upon the few descriptions of the rod and the staff. First, the author says that the staff symbolizes rest, as shepherds used to lean on their staff for rest. Next, the staff can symbolize rescue because shepherds used to use their staff to rescue sheep from the thick brush. Third, the staff can symbolize a guide as the shepherd used it to guide sheep across open fields. This all seems to make a lot of sense to me. It seems like we are much happier and less afraid when we are able to just rest in the Lord. To just sit with Him and turn over all of our worries and fears to Him. Also, God rescues us from difficult situations when we need Him. He doesn’t abandon us. He is always there for us in good times and in bad. Lastly, He is definitely our Guide. How many times have we needed God to guide us through the rough parts of our lives? We need Him as a guide for the easy parts as well.The article goes on to say that Rod is Our Protection. When shepherds were herding sheep they used their rods to defend against anything that wanted to attack the sheep. This is what God does for us. He protects us from our enemies. The Rod is also a symbol of Love. The shepherds used to use their rods to count the sheep. You might be wondering how this is a symbol of Love. This is an act of love because the shepherd is making sure that all of his sheep are present and accounted for. God is doing the same thing for us. He does not want a single one of His sheep to get lost. He loves us too much. Now that I understand what the words rod and staff mean in the context of this verse and in the time that it was written, I feel as though I understand the verse as a whole better now. I can’t believe how much the Lord is saying to us with just a short sentence or two. I am also in awe sometimes thinking abou

Still Waters (Psalm 23)Psalm 23 "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.”I've been hearing this song called Still Waters (Psalm 23) by Leanna Crawford on KLOVE Radio a lot these past few days. Before leaving for Prayer Group I saw that the leader was using the song Psalm 23, although it was a different version of it, as one of the songs for the meeting. Yesterday afternoon I got this deep feeling that that's what I was supposed to talk to you about it because there's a lot of anxiety and worry going around these days. And I just talked to someone who lost her husband and she said she's paranoid these days. She's worried about all the financial aspects of your husband dying. She's worried about her future, she is worried about a lot of things.And I know she's not the only one. I know that we all have fear and worry over different kinds of things in our lives. I was really struck by the beginning part of the Still Waters song when it said, “Great Aunt Maurine said at a hundred and three, write scripture on your heart for when you need it.And it also really struck me when she said, “Cause anxiety hates Psalm 23. So just say it to yourself 'til you believe it.” And I just thought, isn't God so good? Isn't it amazing how he gives us exactly what we need found right there in the scriptures? I have to be honest, I don't know a lot about the Psalms. I know Robert from our morning prayer group always asks people what their favorite Psalm is because he's memorized a bunch of them. And I think what a beautiful thing.And also, I have no idea what my favorite Psalm is. And also, I didn't know that some of the Psalms have a specific purpose. I knew there were Psalms of praise and Psalms of lamentation. But I didn't know that there were Psalms that anxiety hated. And I didn't know that there were Psalms of protection like Psalm 91. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about Psalm 23 today, because I think it's one that we've heard often. And yet, I don't know if we really know how powerful it is. I know I didn't know how powerful it was. And honestly, I didn't even really understand what it meant.I never found it super powerful when I would read it, or even when I would hear it. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul.” I didn't know what that meant. And I don't know if I still know completely what it means. But what the Lord pointed out to me when I was listening to the song today was he leads me to still waters. Even in the storm, there's still waters. Even in the valleys, when you're at your lowest, he can lead you through that valley right next to still waters. To me, this verse is telling us that no matter what we're going through, if we let the Lord lead us, he'll lead us by still waters. He won't lead us into the eye of the storm.He won't lead us by chaos and confusion. If our eyes are fixed on him, and if we follow his path through the storm, there will be still waters that we can follow. And don't we all need some still waters in the craziness of the storm? Also, what stuck out to me today was when it said, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.I think we all want for things. I've heard from people in my prayer group, and from my parents, as we get older, we want for less. But I think there are all things we want, even if those things are peace, health, safe passage, or maybe it is material things. Whatever it is, we all want for things.And yet this is saying, the Lord is our shepherd, we shall not want. We can rely on him to give us all that we need, and all that we want. The Lord knows the desires of our hearts. He knows what it is we want. And he not only cares about the things that we need, but he cares about the things that we want too. He cares about the little requests, just as much as he cares about the big requests.I know sometimes we don't want to feel greedy, and we don't want to ask God for the little things, because we love him, and we know that he's already given us so much. So why should we ask for more? And yet the Lord tells us in our prayer group, in the words of prophecy, over and over again, “I have so much more for you, but you're not asking.” So ask the Lord, we shall not want, he will give us what it is we need, he will give us what it is we want.I feel like the Lord is saying there is no “too much.” Just ask. It can't hurt to ask. And that he wants to give us so much more. And we're not aski

Today, I have a special guest giving the devotional. My friend Catherine was asked to give the devotional to our mentoring group, and I loved her message, and I wanted to share it with all of you. I am sure you will love it to. It was given to a group of women, so she may say girls in the devotional, however, it is for everyone listening. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com CLICK HERE TO DONATE CLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emails CLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio training about inviting Jesus into your daily life CLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace

Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose two testimonies from the Addictions & Deliverance Category. Our family has been touched by addiction and I don’t think we are the only ones. One of my sons is desperately trying to quick vaping nicotine, which he was addicted to before he was really old enough to understand how addicting it is. I think these stories will offer some hope and encouragement. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. Hearing how God worked in their situation gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation also.Adrienne: In 2014, I began praying to God to remove these addictions from me. My life was a mess and all I cared about was my cigarettes and alcohol. God led me to the right resources, and I did manage to quit smoking and drinking (although not at the same time and I experienced some slips.)In 2018, with the help of God and a stop-smoking community, I gave up cigarettes for good. Then on June 23rd, 2020, God helped me once again and both my husband and I stopped drinking. The freedom and joy I feel from having both of these substances out of my life is amazing and like nothing, I’ve ever known. The “buzz” I get now from a life well lived is so much better than any buzz I received from cigarettes or alcohol. I am so incredibly grateful to be free of those chains. If you are struggling with overcoming an addiction, my advice to you is don’t give up on yourself and trust God. You may not break free immediately but with patience, perseverance, and the love and help of our Savior, you can overcome even the toughest addiction.With God, ALL things are possible!Chris: My name is Chris, I’m 32 years old and I’m from Houston, TX. I’m married to my wife, Keyla. We have 2 daughters Kaylee and Madison and a dog, Charlie Boy. As a child, I grew up in a loving home. I’m the youngest of 5 siblings. I grew up with mom and dad at home. We always had a tight bond. The thing is we didn’t know Jesus. Our lifestyle was that of sinners. Alcoholism and drug addiction were creeping around my family. At the age of 7, I was molested by a family member who was on drugs at the time. Years later, he committed suicide. But I forgave him. Mentally and emotionally it messed me up. At the age of 13, I myself started using drugs. I tried cocaine in the 7th grade, then started smoking marijuana. This was the beginning of a drug addiction that would last for a period of 18 years. At the age of 17, I went into a restoration home by the name of Outcry In The Barrio, founded by Pastor Freddy Garcia. By this time I was now using pills. My father was an alcoholic, my older brother, Jr., was selling drugs and was also addicted to drugs as well as my brother, Jerry, and sister, Brenda. My brother, John, was the only one in my family (along with my mother) who didn’t care for drugs or alcohol.So, I walked into this small duplex 1 bedroom house with about 15 guys living there. The leaders and the Pastor of the church told me Jesus would change my life if I would only surrender. As I began my journey of sobriety, every day for the next 6 months was hard and I wanted to leave. But I started to notice something- I noticed my family was coming to church. My brother, Jr., was the first in my family to give his life to Jesus and decided to make a change within himself. He was tired of the lifestyle he was living. Little by little my entire family got saved. By the fifth or sixth month, we were all getting baptized and living for Christ. As I graduated my program at the age of 18, I wish I could tell you that was it- that I have lived a clean sober life. But that would be a lie.The next 13 years were a battle, but it was no one’s fault but mine. After meeting my wife and getting married and having children, I thought that would help. But unfortunately and sadly it didn’t. I was selfish, stuck in my own ways, or addicted. My wife had enough. She moved out and went back to live with her parents, along with my daughters and Charlie Boy. By this time I couldn’t keep a job and I lost my house. I wrecked my car, lost my job, and found myself homeless on the streets and now addicted to crack. I literally lost everything. I was alone, in the streets, at times cold, at times wet because of the heavy rain, I lived like this for 3 long weeks. During the last week, after 6-7 days straight without food or anything to drink, I found myself in a prodigal stage. I cried out to the Lord and said, “Lord!!!!! What have I done? Look at me!!

We Are Saved By God’s GraceEphesians 2:3-5 “The corruption that was in us from birth was expressed through the deeds and desires of our self-life. We lived by whatever natural cravings and thoughts our minds dictated, living as rebellious children subject to God’s wrath like everyone else. But God still loved us with such great love. He is so rich in compassion and mercy. Even when we were dead and doomed in our many sins, he united us into the very life of Christ and saved us by his wonderful grace!”I love verses like this because when the Bible points out the things I am doing wrong, I know I am not the only one doing them. If I were the only one, or if only a few of us were living by whatever natural cravings and thoughts our minds dictated, then God wouldn’t put it in the Bible. The verse starts by saying, “The corruption that was in us from birth was expressed through the deeds and desires of our self-life.” We were all born with original sin. Adam and Eve were born into a perfect world. There was no sin; there was only love, and they got to stroll through the garden at night with the Lord. Their heavenly Father would come to visit them and talk with them.However, they were tricked by the serpent and ate the fruit from the tree of good and evil. I don’t know if they were misled or just enticed. The devil was laying out a pretty good picture of how God was trying to control them by telling them not to eat that fruit. The serpent told them they would be like God if they ate the fruit. Who wouldn’t want to be like God, right? So they ate the fruit. The interesting thing is that they were already like God. God made us in His likeness and image. They were already like God. However, once they ate that fruit, sin entered the world, and it didn’t want to leave.This is the corruption from birth that the verse is talking about. We are all born with original sin, and that is why Catholics believe you should be baptized as soon as you are born. Once you are baptized with the Holy Spirit, sin can’t say, it must leave. However, because we are human, our choices can allow sin to creep back into our lives. This sin that creeps back into our lives is expressed through our deeds and desires of our self-life. When sin creeps back in, we tend to live for ourselves instead of for God.I was listening to an Encounter Ministry talk yesterday, and the teacher talked about how she had a niece or a friend’s child whom she spoke to often. When the girl was little, my teacher would say things like, “How did you get to be so beautiful?” or “How did you get to be so nice?” and the little girl would say, “That’s just the way God made me.” There is such an innocence in this response. However, once we get a bit older and the world corrupts our thinking, and our sin crowds our minds, then we forget that this is how God made us and that He made each one of us just as we are for a reason.Once we allow sin to creep back in with our deeds and desires, our thoughts get distorted. We start to hate who we are, what we look like, what we sound like, and everything else about us. I was at a women’s conference once, and the speaker said that she asked everyone in the audience who hated their body to stand up, and 90% of the women stood up. She didn’t ask, who would change something about their body if they could? She didn’t ask, who dislikes something about their body? She asked who hated their body, and 90% of them stood up. This is the work of the enemy. We are not born hating our bodies. We are born with so much love, and then this broken world pollutes our minds and bodies.The line in the verse says, “ We lived by whatever natural cravings and thoughts our minds dictated, living as rebellious children subject to God’s wrath like everyone else.” This pretty much sums up my struggle. I have so many cravings and thoughts in my life that seem to dictate my life. Some things seem like they are not really a big deal, but when we really examine them, we see that they are not good for us. Do you have any cravings that take your focus away from God? You have thoughts that take up all your focus and that you are thinking about all the time. If you have ever had an addiction, you know exactly what I am talking about. I am lucky in that the addictions I have had have not been life-threatening, like drugs or alcohol. I am lucky that my addictions have not affected my life in ways like losing my family or losing my job. However, that doesn’t mean they were damaging.When I was addicted to TV, while I still am, but now I manage my addiction, I would watch TV all day long. I would not get anything done while the kids were at school, and I wouldn’t do anything after they went to bed, either. I would watch hours of TV a day. I can only imagine how different my life would be if I had spent that time growing closer to the Lord, growing my spiritual life, reading books to further my knowledge, or really anything else that would have been productive. The enemy kept

He Gives All The More GraceJames 4:6 “But he gives all the more grace; therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”Continuing on with our grace series, I wanted to share this verse with you. This is a pretty popular saying. I have heard it often. So let’s explore what this verse is telling us. First. God gives us all the more grace. If we are trying to live the way the Lord wants us to live, He will give us the grace to do so. Remember, grace is the power to do the right thing. Grace teaches us the right thing to do and then allows us to do it. So, why does the it mean for God to oppose the proud and give grace to the humble. Sometimes I know what a word means, like I could use it in a sentence and yet I don’t understand exactly what it means.In case this is you too, I want to break this verse down and share with you what I have learned about it. When the verse says God opposes the proud it is talking about those who strive to live by the world’s standards instead of the ones He has given to us. Do we strive to live our life according to the life God has set out before us, or do we strive to live the life the World tells us that we want? The world says that we should care about how much money we make and how much stuff we can accumulate. The world tells us that we should look out for ourselves first and everyone else second. The world tells us family values are a thing of the past. We are being good parents by providing for our family, we don’t have to spend time with them. It tells us that our children don’t want to spend time with us anyway.The world tells us who we are and who we should be. It tells us that we don’t deserve God’s love, we aren’t good enough for his mercy and grace, so why even bother trying to obtain it? Or it tells us that we have to strive and strive in order to earn God’s love. I know those are two contradicting things, but that is because the enemy is smart, and he will tell you whatever he thinks you need to hear. If you are someone who feels you have to earn love and affection, the enemy will tell you that you need to earn God’s love on your own merit. He will tell you that you have to work harder and harder, and yet you will never really feel like you have worked hard enough. If you are someone who feels like you are never good enough, the enemy will convince you that you shouldn’t even bother to try to earn God’s love because it is too far out of your reach. You simply aren’t enough, good enough, worthy enough, whatever it may be.What I have learned about this verse is that the proud are the ones who feel they have to earn God’s love on their own. They do not turn to the Lord and ask for His grace to help them change. They feel they can change independently, and then they will come to the Lord. This is prideful. Thinking we can do anything on our own is pretty prideful. We need the Lord to do all things. Well, we need Him to do all things correctly. We can do things on our own, but they definitely don’t turn out how they could if we invited the Lord into everything we do. Does this sound familiar to you? Have you ever thought you needed to do it all on your own? Have you ever felt like you needed to earn God’s love and acceptance? I am pretty sure we have all gone through times when we felt like this.Hopefully, we have also gone through times of humility. Being humble means that we come to God just as we are. We acknowledge that we are sinful and prideful, and yet we know that because He is all-powerful, He can help us change. We come to the Lord in our weak and broken state with the confidence that His grace can redeem us. God has already redeemed us. He sent His only Son, Jesus, to die on the cross so that we may be redeemed. Humility is accepting this forgiveness and turning to the Lord to help us change.I would like to say that being humble is something you decide to do and then that is the end of it. You decided to be humble so now you are a humble person. Being humble is something that you need to continually decide. You will be faced with many choices as you go throughout the day and you must keep making the choice that will help you grow in humility instead of pride. The enemy is good and he will try to trick you into choosing things that will actually help you grow in pride instead of humility.This is where grace comes in. Remember, grace is the power to do the right thing. Even in the face of evil, grace has the power to help us do the right thing. So, how do we call upon this grace? We just ask for it. We just come to the Lord and let Him know we need His grace. It can be as simple as, “God, I know I need you to come into this day with me and help me make the right choices.” It could be as simple as “Come, Holy Spirit, come.” What you say is nearly as important as it is that you do say something. You must acknowledge your reliance on the Lord. Let God know that you invite Him in and that you need Him and His grace.Without God’s grace, with

Where Sin Increased, Grace Abounded All The MoreRomans 5:20-21 “Law came in, to increase the trespass; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that , as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”Today’s episode is one I wrote over a year and a half ago and yet goes perfect with this series on grace so I will re-read it for you today. When I read this verse this morning I knew it was the one to talk about because one of the speakers mentioned it in their talk last week at the conference and I thought he made a really good point. I will see if I can help you see the beauty in the time we are living in. Let me begin with the first line of this verse because I didn’t understand it. It was one of those lines that I just want to skip over to get to the part I can explain at least a little better. However, my commitment to you is that we will really examine these scriptures and we will gain a better understanding of what they mean. We can not do that if I skip over the ones I don’t understand. So, instead I decided to see what those who do Bible commentary have to say about this verse. The reason I don’t understand it is because it sounds like it is saying God gave us the law so that we might sin more. Do you see why that would be confusing to me? Why would God want us to sin more? Figuring out what scriptures like this is really saying is why I love doing this podcast. A few years ago, if I was reading that on my own, I probably would have just moved on, I don’t know that I would have looked it up to see what it was saying. This is another reason I am grateful for each of you listening to this podcast. You push me to learn and to grow because you are willing to learn and grow with me. Thank you!What I found out about this verse is that ever since Adam and Eve took and ate of the apple, sin came into the world. It is not that people were sinning more, it was that they were noticing their sin more. In this verse, Paul is not saying that God introduced the Law because He wanted to make us sin more, but that He wanted us to be more aware of our sins and the fact that we had a totally sinful nature. We were already sinning, we just didn’t realize what we were doing was a sin. The analogy I read said its like accusing a kid of stealing a cookie before you even tell him what stealing is. If there is no law against taking a cookie then he is not stealing it. However, once there is a law and once he understands it, then any cookies he takes after that is willful disobedience. God was helping us to see all the ways we were not living how we were meant to live. They say the first step to change is acknowledging that you need to change. How could the Israelites be expected to change if they did not know what they were doing was wrong? This was the point to the law, to show them their sins, not to make them sin more.The next part of the verse above says, "but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” This line explains to us that God didn’t just give them the law, but He gave them grace as well. Here is a quote from an article titled, "Pastor: What the grace of God does in us” by Rev. J. Patrick Street. I will place a link for it in the show notes (click here for article). This is what the pastor said about grace:“You see that the grace of God is more than salvation but also everything we need for life and godliness. The definition of grace could be “God's life, power and righteousness given to us by unmerited favor.” It is through grace that God works effective change in our hearts and lives. Grace gives us a new life which is not condemned by God. Through God's grace we are forgiven, transforming our thinking, resulting in the renewal of our mind and heart. Through grace we live the kind of life that God would like every one of His children to experience.” The grace of god is essential for us to live the way God wants us to live. We need God’s grace. One of the speakers at the conference was talking about how the world is crazy right now. He was talking about how the devil is having a hay day with the world and that sin is running rampant. He also said we shouldn’t be afraid because where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. God’s grace is alive and well and is within all of us. We received a word of prophecy almost six months ago in our prayer group and I think it fits well with what we are talking about today. Let me read it to you:"How often I tell you my people to listen. To listen to my word, to not harden your hearts, but to listen to my voice. How often I tell you parables, parables that compare to life, to the life you live. You look around you and you think the world has never been in worse shape than it is now. For you that is true for others that have come before you they felt the same. But the world is in the best shape it has ever been in because I was born into this world and I gave my life for each one of

What Does Grace Even Mean?Titus 2:11-12 “God’s marvelous grace has manifested in person, bringing salvation for everyone. This same grace teaches us how to live each day as we turn our backs on ungodliness and indulgent lifestyles, and it equips us to live self-controlled, upright, godly lives in this present age.”I had someone reach out to me and ask me about God’s grace. I talk about it a lot and so I thought I would take the next few days and look at what Scripture has to say about God’s grace. The verse above is a great place to start. It begins with God’s marvelous grace has manifested in person brining salvation for everyone. Jesus was God’s grace manifested in person. Jesus came to bring salvation to all of us. He died on the cross so that we would be saved. He took all of our sins, all of our shame, all that is not right and brought it to the cross with Him. He healed us from our sinful nature. He saved us from ourselves. He set us free from the hold the enemy had over us ever since sin entered this world.He saved us and set us free and yet it is our job to walk in that freedom. How does one do that? How do we walk in our freedom? The second part of today’s verse addresses that. This same grace that brought us salvation also teaches us how to live each day as we turn our backs on ungodliness and indulgent lifestyles. If Jesus was the grace that set us free then how can that same grace teach us how to live our lives? Jesus is not longer on earth. He went to be with the Father. In John 14:18 Jesus said, “I promise that I will never leave you helpless or abandon you as orphans—I will come back to you!” Then in verse 26 it says, “But when the Father sends the Spirit of Holiness, the One like me who sets you free, he will teach you all things in my name. And he will inspire you to remember every word that I’ve told you.”Jesus was here on earth and yet His time teaching us was not very long. He did a lot of teaching while He was here. He gave a lot of hard teachings that shaped the way we understand God and what God actually wants from us. He also did a lot of signs and wonders while he was here teaching. However, His main purpose for coming was to set us free. His main purpose was to redeem us so we no longer have to be separate from the Father. Once He did that, His job was over and He went to be with the Father. However, you can see in John 14:18 & 26 that He did not leave us alone to our own devices. He asked His Father to send the Holy Spirit to dwell within us.The Holy Spirit was sent to us to help us walk in our freedom. He was sent to us to teach us all the things that we need to know and to inspire us to remember all that Jesus taught us. I don’t know exactly how to define grace. However, I do know that the verse above says, “This same grace teaches us how to live each day as we turn our backs on ungodliness and indulgent lifestyles, and it equips us to live self-controlled, upright, godly lives in this present age.” I wonder if Grace is the Holy Spirit?The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) defines grace as a free and undeserved gift from God that enables people to respond to God’s call to become children of God. The CCC also describes grace as a participation in the life of God. The CCC distinguishes between two types of grace. One is habitual grace: A permanent disposition to act and live in accordance with God’s call. Second is actual grace: God’s intervention, such as when someone is tempted to do something wrong, but God sends actual grace to help them choose what is right.It sounds to me like grace is a power that God gives us to resist what is bad and to do what is right. Who doesn’t need more of that in their life? It also sounds like grace teaches us right from wrong. We don’t need to look to the world for that, as the world often teaches us the opposite of what God teaches us. Isn’t it great to know that we don’t have to remember everything on our own? Isn’t great to know that when we aren’t sure what to do, which is the right thing to do and what is the wrong thing to do then we can rely on the Holy Spirit and God’s grace to show us what to do.I find it comforting to know that I don’t have to do the right thing in my own power. In personal development, you often hear a lot about a person’s willpower. Do they have the willpower to stick to the diet? Do they have enough willpower to keep going to the gym? It’s all about a person’s willpower. I love that it is not all up to me. I know that I am weak and if we are just relying on my power, not much will get done. Yet, we aren’t just relying on our own power. We have the power of the one who raised Jesus from the dead living inside of us. This power was given to us so that we could be taught right from wrong. This power was given to us so we could overcome our challenges, our weaknesses, and our chains.Jesus died on the cross to redeem us. Then He sent the Holy Spirit to be with us to help us walk in that freedom. That means we are no

Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose three testimonies from the Broken Chapter Category. We all have times in our lives when things don’t go as we thought they would. I think we have all had tragedy strike in one way or another. Some are worse than others but I don’t think anyone has had a tragedy-free life. The witnesses today are no different. They have had some truly terrible things happen and yet they are able to testify to how God was with them through it. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation also. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your situation, He can help.Jasmyn: Matthew, I loved getting your letter years ago when I wrote to you! Your music is so awesome! “Me On Your Mind” touches my heart because I was in a near-death experience 2 years ago when I was hit by a car crossing the street with my long white cane since I’m blind and Jesus had me on His mind. I suffered some injuries such as a fractured pelvis, abrasions on my stomach, arms, and legs from where she dragged me on the pavement, a fractured wrist, that were non-life threatening, along with high blood pressure and fatty liver. I had to stay in the hospital for a day to make sure my injuries weren’t life-threatening. I was lying in my hospital bed asking Jesus why did this older lady decide to drive if she didn’t know how to and why me? I had anger towards this older lady for taking away part of my independence, since walking was my only thing I could do because of my visual impairment from glaucoma which means I can’t drive at all. The hospital said I had to be on bed rest and get physical therapy to strengthen my pelvis since it was fractured. I was depressed and angry at this woman for putting me in this situation because I couldn’t go anywhere according to the doctor’s orders . I felt worthless, “Great! Not only can I not drive if I want to get out of the house, now, I can’t walk around independently because I have PTSD that this will happen. Again!”I was even asking Jesus, “why did you rescue me? I am worthless now that I can’t walk around and my family has to drive me everywhere because of this accident. What good am I now that I’m blind and physically impaired now?” But I could feel Jesus telling me, “Jasmyn, there is a reason why you didn’t die from being hit by a car, you have a mission to complete on earth which is helping children who are blind and visually impaired to be everything they’re supposed to be through me. I will use you to do this and your story of your accident to help other people in your shoes to get to know me.” I’m glad that I listened to the voice of my Lord and Savior who rescued me because He wasn’t done with me yet. I have been blessed with a new church where I volunteer with children teaching them about Jesus, I am a volunteer Braille teacher at my blind center here in Pennsylvania, I go to the gym and library to take care of my physical and mental health, and I’m in grad school studying to be a teacher for the visually impaired. Last year, my church let me share my experience with God about my accident. My speech touched a lot of hearts in church and I even had some people that were crying. I have had the opportunity to share my story with my blind center to get donations to make it better. My pastor has told me that my accident is a great opportunity to get more people to Jesus and tell people what He could do for them like He has done for me! I feel like I’m living. I feel like I’m letting Jesus use my story for His glory!Susan: My story is a story of healing and restoration. I accepted Christ at the age of 19 and floated along until I was three days from a divorce. The Lord restored our marriage and we have been married for 35 years. He called my husband to preach and we went to seminary and have been in the ministry since 1998. We have been hurt multiple times by different church members but we have gotten back up.My mother passed away in 2018 and that tilted my world in a way that I never could have imagined. If only I would have known that my world would totally fall off the axis when my 6 month old granddaughter was shot and killed by her own mother who then shot and killed herself. My son was on the phone with his wife when it happened. I did not see the Lord through that time but I know He was there holding my family up. I see Him in every single

He Sees You As Holy, Flawless, and RestoredColossians 1:21-22 “Even though you were once distant from him, living in the shadows of your evil thoughts and actions, he reconnected you back to himself. He released his supernatural peace to you through the sacrifice of his own body as the sin-payment on your behalf so that you would dwell in his presence. And now there is nothing between you and Father God, for he sees you as holy, flawless, and restored."There was no way that I could read a verse like the one above and not share it with you. This is something I think God wants us all to know. We usually assume the opposite. We believe when God looks at us all He sees is our mistakes and our failures. We are sure that when He looks at us He finds us unworthy and not enough. How many times have we thought that? How often have we thought negatively about ourselves and assumed God felt the same way? We all do it. Yet this verse says something very different.I love the word choice in this verse. First, it says, “Even though you were once distant from him, living in the the shadows of your evil thoughts and actions, He reconnected you back to himself.” I love this part because it emphasizes our role in our redemption. It doesn’t say that if we do everything right and fix our relationship with the Lord, He will welcome us back. It says He reconnected you back to himself. God does the hard part. All we need to do is say yes and let Him in.We don’t need to fix ourselves. This is where we go wrong a lot of the time. We want to do it all on our own. We want to fix ourselves up all nice and pretty before we come to the Lord, and what He is telling us is that He already sees us all fixed up and beautiful. The verse says, “He released his supernatural peace to you through the sacrifice of his own body as the sin-payment on your behalf so that you would dwell in his presence.” Due to original sin we were no longer allowed to dwell in the Lord’s presence. Now, because of His sacrifice we are allowed to. His sacrifice made us worthy. Are we going to accept that worthiness, or are we going to continue to tell the Lord that His sacrifice wasn’t enough to make us worthy?The last part of the verse says, “And now there is nothing between you and Father God, for he sees you as holy, flawless, and restored.” This part blows my mind. I know the Lord loves me. I know He thinks I am special. I know this because I take the time to sit and talk with Him. You could know this too if you take the time to listen to all He wants to say to you. However, reading this verse in this translation hit me in a new way.God, the all-powerful, the King of Kings, and the Lord of Lords, sees me as holy, flawless, and restored. Can you believe that? I imagine not. I imagine that is not what the enemy wants us to believe. He whispers lies in our ears all the time about how unworthy and not enough we are. He tells us God couldn’t possibly love us or forgive us because what we did is too bad, it’s too much. The devil is a liar. God sacrificed his only son for you! Jesus died on the cross for you! Are you telling me there is something you could have done that is too big for this sacrifice to cover?There is a song called Flawless by Mercy me and I think the lyrics really get across what the Lord is telling us today. Here are the lyrics: There's got to be moreThan going back and forthFrom doing right to doing wrongCause we were taught that's who we areCome on get in line right behind meYou along with everybodyThinking there's worth in what you do This is what we think. We think we need to be good enough to earn God’s love, to earn his mercy and his forgiveness. We think we need to fix ourselves. We need to clean ourselves us and get all pretty before we come to the Lord. This is hard on our own and we do good for a bit and then we mess up again. As the song says, there has to be more than this back and forth. Then the song says:Then like a hero who takes the stage when we'reOn the edge of our seats saying it's too lateWell let me introduce you to amazing graceAmazing grace, this is what we don’t count on. This is what we many not even know a lot about. I am going to be doing a series on grace soon. I will be using scripture verses to explain what grace even is and why we should all know all about it. I love this part of the song because it reminds us that even when we think it is too late, it is never too late for God. No matter how far gone we think we are, we are never too far gone for God. There is no darkness to dark for Him. There is no place to distant for Him. Wherever you are, however far away you think you are listen to the words of the verse above, “he reconnected you back to himself.” Just call out and He will reconnect you back to Himself! The song goes on to say,No matter the bumpsNo matter the bruisesNo matter the scarsStill the truth isThe cross has madeThe cross has made you flawless I know you think I don’t understand. I know you think you have

Dance Like No One Is Watching2 Samuel 6:14-16 “And David danced before the Lord with all his might; and David was belted with a linen ephod. So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound of the horn.”I like this verse because it shows how happy David was that the Arc was coming back home. It says that David danced before the Lord with all of his might; and that David was belted with a linen ephod. I am not sure how much you know about David, so let me give you a quick recap. David is the King. He is usually dressed as a King in splendid garments. However, in order to bring the Arc of the Covenant back into Jerusalem David had set aside his royal robes and was “wearing a linen ephod”—a clear indication that he was not naked. The ephod David wore was a garment usually reserved for priests and those ministering before the Lord. As David led the procession of the ark into the city, he humbly laid aside his royal garments and worshiped the Lord, in ecstatic joy, as the representative of God’s “kingdom of priests.” There is so much in these 3 short verses. First, David was dancing before the Lord with all his might. When is the last time you danced in front of the Lord with all your might? When is the last time you did anything in front of the Lord with all your might? What amazes me is that David was the leader, he was the king and yet he humbled himself and set aside his royal robes to welcome the Arc of the Covenant back into the city. David was the king and yet he didn’t care what others though of him. He didn’t care that he was wearing very little clothing. He didn’t care that he might look silly dancing around like a fool. In fact, in a later verse one of his wives sees him leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart. When he got home she called him on his behavior and he didn’t try and defend it, he didn’t feel he needed to explain himself to her, he simply said in 2 Samuel 6:21, “It was before the Lord, who chose me above your father, and above all his house, to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the Lord—and I will make merry before the Lord.” He is basically saying that he doesn’t care what she thinks. The Lord has done amazing things for him, so he will praise him any way he likes.I wonder what it would be like to have that kind of courage. Actually I don’t think it took courage for David. I don’t think it even occurred to him to stop and think about what others would think. I bet his love for God was so great, he couldn’t help but be filled with joy! I love that David was filled with joy. I have heard it said that martyrs, those who die for the faith, don’t really have a choice. Their faith is so strong, their love and belief is so strong that the option to stay alive as long as they denounce their faith, is not an option at all for them. They couldn’t do it. I think it similar with David and the way he worships. I think his heart is over flowing with joy of the Lord and so the option to “tone down” his praise, it not really an option for him. It is not something that would enter his mind. I don’t think he is thinking of others at all. I think his eyes are fixed on God and that is all he is thinking about when he is praising.I wish this was me. I wish I could freely praise God without worrying what the person next to me is thinking. I wish I could just throw my hands up in the air or dance around the room without the fear of being judged. I pray for a holy boldness all the time. However, maybe I need to pray for a deeper faith, or a less distracted faith? Maybe I need to pray for God to help me keep my eyes fixed on Him so I am not thinking of what others might be thinking. It seems crazy to me that I would care more about what other people think than I would about what God thinks. I know God would be smiling down at me if I was to let loose and just worship with a childlike sense of abandonment. If I know God would be smiling, why do I care what others will think? This is my great mystery. This is the thing I keep trying to tell myself and yet I still get nervous about what others will think. I am working on this and I hope to get to David’s level of praise someday. I pray I will be able to just let the Holy Spirit lead me however He wants to. I pray I will be able to give up that control and just follow the Spirit as He leads me in praise. I pray I will have so much joy, like David did, that I can’t help but dance and leap for joy. I pray I have so much joy I can’t contain it. Sometimes I stand in the back of the church during praise and worship in my class. This way I don’t have to worry about being judged because everyone else’s eyes are straight ahead focused on Jesus. I don’t know why I think people will judge me, I am not judging them, my eyes are fixed on Jesus too. The last verse says, “So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound of the horn

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

God Will Make A Way Where There Is No WayJohn 16:33 “I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!”This is something that we can all take heart in knowing. We will all face persecution, but Jesus has conquered this world. We don’t have to worry that the persecution will be the end of us. Sometimes it feels like it will. There are times when the persecution seems like it is too much, like we are drowning and we can’t possible come up for air. This is when it is important to remember this verse. The enemy will definitely try to make you feel like he is winning. He will make you feel like you are in a losing situation and no matter what happens you can’t win.This is actually his specialty. He loves to make us feel like we are in a hopeless situation. He whispers in our ear that there is no way out. No matter what you do, you hurt someone, you lose someone, you end up getting hurt, whatever it is. I have had several friends that have been in this type of situation lately. When we are in those situations the enemy may be right, there is no way out that we can see. It is those last words that I want you to focus on. No way out that we can see. The thing is, we don’t have to see a way out. God can see things that we can’t see. He can make a way where there is no way. God is really good at making a way in times when people thought for sure there wasn’t a way. I am sure when the Israelites were leaving Egypt and they were being pursued by the Egyptian army they thought there was no way out. The army was gaining on them and all they saw in front of them was the Red Sea. There was no possible outcome that they could see where they lived. If they tried to cross the Red Sea they would drown. If they turned back they would be caught and surly be killed for fleeing. It seemed like they were in an impossible situation. However, God made a way where there was no way. In Exodus 14:15-18 it says, “Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry out to me? Tell the Israelites to go forward. But you lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the Israelites may go into the sea on dry ground. Then I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them; and so I will gain glory for myself over Pharaoh and all his army, his chariots, and his chariot drivers. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I have gained glory for myself over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his chariot drivers.”I am 100% sure that there wasn’t a single person in that group of people that saw that way out. God can make a way where there is no way. Maybe you are in a situation where you can’t see a way out, hang in there, God has a plan. Maybe you are in a situation where there is no good choice, God will show you which to choose if you ask Him. If you are stuck in a situation and you can’t see a way out, I urge you to read Isaiah 43. I found Isaiah 43:15-16, “I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King. Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters,” when I was searching for a verse about God making a way where there wasn’t one. However, when I went to the verse I decided to read the whole chapter and it is really good. It talks about various things that the Lord has done for us over the years. Isaiah 43:19 says, “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”The Bible is full of stories where God did the impossible, where He did something that no one saw coming. Remember Daniel in the lion’s den? Daniel continued to pray to our Lord, even when it was outlawed and so he was thrown in the Lion’s pit. God sent and angel to keep the Lion’s mouths closed so they wouldn’t eat Daniel. This can be found in Daniel 6. There was also Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego that refused to bow to King Nebuchadnessar’s golden statue and were thrown in the fiery furnace. God sent an angel into the furnace to keep them from burning up. This can be found in Daniel 3. I am sure no-one involved in these two circumstances could have seen these two outcomes. However, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego all had the courage to stay in the fight. They had the courage to trust God would get them out of the situation even when they couldn’t see how. Can we be more like this guys? Can we keep doing the next right thing, even when we don’t see how it will all turn out? Can we keep going when it seems like all is lost?This bible verse reminds us that all is not lost. Yes, the enemy might be making your life miserable, just he was with Job. Remember Job? He lost everything. His crops, his animals, his children, and eventually his health. He could not see any way forward that wasn’t filled with misery. And yet, he stayed in the fight. He didn’t give up on God. If you ever feel like your life can’t ge

Today’s guest speaker is a very special guest because he is my dad, Pierre D. Pierre is a deacon at his church, he is a husband and father to 11 children and numerous grandchildren and great grandchildren. My mom and dad raised us all in the Catholic faith and I am so very grateful to them. They didn’t just send us to religious education classes and bring us to church on Sunday, they lived the faith all day every day. They were so faithful and they showed us how to rely on the Lord. Having 11 children means there is never enough money for all your needs and yet we never went without all that we needed. God was so good to my parents and I am excited to have my dad share some of his experiences with you. Today he will be talking about how a life in the spirit seminar changed his life. I know you will enjoy this as much as I did! We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at [email protected] or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day! 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

Struck Down, But Not Destroyed2 Corinthians 4:8-9 “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”I saw this verse written on a page in my book today and thought to myself, man if there was ever a time that we needed to hear this. The world is crazy right now. There is so much tragedy and pain. It seems like it all keeps coming in waves. It is like one thing after another. Life seemed like maybe it was beginning to calm down a bit and then all the violence in Afghanistan and now the hurricane in Louisiana. It seems to be nonstop these days. If you watch the news a lot you can easily get overwhelmed and scared. I think it is important to stay inform and I also think that we need to protect ourselves at the same time. If you find that watching the news makes you anxious and fearful then maybe watch less of it. You can be informed without having the news on 24 hours a day. Remember that we are in charge of protecting our thoughts. We get to decide what we allow to influence our mind. There needs to be some balance between the craziness of the world and the grounding influence of God. For instance, if you are watching an hour of the news, maybe watch an hour of something that makes you remember all is not bad. Maybe listen to a podcast or read a spiritual book. Anyway, back to this scripture. It does seem right now like we are “hard pressed on every side.” It seems like bad things are coming at us from all sides. Like in those movies when the walls start closing in and the room gets smaller and smaller. Life can often feel like that. It can be hard to breathe sometimes because we feel squeezed on all sides. It is important to remember when we feel like this that although we feel pressed, we are not crushed. We are still here, the trouble has not gotten the better of us. God will not let that happen. He may let us fall down with the weight of it all, but he will not let is crush us and he will be there to pick us back up again if we do fall. The next part says perplexed, but not in despair. I don’t think there is a single person in the world, or at least in this country that is not perplexed right now. Trying to understand what is going on in the world right now leaves us all confused. A global pandemic, how does that happen? Why does that happen? All the systemic racism in this country, how did we let that happen? How do we begin to change it? Why all the natural disasters, the wild fires, the hurricanes & earthquakes, the flooding? What is going on in this world? Although this is all very confusing, hopefully we are not in despair. What is despair? Despair is the complete loss or absence of hope. I can see how it could be easy these days to fall into despair. I could see how many could be starting to question if we have hope. What about the people that are in Louisiana right now. The last two years have been awful for everyone and I feel as though our country was just starting to come back to life a little. People seemed to be looking towards the future with a little more light and hope. Then this hurricane comes and devastates so many people. Or what about those that have lost people in Afghanistan, or what about the refugees of Afghanistan. It is easy to understand why people might be falling into despair. We must fight these feelings of despair. Yes, times are incredibly hard right now. Yes it seems like it is coming at us from all angles and we can’t seem to catch a break. But there is always hope. If God brought you to it, He will bring you through it. The last part of the verse says persecuted but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. Is this how you are feeling? Are you feeling persecuted? I know many in this country are feeling this right now. If this is you, know that you are not abandoned. God never leaves your side. He is there with you even when you are feeling persecuted. God actually told us in the bible that we would be persecuted. Matthew 5:10-12 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” God is there with you through this all and He even states that your reward is great in heaven. If you are feeling struck down right now, know that God will not let this situation destroy you. It may feel like you are destroyed, but God won’t let that happen. You may be down, but you are not down for the count. God will help you get back on your feet again. Trust that He is there for you and lean into Him when you feel like you don’t have the strength to do it on your own. He is strong. He can handle the weight of your problems. Sometimes we don’t have to lean on God because we feel like He is too busy or because we do

The Tree House2 Corinthians 1:20 “For all of God’s promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding “Yes!” And through Christ, our “Amen” (which means “Yes”) ascends to God for his glory.”All God’s promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding “yes!” How great is that? All God’s promises have been fulfilled. There is not one thing that God promised that He has not followed through on. That is amazing. I wish I could say the same. There is a house down the street from us that just got renovated. The new owners built a whole new second floor to this house. They also did a lot of renovations on the outside of the house and in the yard. One thing they built in the yard is a beautiful tree house. It looks so awesome and even has a climbing wall on one side so if they didn’t want to take the stairs, they could take the more difficult way up. I feel like life is like this. I feel like God provides us the stairs to make it to the top, but often times we choose the climbing wall. We could choose the path that was pretty well laid out for us where we just need to put one foot in front of the other and climb one step at a time. We know the next right step and we continue to take each step until we reach the end. However, sometimes we choose the difficult path. Sometimes we choose the climbing wall. We chose the path where we don’t know what the next step is. We need to feel our way through and look for where each new step is. We can’t find the next step until we take the first step. And depending on where we step, we will have limited options for our next step. The reason I thought of this tree house when the reading was talking about promises is because we told our middle son, Noah, that we would help him build a tree house. And yet that never happened? Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever told someone, promised someone, that you would do something, and then not done it. It is an awful feeling to not keep a promise and to let someone down. I am not sure why it never got done. I am sure I can find a whole list of excuses. However, none of them make me feel better when I see the beautiful tree house this family built. Regret is a terrible feeling. I am definitely not a fan. It is definitely an opening for the enemy to get in and destroy some people. I have seen it numerous time on TV and movies. Can you think of anyone you know that just can’t let go of something that happened in the past? Sometimes we can get stuck on something in our past and we let it bother us for far too long. I am not saying we shouldn’t feel bad if we broke a promise to someone. I wish we were like God and we could keep every promise that we make. Unfortunately, we are a broken people and so occasionally, we will break promises. What is important is what we do after we break a promise. Do we repent and ask the person for forgiveness? Do we forget about everything and start over again? Do we pretend it never happened and just move on? What is the right protocol in this scenario? I would say we should go back to the golden rule. How would you like someone to act towards you in this scenario. I think repentance is important. Tell the person you are sorry you did not follow through with the action you promised you would do. Try to make it up to them in some way. If you can’t make it up to them then apologize and move forward from there.What is not a good idea in this situation is to sit and think about what you did over and over again. Regret is not good because it eats away at you slowly from the inside. I read a book once called Miracle Mornings. It is a book by Hal Elrod. It is an excellent read in case you have not heard of it before. It is a book about how to start a really helpful morning routine. Anyway, the author talks about a 5 minute rule that I feel could be really helpful here. He used to see Cutco knives. He would get really upset when someone would cancel their appointment with him because he worked off commission. His boss told him about the 5 minute rule. This is a way to not get stuck in the negative feelings. He said when something upsets you take a minute and think about whether or not you can change the thing that just happened? For instance, someone calls up to cancel and appointment with you at the last minute. Can you change the fact that this customer canceled? No. In this case, where there is nothing that you can do to change it, you set a timer for 5 minutes and that is how long you allow yourself to be upset. You have 5 minutes to yell, scream, cry, etc and then you need to move on. Hal found this 5 minute rule to be very helpful in his life. At first he said it took longer than 5 minutes. He said after 5 minutes if you still can’t let the emotions go, set the timer for another 5 minutes. Eventually you will train yourself to let things go sooner. If there is nothing you can do about a situation then there is no reason to keep dwelling on it.This is what the enemy wants. He wants us to dwell on

God Will Fulfil Every Need!Philippians 4:19 “I am convinced that my God will fully satisfy every need you have, for I have seen the abundant riches of glory revealed to me through Jesus Christ!”This was in a letter from St. Paul the Philippians. When I read it this morning I wondered, are we convinced? I know St. Paul was convinced, he had seen God come through time and time again for him and his followers. However, what if we haven’t seen God come through? What if we have never really been in a situation where it felt like we needed God to come through? How do we become convinced that God will satisfy our every need?What comes to my mind first is that if you haven’t seen God provide for you then you aren’t looking hard enough. I would argue if you have never had a time when it felt like you had to rely on God then God has blessed you even more because you never went without. I do think if you have little and you have no idea where your next meal or the money to pay the bills is going to come from, then you learn to rely on God more and you get to see Him work more in your lives. That does not mean that He is working more, it just means that you see it more.God is working in each one of our lives. There isn’t a single one of us that He puts on earth and then just forgets about. He knows everything about each one of us. He not only knows your needs but He knows your wants and your desires too. He put them in your heart. He will take care of providing for you all that you need. However, He will also help you get the things you want as well. Oftentimes it is not in the time that we want.For instance, we may have wanted to get married when we were 20 and instead, it happened when we were 40. I don’t know why this happens but what is coming to mind right now is two different scenarios. First, maybe we weren’t the person we needed to be earlier in life. Maybe if we had gotten married earlier it wouldn’t have worked out because we weren’t ready. The second is that God allows us to make our own choices so maybe we weren’t listening to Him and we were doing our own thing. God's ways are higher than our ways so I have no idea why things don’t happen in our timing. I wish I did. I wish I had an answer for every person who wanted a child and didn’t have one, or wanted to be married and hasn’t found the right person yet. I wish I could tell you why sometimes you have desires that weren’t realized. I honestly don’t have answers for that.I do know it says in Romans 5:5, “Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” Hope in the Lord does not disappoint so we don't have to be scared or afraid to hope in the Lord for our dreams and desires to come true. I don’t think we have to be afraid our dreams are not His dreams for us either. I believe He put our dreams in our hearts and as long as we are close with Him, as long as we are doing our best to listen to Him, then we don't have to be worried about them not being His dreams for us too.I just spent some time talking about how God will provide all we need for our heart’s desires. What I want to talk about now is something that I am not sure many people know or believe. God can and will provide for your everyday needs too. Did you know that God can give you money, food, cars, or whatever you need in miraculous ways? We tend to put God in a box and we think He has the same constraints that we have. We look at our situation and we don’t see a way and we assume there isn’t a way. However, God is a way maker. He doesn’t need to follow a path, He can create His own path. Just as He did for the Israelites when he parted the Red Sea.However, it doesn’t have to be that dramatic. Sometimes He can create a miraculous answer to your prayer without a big show, without fanfare, without you even realizing it is Him doing it. My dad is a deacon and so I got a front-row seat to hear him talk about all the ways God helped our family. Honestly, I feel like he could talk about them all day every day and we would never run out of miracle stories. I don’t think my family is unique in this way. I think God is working miracles in many of our lives. I think there are two differences with my parents that others may not be doing.First, they always went to God with their needs. They didn’t try to solve it first on their own. They didn’t save prayer for the last resort. Luckily they both knew the power of prayer and so it was their first response to a problem. Second, they were on the lookout for the miracle. They have this faith that they are absolutely sure God will provide. It is amazing to watch. They never told us growing up that we should pray and that if we were lucky, God would provide for us. They never told us God might come through. They taught us that God is a God who provides and if we ask He answers. I am more grateful for that lesson than for anything else they taught me. Sitting in the pews at church listen

The Example of Jesus ChristPhilippians 2:6-8 “He existed in the form of God, yet he gave no thought to seizing equality with God as his supreme prize. Instead, he emptied himself of his outward glory by reducing himself to the form of a lowly servant. He became human! He humbled himself and became vulnerable, choosing to be revealed as a man and was obedient. He was a perfect example, even in his death—a criminal’s death by crucifixion!What jumped out at me in this verse was the line that says, “He emptied himself of his outward glory by reducing himself to the form of a lowly servant.” Jesus did not just enter existence when He was born into this world. I guess I never really thought of that before. Have you noticed that God reveals things to us slowly? Or maybe it is just that it takes us a while to come around to being curious enough to be taught. I am not sure. I do know that I am always learning new things. You would think being Catholic my whole life, going through all the religious education classes as a kid, teaching them as an adult and even participating in RCIA, I would know all there is to know. However, I am always learning something new.I am sure it is the same with you. The Bible is so vast, our Catholic religion is so rich, there is no way anyone can know everything. Even if we think we have it all figured out, the Lord opens up an old favorite scripture in a new way. That is so amazing to me. God is so good!!It says in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” This is true. What is also true is that Jesus volunteered for the job. I sort of had it in my mind for the longest time that there was God, and he was alone. Then he decided to give us Jesus through Mary and the Holy Spirit. But I never thought about Jesus existing before He walked the earth. I never thought of the fact that He had a say in the matter. We read about Jesus in the garden the night before he was crucified. We read about how He was in agony because He knew what He had to go through and yet was willing to do it anyway. However, we don’t really talk about how it was His choice to live this life. Yes, God gave Him to us, but not without His permission.Can you imagine, Jesus was up in heaven with God. He was/is God. He is sitting up there surrounded by the angels. He is being praised and worshipped all day and night. Everything is great, everything is perfect. There is no illness, there is no anger or hate, there is only love. Can you imagine sitting up in heaven and looking down at Earth and seeing how much we are struggling? Not only that though, He could see the brokenness of the world. He could see how cruel people were. He could see how much greed and jealousy there was. He could see all the pain and suffering. He could see all the violence. He could see all of that and yet His desire to save us was greater than His desire to stay in Heaven where all was perfect.He decided to enter into a broken world. He decided to come down and join a world that He already knew would hate Him, mistreat Him, and eventually crucify Him. Can you even imagine that? I can’t. I know some people have died and gone to heaven but then were brought back to life. I can’t imagine being that close to heaven and then having to come back to this broken world. Heaven was His home. He was at home with His dad and the Holy Spirit and agreed to leave all that behind to save us.We live in a world that emphasizes fame and fortune. Everyone wants to be on top and many are not afraid to step on others to get there. We definitely don’t see a lot of humility. We don’t see a lot of people who are willing to let others take the credit for the things they have done. But Jesus didn’t want the glory. When He first started healing people He would tell them to go in peace and not to tell anyone what He had done. He was happy to live in the shadows and not get credit for the work He had done.I am not a big Olympics fan. I am not sure why I never really got into it. Maybe because my parents weren’t into it. Or maybe they were but we didn’t have a TV for a lot of years when I was growing up so we couldn’t have watched it if we wanted to. I did not watch the Olympics this year unless I happened to be out and about and it was on the TV. For instance, I was at a retirement celebration at a restaurant and they had the Olympics on the TV. It was a trampoline competition which I had no idea was even an Olympic event. They were awesome though. Most of what I learned about the Olympics this year came from my children filling me in or clips I saw on YouTube when I was uploading my podcast episodes.There were so many good stories that I heard. One was about the second and third-place gymnastics winners bowing to the first-place winner to show her respect and show they honor her. Another one was not at the Olympics but at a different race. There was a runner from Kenya who mistook

Click Here for the Saints Be To God WebsiteGod is Good,All the time.All the time,God is Good.This very popular saying of ‘God is good all the time and All the time God is good’ has come up many times recently. Many people have embraced this and taken this thought as their own. And for good reason – God is the ultimate Good and He does it all the time and in every situation. We all know there is evil, and we question where God is when something bad happens. The answer is: He is there helping us in some manner to get through it. Sometimes the “Footprints” story comes to mind. But we know the ultimate evil of Christ being cruelly beaten and even more cruelly killed on the cross was changed from being evil to being our redemption. God has a way of doing this in every evil that happens if we accept the Graces that He wants to give us. Even that grace of Redemption we must accept if we want to go to Heaven. God the Father’s answer to evil is that He sent us His Son. His Son lived, suffered, died and rose to replace or remove the effects of what is evil with what is good- He saved us! He saved us from evil.Another way of saying ‘all the time‘ or on all occasions is the word always. So, our God is a God of Holiness and takes every bit of time and any occasion to ultimately make something Holy come from it. And He does. All the time. He makes Holy moments. All the time God is with us. This was his promise. See Matthew 28:20 “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” It is different with everyone because we are all different. God will take an evil; a bad accident or a sickness, and thru His grace for us He somehow makes a Greater Good come from it. Most of the time we do not see this or find out why until we are on the other side of the vail but if we continue in our beliefs and accept Gods graces, we will be as fortunate as Job. If you are unfamiliar with the story of Job and how all of his great blessing were taken away from him and then given back twice as much because of his great belief, please see the Book of Job in the Bible. There is another ‘always’. "All ways" or "all the ways" means every manner possible. What happens when we think the same thing with God with this ‘all ways’. It is now a more complete picture of what God is. God is all the time good and every possible good. Can we say, “God is good all ways and all ways God is good”? God is in every manner possible good and in every manner possible God is good. God constantly is pouring out Graces on us. Does He ever give us something bad? No, He gives us everything we need. This is why we find that the saints had Joy no matter what. They say Saint Francis of Assisi was one of the saints most like Jesus. Not only was St. Francis poor like Jesus but he was Joyful like Jesus to a point of Loving Lady Poverty. He felt this great joy in his state of life because of the Blessings he received from God. In every manner possible God took care of him as he does now with us.Joy is the work of the Holy Spirt. The Holy Spirit has many Fruits. St Francis and Jesus have the Holy Spirit. Jesus gave His Holy Spirit to St Francis and now He gives Him to us. The same Holy Spirit that filled Jesus and the Saints fills us today if we ask Him and accept His graces. Ask for many graces. Ask all the time for Graces for every possible need. Ask for all the graces Jesus wants us to have so we and the others we pray for get all graces always and all ways. We ask for too little. Ask for more. More Jesus, More Jesus. All of Jesus, all of His body, blood, soul and Divinity. It is ours; we receive all of Him in Communion. We receive these graces in Adoration.More Jesus, More Jesus,Shalom 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

Making Scripture PersonalHabakkuk 3:17-19, “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.” Have you ever personalized scripture before? Have you ever replaced the word Israelites for your name? Have you ever just inserted your name into scripture to make it more personal to you? What do you think about this idea? If you haven’t done it before, why haven’t you? Is it because you never thought of it before? Is it because you think it is wrong to add your name to the holy scriptures? Is it because you can’t see how the Bible and the scriptures apply to you in your life? Take a moment and really think about this idea of personalizing scripture. I will be honest with you, I haven’t done it a lot. I have heard of this idea before and I though it sounded like an awesome idea, and then I just never really did anything with it.When I was reading a book titled Built Through Courage by Dave Hollis, the author talked about something I think can really help us not to worry so much. Dave talked about his mentors and how they had tragedy hit and he said they relied on a specific scripture verse to get them through it. He said they took a scripture verse and personalized it to their specific circumstances. That scripture verse is Habakkuk 3:17-19, “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.” There is a lot going wrong for the people in this verse. The things mentioned here are not small things. It might not seem like a big deal to us, as how many of us eat figs anyway? However, it was a bid deal at the time. The people who wrote this depended on those crops not just for food, but also for their lively hood. If they did not have figs, grapes or olives, what would they sell at the market to get the other things they needed. The verse says the fields produced no food. What could they eat, if they had not fruits or vegetables? Normally I would say at least they have animals to eat. However, the verse also says, no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls. I can’t even imagine what I would do if I were in their circumstances. This verse is basically saying they had nothing. They had no food, they had no animals, and if they didn’t have any of that, then they didn’t have anything to trade with to get the other things they needed. I know we often think our situation can’t really get any worse, however, for these guys I would say that it really couldn’t get much worse. How did they react to these dire circumstances? Did they yell and scream at God? Did they question Him and ask Him how dare He take it all away? Did they turn away from God? No, they didn’t do any of those things. In that very same sentence, they said “yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”Wow, that is incredible. Don’t you wish you had their strength? Don’t you wish you felt the same way on your worst days? I will rejoice in the Lord. Not, I will trust the Lord, not I will be ok with the Lord, I will rejoice in the Lord. What did they have to rejoice about? Then it goes on to say I will be joyful in God my Savior. I was about to ask you what they had to be joyful about, and then the words “in God my Savior” rattled around in my head. They weren’t joyful because of their circumstances, they were joyful because of God their Savior. They knew God was going to save them. They didn’t know when and they didn’t know how, but they relied on the fact that God was their savior and if He saved them before, He would do it again. Why is it so hard for us to remember this? What came to mind was, maybe we haven’t seen Him save us before. What if we have never needed saving before and so we don’t know He will save us this time. If this is what you are thinking, rest assured whatever God has done for those who have come before us, He will do for us. If He has saved His people in the Bible, then He will save us. Those are our people. Remember Hebrews 13:8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” Because Jesus saved His people in the Bible over and over again, we know He will save us. We also know that because of His promise in Jeremiah 29:11 which says, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” God will use all things for our good. The problem is, we don’t want to wait for it. We want things to happen when we are ready, or when we think we are ready. When are we going to come around to the fact God’s timing is perfect? If things are going wrong for us, God’s got a plan. He might not have planned for yo

Today’s episode is a bit different. I will be reading a chapter from my book, Total Trust in God’s Safe Embrace. Today’s chapter is called The Power of The Saints. I hope you enjoy it!I love the saints! We can learn so much from them. I think we tend to put the saints on a pedestal and think that they were perfect and that we can’t really learn anything from them because they weren’t like ordinary people. We tend to think their lives were easy and they didn’t struggle with the things that we struggle with so we can’t relate to them. I am not sure how much you know about the saints, but I am not sure any of them had it easy and I know for sure that none of them were perfect because no one on earth is perfect. We are all human and we all struggle with human behaviors and sins. No matter what you are going through, there is probably a saint that has gone through the same thing in their life.If you are struggling with parenting, or if you have a child who has turned away from the faith, and/ or is getting into all sorts of trouble you could look to Saint Monica. She is the mother of St. Augustine. Saint Augustine is a doctor of the Church now, but before the age of 31 he was known for running around with women and having mistresses. His mother would not give up on him and his conversion. She prayed for him and his conversion everyday.Saint Monica was a Christian, but her parents married her off to a pagan. He husband wasn’t all bad, but he did have a violent temper and he was promiscuous. Saint Monica also had a mother in law that lived with them that was bad tempered and uncooperative. Even though her husband criticized her for her faith, she never gave up on praying for him and his mother. Her prayers finally proved fruitful and her husband and mother in law both became Christians. Her husband died one year after his baptism.If you are struggling with a past that you are not proud of you could look to St. Augustine, or Saint Mary of Egypt who ran away from home at 12 and spent her years living on the streets as a seductress. She did her best to sleep with as many young Christian boys as she could. One day she went with some men to Jerusalem. They were on the way to see the life-giving Tree of the Cross that was being shown at the temple. She pushed to the front of the line, but when she tried to step over the threshold she could not get in. It was as if there was an invisible barrier was preventing her from getting in. She tried this several times and the same thing would happen.Mary was too tired to keep trying to get in. She stepped aside and just stood there. She wondered why she could not get in. Suddenly she felt the word salvation and it occurred to her why she was not allowed into the temple. Her unclean lifestyle was the reason she could not enter the holy place. Upon realizing this she because to cry and was filled with grief and sorrow.While she was standing there she looked up and saw an icon of Mary, the mother of Jesus. She begged Mary to let her into the temple to see the Tree of the life-giving Cross. She promised Mary as soon as she had seen the cross she would no longer take part in her unclean lifestyle and that she would renounce the world and its temptations. Mother Mary allowed her to enter and once she left that temple she crossed the Jordon and lived by herself in the dessert.Maybe you are the mother of boys and you are not sure how to lead them with love through all their difficulties. You can turn to St. John Bosco who took care of all the boys in his town, most of them lived on the streets. He had them in church every Sunday. He never yelled at the boys he just loved them.If you are struggling to forgive someone who has hurt you unforgivably you can turn to St. Maria Goretti. She was a child of about 12 I think when her neighbor tried to rape her. She tried to convince him that God did not want him to do that to her. He took out a knife and stabbed her several times because she refused to let him rape her. She was rushed to the hospital and before she died, she forgave him.Are you struggling with a lack of faith? Do your prayers feel unanswered, or maybe you can’t even pray right now? Maybe you feel a complete lack of faith, and feel as though there may not even be a God. You could look to Mother Teresa. Most people do not know a lot about her story. She had a deeply personal encounter with Jesus on a train early in her religious life. She had a vision of Jesus and she told Jesus that she would do whatever he asked of her.As time went on she began to feel this deep darkness. Almost as if she were in a pit. She did not feel the love of Jesus, she did not feel anything. She was such a powerful ambassador for God’s love, and yet she did not feel any of that love. This did not just go on for a year or so it went on for a very long time. She experienced this darkness for over half her life. She knew that there was a God because of her encounter on the train. However, she did not feel this

Live A Cheerful Life Without ComplainingPhilippians 2:14-16a “Live a cheerful life, without complaining or division among yourselves. For then, you will be seen as innocent, faultless, and pure children of God, even though you live in the midst of a brutal and perverse culture. For you will appear among them as shining lights in the universe, holding out the words of eternal life.”When I read this verse this morning, the part that jumped out at me was that it says, “For you will appear among them as shining lights in the universe.” I had re-written this part in the margins of my Bible. I started doing that a few years ago. Whenever I am reading a book or my Bible, and there is something I really like, I will underline it, but then also write it in the margins, so if I am flipping through the pages, I can see it more clearly as sometimes I underline a lot. Then, the essential stuff can get a bit lost.After I read that part of the verse, I decided to go to the beginning of the paragraph and see what else it said. That is when I read the first line, “Live a cheerful life, without complaining or division among yourselves.” I instantly thought, “Yep, we need to hear that today.” And by we, I mean me and probably you too. Complaining is so easy to fall into. A lot is wrong with the world today, and we notice it daily. I have noticed I am complaining more in the car lately. I am talking to the other drivers. Yes, I know they can’t hear me.However, I comment, “Really, you couldn’t get over?” or “You are not a very good driver.” I don’t think I used to do this, and I believe the Holy Spirit has been bringing it to my attention lately, as when I notice it, I don’t like that I am doing it. I feel I am focusing on the negative instead of the positive. Also, if I have kids in the car, they will hear me say these things about other drivers. I realize the things I say aren’t terrible and could be much worse, yet they are still not kind. Sometimes, I call the driver an idiot. They can’t hear me, so why am I doing it?I don’t know why we feel the need to complain so much. Some of the people I spend the most time with complain about everything. They complain about drivers, co-workers, fast-food workers, and apps. They are never really happy. This is no way to live. I know a lot is wrong with the world right now, and I also know there are things to be cheerful about. There is a saying, “Where focus goes, energy flows.” The kind of energy we have is based on where our focus is. If we are focused on all the negative things happening in the world, then we will be negative. If we are focused on the positive things going on in our lives, we will be positive.God is asking us to be his shining light in the world. We can’t do this if we focus on everything wrong with the World. Instead of focusing on all that is wrong, the enemy's work, let’s focus on all that is right, God’s work. The way we can be a shining light in the world is to be a representative of Jesus. Jesus had a lot to complain about in His life. His dad died; we don’t know how old he was, but we know it was before he was 30 years old. Many people hated him and wanted to kill him. He was put to death for no reason. He was whipped and beaten. He was mocked and made to wear a crown of thorns. He was hung on a cross even though He was blameless. He had a lot to complain about, and yet He didn’t complain.If we want to be a shining light in the world, which the world definitely needs, then we need to do things differently than the world does. We need to focus on the good in the world. We need to spread hope, not fear, worry and anxiety. There is a lot of uncertainty in the world, especially with an upcoming election. The country is worried about who will be running this country in a few months. I understand that this is important. Yet, worry never changes anything. We can change our focus from worrying about who will get in to the fact that the true ruler of this world is God, and He is all-powerful. He created this world with words and has power over every aspect. There is nothing too great a feat for our God.What our country needs right now is hope. Hope that God is here for us. Hope that regardless of who gets in, we will be OK because God is on our side. Hope that no matter what we are going through, God can and will use it for our good. This is not the end. Whatever situation you are in right now, if it is not good, it is not the end. Keep going, keep moving forward, and there will be a happy ending for all of us. We don’t know when that happy ending is coming, but we are assured it with God.The best way to be the shining light that God asks us to be is to live our lives so that people will see us and say to themselves, “I want what she has, or I want what he has.” People will notice if we can be filled with joy, no matter our circumstances. They will see when we are filled with peace, no matter the circumstances. They will notice if we love all those around us, even thos

Letting Go Of Our PastPhilippians 3:7-8 “Yet all of the accomplishments that I once took credit for, I’ve now forsaken them, and I regard it all as nothing compared to the delight of experiencing Jesus Christ as my Lord! To truly know him meant letting go of everything from my past and throwing all my boasting on the garbage heap. It’s all like a pile of manure to me now so that I may be enriched in the reality of knowing Jesus Christ and embracing him as Lord in all of his greatness.”This verse stood out to me this morning. The words, “To truly know him meant letting go of everything from my past,” really stuck with me. I got to thinking about how great it is when we discover Jesus. At first, I thought that it must be so great for people who don’t know Jesus at first and then come to discover Him later in life. There must be such a stark contrast in their lives. I wonder if it is easy to tell what moment Jesus came on the scene in their life. I wonder if it was as if one day they were one person, and the next day they were completely changed? Or, maybe it was more gradual, and they slowly changed their lives as they got to know Jesus more and more. I am sure this journey is different for everyone.I was a bit envious of people who didn’t just grow up knowing Jesus because they seemed to be more on fire for Him. It's like when you enter into a new relationship, whether a friendship or a romantic one. Everything is new and exciting; you can’t wait to learn more about the other person. You make time for that person and you ask questions, you get to know them and what they like, what they don’t like.Those of us that have know Jesus our whole lives don’t seem to have that same awe and excitement about it. I know that is a generalization and I know plenty of people who have know Jesus their whole life and still have amazing awe and wonder about Him. They still spend time with Him daily and they learn more and more each day through conversations with Him and through reading His written Word. But that’s the thing, they are putting in the times. They are working at their relationship with Him. Are we?I had a colonoscopy at the end of July. I work up during the procedure and the medical staff were talking about the difference between Catholics and other Protestants. I heard one of them say that the difference is that Catholics don’t read the Bible and Protestants do. I spoke up and let them know that wasn’t true, but then they put me back to sleep as I was not supposed to be awake. However, as much as I wanted to complain that they thought this, this is not an uncommon belief. When I first joined the Catholic Woman’s groups on the military bases we moved to, there were not a lot of Catholic Bible Studies. Sometimes we would join up with a study the Protestants were doing.As Catholic’s we get to hear the Bible every week at church. Every three years, the Church has covered almost the whole Bible. So, to say Catholics don’t know the Bible is not true at all. However, I think Catholic Bible studies is fairly new, at least in my experience. However, this is a great way to get to know the Lord. To develop a deeper relationship with the Lord. If you want to get to know someone, you learn all you can about that person. The Bible is a great way to get to know who God is and what He is all about. You get to see all the various parts of His personality and the many ways He loves us and has saved us over the years. This is important because if He did it then, He will do it now.I said earlier that I was envious of people who newly discovered Jesus because they seemed more on fire for Him. Then, one day, I realized we all had that turning point. Whether we have been going to Church our whole lives or we have just learned about Jesus today at the grocery store, we all have a point where our relationship with Him changes. There comes a time when we realize we need more Jesus in our life. There comes a time when we don’t just know about Jesus, but we know Jesus. We enter into a relationship with Him. This is where the fire comes from.Those who just learned about Jesus aren’t on fire because Jesus is new to them, they are on fire because they have been personally touched by Jesus and they know what it is to be with Jesus. They know Him on a personal level and that makes you hungry for more. You want to read scripture because you want to know and understand Jesus more. You want to know what makes Him happy. You want to see how He has helped others so you can see how He can help you too!Whether you have know Jesus your whole life and now have discovered a personal relationship with Him, or you have just found him, the verse above is the same. “Yet all of the accomplishments that I once took credit for, I’ve now forsaken them, and I regard it all as nothing compared to the delight of experiencing Jesus Christ as my Lord! To truly know him meant letting go of everything from my past and throwing all my boasting on the garbage heap. It’s

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

Light To My SoulEphesians 5:11-14 "And don't even associate with the servants of darkness because they have no fruit in them; instead, reveal truth to them. The very things they do in secret are too vile and filthy to even mention. Whatever the revelation-light exposes, it will also correct, and everything that reveals truth is light to the soul. This is why the scripture says, "Arise, you sleeper! Rise up from your coffin. The anointed one will shine his light into you.”I liked today’s verse because it talks about the light. I love to talk about the light. However, you can’t talk about the light without talking about the darkness as well. This is why I included the first part of this verse. It says, “And don't even associate with the servants of darkness because they have no fruit in them; instead, reveal truth to them. The very things they do in secret are too vile and filthy to even mention.” I like that the verse tells us not to associate with the servants of darkness. We spend too much time associating with the servants of darkness, and I am not talking about people you know who might be doing something you don’t like.This verse is talking about the evil forces at work in this world. How often do we engage with that voice in our heads that fills us with worry and anxiety? That voice that tells us this bad thing will happen or that bad thing will happen. How often do we listen as the enemy tells us lies about not being worthy enough and the lie that no one likes us? This verse tells us that we should expose the lies and the darkness. This includes the lies the enemy is telling us. These consist of all of our thoughts that are unkind to ourselves. We must bring our thoughts into the light and see if they still hold up.My favorite line in this verse is, “Whatever the revelation-light exposes, it will also correct, and everything that reveals truth is light to the soul.” Could your soul use a little more light right now? I know mine could. When we hold our thoughts up to God’s light, they don’t hold up. Have you tried bringing your thoughts to the Lord and asking if they are true? The enemy wants us to keep our private thoughts private because he knows we can see how ridiculous they are when exposed to the light.The enemy tells us we are unworthy, yet when we shine the revelation-light on that lie we know it is not true because Jesus died on the cross to make us worthy. We are worthy, not because of our merit but because of what Christ did for us. The enemy tells us that we are not loved, yet when we hold that up to the light, we know it is not true because God repeatedly proves His love for us in the Bible. Especially in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” And Romans 5:8, "But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” There is no doubt that God loves us.In the darkness of our mind, the enemy can get in and tell us the lie that, yes, God loves most of his children, but he does not love you. Your sin is too great. We need to hold this up to the light, and we will see that it is a lie. When we examine this statement in the light of day, we can see it is an absurd thought. If this statement were true, that would mean Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, all he went through, was not enough. Do you really believe that? Do you believe there is anything you could do that is so big that Jesus’s suffering on the cross isn’t enough to cover it?This is why the enemy whispers this stuff to us in the darkness of our minds and why he makes us too ashamed to voice these thoughts out loud. He makes us feel as though we are all alone, and if we share our thoughts with others, they will make fun of us, yell at us, or whatever it is you think will happen if you share your vulnerable thoughts with others. The enemy knows his lies start to fall apart when you bring them out into the light. This is why he makes us afraid to say them out loud. This is why he whispers them instead of shouting them. He doesn’t want anyone to overhear them and shine light on them.I think it is essential to focus on the part of the verse that says, “Whatever the revelation-light exposes, it will also correct.” When we bring the enemy’s lies to light, they will be corrected. Once we know the truth, the lie is harder to believe. Once we know the truth, we can ask the Lord for the strength and courage to replace that lie with the truth. We know He will do this because the verse says that whatever the light exposes, it will also correct. Wouldn’t it be great not to have all those lies in your head anymore? What if you just said them out loud and then asked the Lord what truth he would like to replace those lies with? This activity does not take very long, yet the rewards can last a lifetime.Take a moment, quiet your mind, and ask the Lord, “What lies am I believing right now?” Then, write down all those lies.

God’s Armor (Part 2)Ephesians 6:17-18 “Embrace the power of salvation’s full deliverance, like a helmet to protect your thoughts from lies. And take the mighty razor-sharp Spirit-Sword of the spoken word of God. Pray passionately in the Spirit as you constantly intercede with every form of prayer at all times. Pray blessings of God upon all his believers.Today, we are finishing up the discussion on the armor of God. In case you missed last week’s episode on Thursday, we were told we would be victorious if we put on all the armor God has given us. However, we can’t put something on if we don’t know what it is. So, on Friday and today, I am going over what the armor of God is and how we can put it on so we can be ready for the enemy when he comes. And make no mistake, he is coming.Today we are discussing three things that I am passionate about. First, we are delving into the profound concept of protecting our thoughts. The reason I am so fervent about this is because I understand its transformative power. It may sound like an exaggeration, but if you can master the art of guarding your thoughts, you can truly change your life. This is not just a claim but a truth I stand by. I wish everyone could grasp the significance of our thoughts. In 2 Corinthians 10:5, Saint Paul says, “ We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” This verse is a powerful reminder of the control we have over our thoughts, and the potential for transformation it holds.We have the power to take captive our thoughts. You have the power to take captive your thoughts. The enemy doesn’t want us to know this. He wants us to be a slave to our thoughts. He wants our worry and anxiety, or anger and resentfulness, to get the best of us. He wants us to sit and let those thoughts take over our minds. He wants us to act out of that fear instead of acting out of the truth of who God is and what we know He can do in our lives.God knows how important our thoughts are, so he tells us to take control of every thought and put on a helmet to protect them. In the verse above, God tells us to “Embrace the power of salvation’s full deliverance.” Deliverance is something I have learned a lot about in the last two years of encounter. Did you that God wants to deliver you from any hold the enemy has over you? Did you know that He has given you this power as well? You do not need someone else to deliver you from the hands of the enemy. You don’t need someone else to deliver you from the worry or anxiety that you have. You don’t need someone else to chase away the demons in your life. God has given you all the power you need to deliver yourself from the enemy.This is something the enemy is for sure trying to hide from us. He wants us to remain helpless and dependent on him and his lies. He wants us to think there is nothing we can do. He wants us to believe we are just anxious people; it is who we are, and we can do nothing about it. This is a lie straight from hell. God did not create us to be anxious or worried. This is why it tells us over 365 times in the Bible not to be worried and not to be anxious. God created us in His likeness and image, and we have a right to stand by that identity.What the devil doesn’t want us to know is that we have the power to banish him from our thoughts, and not just our thoughts, but from our lives. The enemy is bound by free will. He needs our permission to be in our lives. Sometimes, we don’t realize all the ways we can give the enemy access to our lives, and yet regardless of what open door he walked through, if we tell him to leave, he has to go. There are no “ifs,” “and,” or “buts” about it. If you tell the enemy to leave, he must leave.So, what might that look like? It can be as simple as, “In the name of Jesus, I command worry to leave now.” “In the name of Jesus, I command anyone or anything not of God to leave now.” “In the name of Jesus, I command sadness to leave now.” “In the name of Jesus, I command fear to leave now.” Whatever thoughts or feelings are taking over your mind, you can command them to leave, and they must go. Then, you can ask the Lord to replace them with peace, love, or hope. Whatever you need, you can replace the unwanted thoughts with the thoughts you would like to have. I invite you to try this and see how it can change your life. Don’t believe the enemy’s lies that you don’t have control over your thoughts. You are more powerful than you know because you have the Holy Spirit inside you. The enemy knows how powerful you are, and it is time we all start realizing it as well.Next, the verse tells us, "Take the mighty razor-sharp Spirit-Sword of the spoken word of God.” This is something I talk about a lot. It is so important that we read the world of God. We must not only read it but also study it and know what it says. The enemy is full of half-truths, and he will take the very word of G

God’s Armor (Part 1)Ephesians 6:14-16 “Put on truth as a belt to strengthen you to stand in triumph. Put on holiness as the protective armor that covers your heart. Stand on your feet alert, then you'll always be ready to share the blessings of peace. In every battle, take faith as your wrap-around shield, for it is able to extinguish the blazing arrows coming from the evil one!”Yesterday, I talked about how we will be victorious and how important it is to put on all the armor that God has given us. Today, I thought I would go over what that armor is because it can be hard to put something on if we don’t know what it is. The verse above tells us to put on truth as a belt to strengthen us to stand in triumph. We have truth on our side. God is truth, and the enemy is a liar. We must stand in that truth. We must know the truth, and we must also tell the truth. Our actions can either make it possible for the enemy to gain a foothold in our lives or keep him out, and it is up to us to decide. I said yesterday that the enemy is bound by free will. He can’t come in unless we open a door for him. Sometimes, we leave a door open by accident. Sometimes, we do wrong things, and we don’t know that by doing so, we are making an opening for the enemy to come in.We not only need to stand in the truth, but we also need to tell the truth always. Lying will open a door to the enemy in so many ways. If you lie about something, the enemy will call you a liar. He will use that lie to make you think you are a liar. He will make you nervous that someone will learn about that lie. He will make you feel bad about that lie and then start telling you lies. He will tell you you are not good enough for God’s love because you are a liar. He will tell you God won’t forgive you because you are a liar. He will tell you others will find out you lied, and then they won’t like you either. He will tell you that the person you lied to will find out, and they won’t like you either. Do you see how we are opening a door to the enemy when we lie? The enemy is the liar. He is the one who is not worthy of God’s love. We need to put on the belt of truth because telling the truth will not only strengthen us but also protect us from opening the door to the enemy.The next piece of armor is the breastplate. The scripture instructs us to wear holiness as the protective armor that shields our hearts. We must guard our hearts. The enemy takes pleasure in assaulting our hearts with his deceitful lies. He revels in telling us we're unworthy, inadequate, unloved. He spins so many falsehoods. But your heavenly Father loves you unconditionally, regardless of your actions. Even if you weren’t worthy, He would still love you. But you are worthy because Jesus made you worthy when He died for you. This is the power of holiness, a shield that assures us of God's unwavering love and protection.So, what does it mean to wear holiness as a breastplate to protect our hearts? Does this mean we need to be perfect? No, it means we need to be close to God. We should do what we can to grow closer to the Lord daily. We must strive to do the right thing and live the right way. Remember, our actions give the enemy a way into our lives. He will take any opening, no matter how big or small. We don’t want to give him an opening. If we stay close to the Lord, He can protect us. If we try to grow in holiness more each day, the breastplate protecting our hearts will grow stronger and stronger.I just looked up at the wall in front of me, and I have post-it notes and pictures hanging on that wall. When I looked up, I saw a post-it note that said, “Holiness is saying yes to the will of God.” We are all called to live a life of holiness, and sometimes we can shy away from that because we think that means it is calling us to a life of perfection. It isn’t. God asks us daily to learn to say yes to His will instead of our own. He knows we are not perfect and that it will be a lifelong goal, and yet he is still asking it of us. He is not expecting us to get it right each time. He is just asking that we try to say yes to Him more than we say yes to ourselves. Since He is God and knows what is best for us, can you see how if we grow in holiness, saying yes to His will, His perfect will, then we will protect our hearts?Next, the verse says, “Stand on your feet alert, then you'll always be ready to share the blessings of peace.” It is important to be alert. The enemy will come more easily if we are sleepy, distracted, or not paying attention. I like this one because we get to share a blessing of peace. Did you know you had the power to impart peace to other people? This is one of my favorite things to do. I pray for peace over people. There is so much worry and anxiety in this world, and peace can combat it. It is not a worldly peace but the peace of Christ that surpasses all understanding. If you see a loved one struggling, pray that the peace of Christ fills them up. If you see a stranger and you

You Are Destined For All Things And Will Rise VictoriousEphesians 6:13 “Because of this, you must wear all the armor that God provides so you're protected as you confront the slander, for you are destined for all things and will rise victorious.I looked at several different scriptures for this morning's devotional. There are so many good ones in Ephesians. I don’t know why I never saw them before. Or maybe I did, and the Lord is just showing me them again in a different light. I am not sure, but I love it! I saw this verse first this morning, and then I went back and forth on a few others, but my eyes kept being drawn back to this one. I know a lot of you are going through some really hard things right now, and what I felt when I kept being drawn back to this verse was that God wants you to know that you will rise victorious!He wants you to know that this thing you are going through, the situation you are in, it will not take you down. This illness will not be the end. These financial matters won’t be the end. Your estranged loved ones, this is not the end. You will be victorious. You will be healed. Your loved one will be healed. The Lord will provide for you to pay your bills. You won’t be estranged from your loved one forever. Whatever it is you are struggling with this morning, I feel the Lord wants me to tell you you will rise victorious.The last part of this verse made me think of a song I saw in a movie called Pitch Perfect 2. The song was sung by a group of Germans who were competing in an a cappella singing competition. This song came into my mind because their performance was so powerful. They projected such strength when they performed this song. This is what we must do when we are dealing with the enemy.The verse says that we must put on the armor that God provides us so that we are protected when we confront the slander. Make no mistake, the slander is the devil. Of course, he won’t look like the devil. He will look like someone who cut you off in the traffic. He will look like the person spreading lies about you. He will look like your co-worker or your boss. He might look like your children or your siblings. Whoever is causing strife in your life, the enemy is working through them. I want to read you the words to the song that popped into my mind as I know it is not a coincidence that when I read this verse this song came to mind. If you want to see the video on youtube you can type in Das Sound Machine Car Show and it should come up. Here are the lyrics:They will not control us. We will be victorious[Verse 1]Paranoia is in bloomThe PR transmissions will resumeThey try to push drugs that keep us all dumbed downAnd hope that we will never see the truths aroundCome On![Verse 2]Another promise, another seedAnother packaged lie to keep us trapped in greedAnd all the green belts wrapped around our mindsAnd endless red tape to keep the truth confinedCome On![Chorus]They will not force usThey will stop degrading usThey will not control usWe will be victoriousAt first, these lyrics might not seem to make much sense. However, if you think about them in terms of what the enemy is trying to do to us, they make much more sense. The first line goes perfectly with the verse. They will not control us; we will be victorious. The enemy and his evil henchmen will not control us. We are God’s children and we are protected. However, we must put on our armor of protection. We must call on the Lord. We need to give Him permission to protect us. We need to read the scriptures so we know when the enemy is lying to us. We must stand in truth.The next verse in the song says, Paranoia is in bloom. The PR transmissions will resume. They try to push drugs that keep us all dumbed down. And hope that we will never see the truths around. Come On! This may not fit perfectly, but when we really think about it, we can see that the enemy is trying to make us feel paranoid. All we have to do is listen to the news for a few minutes, and we can see all the craziness going on in the world today. Also, it says they try to push drugs that keep us all dumbed down. And hope that we will never see the truth around us. How many of us know someone who has struggled with drug or alcohol abuse? We know it is all around us, yet do we know that the enemy is the one who is pushing it on us. Do we know he is trying to keep us on drugs so we don’t see the truth all around us? When we use drugs, when we drink, it alters our state, and we don’t see things as they really are.The next verse of the song says, “Another promise, another seed, another packaged lie to keep us trapped in greed. And all the green belts wrapped around our minds. And endless red tape to keep the truth confined. Come On!” How many people in our lives have promised us promise after promise and yet not kept them? How many times have people in the government, or in any authoritative power, promised something, and yet it never happened? I like how it says, “another packaged lie t

Today's witness was from the book "From Grief to Grace" By Jeannine Ewing. Click here to check out the book. 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

Don't Let The Passion Of Your Emotions Lead You To Sin!Ephesians 4:26-27 “But don't let the passion of your emotions lead you to sin! Don't let anger control you or be fuel for revenge, not even for one day. Don't give the slanderous accuser, the devil, an opportunity to manipulate you!”I know we have already talked about anger recently and how even God got angry at times. However, I really liked today’s verse because it is something many of us struggle with. The passion of our emotions can be so strong that it can often lead us to sin. Not just anger, but a lot of our emotions can be strong.We live in a world that tells us we should follow our passion and that the most important thing is that we are happy. This is not true. Yes, it would be great if we were all happy. God would love for us to be happy, but not in ways that would put our eternal salvation at risk. If you have children or have spent time with them, you know you can not always say yes to them. Children ask many questions, and sometimes, they don’t know what is good for them and what is not.For instance, they might want to eat cookies every day for breakfast. Occasionally, you might be able to say yes to them, but every day would not be a good idea. They want to stay up late and watch TV every night, and yet you know that they will be tired the next day and be super cranky and unhappy. They probably know this, too, but the passion with which they want to stay up overrides the part of their brain that knows they need sleep. They rely on us to set boundaries so that they aren’t cranky and miserable the next day.God has done this for us as adults, too. We are not exempt from the passion of our feelings. Our passion can get us into a lot of trouble. This is why when the Israelites were led out of captivity, the Lord gave them the Ten Commandments. They had been living outside their culture for so long that they weren’t living in the way God had asked them to live. He gave them the Ten Commandments so that they would have guidelines. They would have something to think about when their passions told them they should do something.Even today, our passions can get the best of us. The divorce rate is 42 %, which is actually down. It used to be that 1 in every two marriages would end in divorce. The reason that 75% of the individuals and couples cited for their divorce was lack of commitment. This comes back to passion. If we think that we deserve to be happy above all things and we are not happy in our marriage, then we start to look outside of our marriage for that happiness or that passion. We are always looking for that thing that will fulfill us, that will make us happy, and that will make us excited to get out of bed each day. It can be easy to put that responsibility on our spouse. It can be easy to expect the person we married to fulfill all of our needs and desires. That is not their job.We all have a place in our hearts that can only be filled by God. He can bring us the joy that we seek and give it to us in all situations. You might not be feeling fulfilled in your marriage or in your job because you haven’t let God into those areas of your life. Have you invited Him in? Have you asked Him to be a part of your life? He is a gentleman and does not go where He is not invited. If you feel you are missing something in your life, in your marriage, or in your job, ask the Lord to come in and show you what you are missing. Ask the Lord to fill that empty space inside of you, or in your marriage or your job. God will always come where He is invited.There are other ways when the passion of our emotions can lead us to sin. It is not just in marriages. We can also let our emotions control our behavior in all different circumstances. The most prevalent, I think, is probably anger. We have talked about anger before. Anger is not universally good or bad. It has its place and its purpose. Notice this verse doesn’t say don’t feel all your emotions. What it says is don’t let the passion of your emotions cause you to sin. It also goes on to call out anger specifically. It says, “Don't let anger control you or be fuel for revenge, not even for one day.”I can see how anger can get in your head and make you do or say horrible things. One of my sons is angry most of the time. Anger has a real hold on him right now, and he hates it. When I listen to him talk, I can hear the anger in his voice—not usually at me but at most of the people he interacted with that day. This can happen to all of us to some degree. I know when I get angry, sometimes my voice gets louder, and I find myself yelling. I have worked hard on this, and I have gotten so much better at not letting the passion of my anger take over. Yet, sometimes, I still yell. It is a process and God is not looking for perfection, but he is looking for progress. He does expect us to notice when we need to work on something and then actually work on it.I invite each of you to pay close attention to the passion of y

Be Imitators of GodEphesians 5:1-2 "Be imitators of God in everything you do, for then you will represent your father as his beloved sons and daughters. And continue to walk surrendered to the extravagant love of Christ, for he surrendered his life as a sacrifice for us. His great love for us was pleasing to God like an aroma of adoration – a sweet, healing fragrance.”I was looking back over Ephesians this morning. I reviewed Chapters 5 & 6 and decided I couldn’t move on yet as there are several things I want to talk about. I may have talked about them before; I am unsure, but even if I did, they are worth repeating. Every time in the past, I have repeated a scripture because the Holy Spirit revealed something new about it, so hopefully, these next few days will be the same.I love today’s verse because it reminds us to be imitators of God in all that we do. It reminds us that because everyone knows that we are Christians, then they will be watching what we do to see how “Christians” act. We essentially represent Christians to those we know—especially those who are not Christians. Our actions matter, and so do our attitudes and words. I had a friend who stayed away from attending church for a long time because she didn’t like how those at her church acted. She said on Sunday, they would come to the service and praise the Lord, then sit around and talk about the latest gossip. This did not give her a good picture of what we should do as Christians.She is not alone, and neither are the people sitting around gossiping. We all fall short of the call to live a holy life. That doesn’t mean we can stop trying, though. This verse is a good reminder of our call. We should be trying to imitate God in all we do. What is the best way to imitate God? What is the simplest way to imitate God? To love our neighbors as we love Him. I think we can all agree that we love God. Now, we just have to figure out how to love those around us and those we meet, and we will be all set.Loving our neighbor is not easy. People are difficult. They aren’t always nice, and they are sometimes downright mean for no reason. Jesus encountered these people, too. He had people that hated Him for no good reason. They hated Him for who He was and what He stood for. It wasn’t anything He did; they didn’t like who He was. We can’t change who we are, and God wouldn’t want us to. You will encounter people who don’t like you simply because of who you are, which is ok. You don’t have to try to be friends with this person, yet we are called to love them. Can you show love in your interactions with them?When I wrote that, I got this overwhelming feeling in my stomach that we all need to hear that today. There may be people that we don’t like. There may be people who drive us crazy, like we talked about the other day—those who get under our skin like no other. I really feel like the Lord is calling us to love them more today.I feel like He is asking us how we could interact with them more lovingly. He is asking us to stop venting about them to others. Stop complaining about them. Stop focusing on how much they annoy us or make our lives harder. I feel as though the Lord is calling us to bring that to Him instead of to others. He is asking us to think about how we can love them more. How can we be an imitation of Christ to them? Think about this, you may be the only interaction with Christ they ever have.I was praying with someone the other day, and she asked what prayer requests I had. I told her I prayed that my boys would each have an intimate encounter with Jesus. She said she used to pray this for her children, too, and the Holy Spirit told her one day that she was that encounter with Jesus for her kids. They are encountering Jesus through her. I thought this was a beautiful reminder to pay attention to our actions as they may be the only encounter those we meet have with Jesus. Are we being good representations of Jesus? How could we work on this so we can do better? How can we spread love to all we meet and interact with?The verse says, “And continue to walk surrendered to the extravagant love of Christ, for he surrendered his life as a sacrifice for us. His great love for us was pleasing to God like an aroma of adoration – a sweet, healing fragrance.” This is great because it reminds us of how much Jesus loved us. He loved us so much that He gave his life for us. God is not asking us to give our lives to those we meet. He is not asking for that kind of sacrifice, but he is asking for sacrificial love. A love that cost us something. Maybe that something is getting over what we want to be there for someone else. Maybe that means we need to forgive someone for something. Maybe that means we need to stop getting so defensive when those who irritate us talk to us. Maybe we need to stop taking offense so easily. I think God was talking to me for those last two. I have been defensive and taking offense a lot lately, and that is not what God wants. What about

Humility & Quiet PatienceEphesians 4:2 “With tender humility and quiet patience, always demonstrate gentleness and generous love toward one another, especially toward those who may try your patience.”This is a profound reminder of the challenging path we are called to walk. We are summoned to be gentle and generous towards others, a task that is far from easy. People can be difficult, and they can test our patience. St. Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, was well aware of this. Hence, he emphasized, “Especially those who may try your patience.” St. Paul's intention was to underscore that our love should not be limited to those who are easy to love or reciprocate. We are called to love everyone and treat everyone with gentleness, a challenge that requires our utmost dedication.If we take a minute to think about those who try our patience, I am sure we will all have several people who come to mind. Now, let’s take a minute to think about how we interact with those who try our patience. When we are annoyed, we tend to be short with people. It is not easy to demonstrate gentleness when we feel people are annoying us. I think the key to being gentle and loving with people who try our patience is what it mentions in the beginning of this verse.We need tender humility and quiet patience if we want to demonstrate love and gentleness to one another. Why humility? Humility allows us to get past ourselves, think of others more, and avoid offending too easily. Humility is not easy. It is something that we need to pursue actively. What does humility even mean? When you look in the dictionary, humility means a modest or low view of one's own importance. However, I like what Rick Warren said about humility. “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.” I think we need to be careful when we read the dictionary definition is we may read it and think that humility means we are supposed to have a low view of ourselves. I don’t think God would want us to have a low view of ourselves especially since we are made in His likeness and image. But what the definition is actually saying is that we have a modest or low view of our importance.This is why I resonate with Rick Warren's perspective on humility. It's not about thinking less of yourself but about thinking of yourself less. This challenges the misconception that humility means having a low opinion of oneself. Instead, it suggests that true humility is about shifting our focus away from ourselves and toward others. It conveys that genuine humility involves selflessness, empathy, and an orientation towards serving and caring for others. It inspires us to transcend self-centeredness and egocentric thinking and cultivate a mindset of humility that prioritizes the well-being of others. It's a powerful transformation that can reshape our hearts and lives.C. S. Lewis also talks about humility. According to Lewis, the first step in pursuing humility is recognizing and admitting how proud and conceited you are. A solid second step would be to confess this to God and ask God for help. The third would be to cultivate the practice of praying for other people. Don’t pray for others like you’re reading over a laundry list to God, but offer deep, imaginative, caring, and concerned prayers like you are holding someone else’s life, their existence, their well-being in your hand and holding that person up to God. Pray for others like you pray for yourself or your children and see what God does in your heart.That last line is powerful. “See what God does in your heart.” I think we would all be amazed at what God will do in our hearts when we start trying to be more humble, when we try to put the needs of others before our comfort. I am not saying to never think about your needs but often we put the needs of others behind our wants and desires. For instance, someone asks us if we can help them with something important on Thursday night, but that is when our team plays an important game. They need us, and we don’t need to see the game; we could watch the replay, but we want to see it.We often talk about the importance of self-care, and rightly so. If we don’t take care of ourselves, we can’t take care of others. However, we can’t be solely focused on ourselves and ignore the needs of others either. I believe God created us to look out for one another. He wants us to care for the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, and so on because He tells us so in the scriptures. When we shift our focus away from ourselves and towards those in need, we can grow in humility.The verse says, “With tender humility and quiet patience, always demonstrate gentleness and generous love toward one another, especially toward those who may try your patience.” If you are struggling with this, as I think we all are, it's okay. God doesn’t expect us to be perfect or to get it all right. However, now that we know what we are called to do, we also can’t keep going on like we were without changing an

The Supernatural Fruit of His Light: Goodness, Righteousness, and TruthEphesians 5:8-10 “Once your life was full of sin’s darkness, but now you have the very light of our Lord shining through you because of your union with him. Your mission is to live as children flooded with his revelation-light! And the supernatural fruits of his light will be seen in you-goodness, righteousness, and truth. Then you will learn to choose what is beautiful to our Lord.”Have I told you recently how much I enjoy reading through Ephesians, especially in the passion translation? Everyday I find myself underlining almost the whole section. Yes, I am aware that if I underline all of it, then there is not much point to it because nothing will stand out. Yet, I can’t help myself. There is so much wisdom in this book. I am sure they are all probably like that. I am pretty sure I said the same thing while reading Philippians.There were many things that stood out to me today while reading Chapter 5. It was hard to choose one thing to talk about today, so I may stay in Chapter 5 for tomorrow’s episode to. We will see. I chose this verse for today for a few reasons. First, I love how it begins. “Once your life was full of sin’s darkness, but now you have the very light of our Lord shining through you because of your union with him.” This is a great reminder that we are not who we were.Yes, we might have sinned in the past and been filled with the darkness of sin, but that is in the past now. That is no longer who we are. The verse says that because of our union with the Lord, we have His very light shining through us. How amazing is that? God’s light shines through you. His light shines through me, too—not because we are special but because we chose to be in union with him.Sometimes, we can get caught up in our past and be tempted to live there. We can take on our sins and that darkness as our identity. We can forget that God has already set us free from that darkness. No matter how bad we think our past is, not matter how bad of a person we think we are, God is bigger than all of it. If you have accepted God, if you have repented for yours sins, then God has already forgotten about them, so why do we hold onto them? I know it is hard to believe that God can forget our sins, but it says so right in the Bible. Actually it says it more thank once in the Bible. Isaiah 43:25 says, “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.” And Hebrews 8:12 says, “For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.”Scripture is truth. You can hang your hat, as some would say, on anything you find in scripture. You can stand firm on scripture. When scripture says that God does not remember our sins, then you can believe it. I know you don’t think you are worthy, none of us do. However, that is what the cross is for. By holding onto our sins, we are basically telling Jesus that we don’t believe His sacrifice was big enough to cover our sins. Is this how we feel? Do we feel Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross was enough? Was it enough to cover all of our sins? What it enough to cover other’s sins, but just not yours? What will it take for us to believe we are forgiven and that God has already forgotten all that stuff we are carrying around with us?The next line says, “Your mission is to live as children flooded with his revelation-light!” I love the idea of living as children. Children are so carefree and full of energy, and they are also full of God's light. Kids tend to shine so much brighter than adults do. I know some kids have had a pretty hard life, and you might not see the light shining as brightly in them because this world has tried to snuff that light out. However, kids can hope and believe in a way that is different than adults. They can believe with an innocence that is hard for us a adults.Children can believe with wonder and awe. They can look at the world and see all the good things, they can see the beauty, the can see the potential. As adults, our view of the world is filtered through the lens of all of our experiences over the years. I think in this verse, God is calling us to come back to Him as little Children. I think he calls us to live in His light and let his light shine into all the dark parts of our lives. The verse tells us that our mission is to be flooded with this light, His light.The final line in this scripture says, “And the supernatural fruits of his light will be seen in you-goodness, righteousness, and truth. Then you will learn to choose what is beautiful to our Lord.”God is not just telling us to live as children but He is explaining what will happen if we obey. If we live like children and allow ourselves to be filled with the light, then the fruit of that light will be seen in us. The supernatural fruit of God’s light is goodness, righteousness, and truth. Who couldn’t use more of those in our lives? Do you long to see goodness, righte

Witness Wednesday #122 More PopWe Stories (Anxiety/Depression)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 Anxiety/Depression Category. I know so many people who are struggling with anxiety and depression right now. Suicide seems like it is increasing as well. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation also. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your anxiety and depression, He can help.Jenna: I grew up in a Christian family. We went to church every Sunday and Wednesday and were a part of almost everything; Awana, Elevate teen group, and even school there. Two and a half years ago, I lost someone who I was close to because she felt the need to commit suicide. I was heartbroken and I felt like I lost everything. 2022 was a challenging year for me. I had daily panic attacks and felt like I was worthless. My eating habits went down significantly, and I was stressed all the time. As exams neared, I was super stressed and ended up passing out.Months passed and I still felt worthless. I planned to commit suicide when I got a text from a friend, and it was like a text from God. She said she heard I was going to camp and hoped to see me there. I thought if I waited til after camp, and then committed suicide it would be okay. So I went to camp and it changed my life. I met so many new people and was able to share my hurt with my church and they told me that I was not alone. Camp was my blue couch moment as I sat there in service Thursday night, I realized that I needed God in my life more than ever. I had already been saved, but I realized I hadn’t been living like Christ wanted me to.Around late February early March, my friend introduced me to someone…we immediately hit it off and became great friends. A month or two later, it was revealed that he liked me. We started dating in June and have been together ever since. I tell you that little story because sometimes when you need it most, God has someone in mind who will help you grow in faith and support you through it all. They can also help you overcome the hardships in your life.I still deal with anxiety and eating habits, but they have gotten so much better since camp and I am so thankful for all that my church has done for me. Also, I have my three closest friends with me right by my side and the Lord has blessed me with an amazing boyfriend who I love and who has helped me through a lot.GOD’S NOT DONE WITH YOU OR YOUR STORY! HE STILL CARES A LOT AND WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU. YOU HAVE A PURPOSE – TURN TO GOD TO FIND THAT PURPOSE AND YOU WILL BE FOUND.Brianna: From the age of 10, I was stuck with the label “child prodigy,” winning piano competitions, featured in local newspapers, and recognized as a passionate, fiery recitalist. Yet, even as a youth, I was severely depressed. I was insecure, seeking affection, and perpetually in pursuit of attaining “good enough.” Right before my 16th birthday, my world suddenly turned upside down. In an unexpected turn of events, I faced a close encounter with death, had my innocence taken, and watched helplessly as my mother’s health began to rapidly fail. Too ashamed to ask for help and blaming myself for the situation, I despairingly turned to self-harm, eating disorders, and eventually, planned my own suicide. One day, I heard the song ‘Broken Pieces’, and I found something onto which I could cling to – Truth, even when I could not feel it and it failed to make sense.Through involvement with an organization called Csehy Summer School of Music, I came to personally know Christ. For the first time in my life, I experienced peace, hope, and true joy. Dedicating my life to God, I went back home with a different perspective. My life was still intense – balancing high school and conservatory studies, living between home and the hospital, while being a full-time caretaker for my undiagnosed mother. By the grace of God, I managed to graduate as Salutatorian and get accepted into music school. However, shortly before college began, my mother passed away.I started my B.A. in piano at Charleston Southern University, using every spare moment to pour my heart out into the keys as a wordless prayer. Yet, a lingering pain in my right hand soon became constant. A few months after my mother’s funeral, I was diagnosed with severe damage in my right hand, incited by the physical strain

Let’s Build Each Other Up Instead!Ephesians 4:29 “And never let ugly or hateful words come from your mouth, but instead let your words become beautiful gifts that encourage; do this by speaking words of grace to help them.”I love this version of this verse because so much of what I hear coming from people’s mouths these days is ugly or hateful. The NRSVCE says, “Let no evil talk come out of your mouth.” That is pretty accurate, too. Why is there so much hate in the world right now? I am sure there always was hate. All you need to do is look back at all the awful things that happened over the years, and you will see that hate. However, right now, I feel like there is so much more.It seems as though it is ok to say whatever is on our minds, even if it is ugly or hateful. I think most people had a filter once upon a time. They may have thought ugly or hateful thoughts, but they didn’t share them with everyone. They didn’t just blurt them out. However, now I feel as though people feel they can say whatever they want and do whatever they like. I don’t know what has changed, but it is still not ok to treat people badly just because you don’t agree with them.I am not a fan of politics. I don’t like the division it causes, and I don’t like how it tends to bring out the worst in people. The last two elections especially. I am glad that people really like the candidate they are voting for, and yet that doesn’t give the license to say ugly or hateful things about the other candidate. I have seen some of the worst signs, shirts, and hats about some of the candidates. I wonder if people even care about the example they are setting. There is a house that I used to pass by a lot when I was running more. They have two signed up. I can’t remember them both but I do remember they are both very unkind. One of them says F*** Biden.I get it; you don’t like Biden. You are entitled to your opinion. You may not like him as a person, or you may not like what he is doing in his presidency, and that is your right. You can like or not like whoever you want. However, when you post a sign like that out in your yard for all to see that is just wrong. You might think you are just expressing your opinion, but you are also being a terrible example to all who pass by and see your signs. You are showing others that it is ok to say whatever we want, even if it is ugly or hateful. You are showing everyone that we don’t have to have self-control over our emotions. It’s ok to say whatever we think.President Biden, Former President Trump, Kamila Harris, and J. D. Vance are all just people like you and me. Yes, they chose politics and that means they are in the limelight. That doesn’t mean that it is open season for us to say or do whatever we want. They deserve respect whether we like them or not. With social media the way it is today, one little mess up can be turned into a meme for all to see. One misstep, and you are mocked endlessly. I think we tend to forget that politicians are real people with real feelings. When dealing with all people, politicians or not, the words in this verse are great words to live by. “And never let ugly or hateful words come from your mouth, but instead let your words become beautiful gifts that encourage; do this by speaking words of grace to help them.”Let’s discuss the second half of this verse. Instead of saying ugly or hateful words about others, what if we let our speech be filled with words that bless others? Let our words be gifts that encourage others, not tear them down. I saw a beautiful post on facebook yesterday. My friend had reposted something from the page Shower Arguments with Emily Solberg. Let me read it to you now.Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles literally bowed down to Brazilian gymnast Rebeca Andrade on the podium as she claimed first place in the gymnastics floor final.Apparently Simone said that Jordan asked Simone, "Should we bow to her?" And Simone replied, “Absolutely." “It was just the right thing to do.”Can you just imagine?Can you just imagine if women ALWAYS cheered for each other so enthusiastically, so boldly, so unapologetically, so joyfully, so selflessly? Can you just imagine if women didn’t feel threatened by each other’s successes and used them instead as motivation?Can you just imagine if women supported other women, simply because “it was just the right thing to do?”This. Is. Everything. And this is why I love the Olympics—because we don’t look to them just as an example of what we could be as athletes, we look to them as an example of what we could be as humans.Isn’t this a great post? I thought it went perfectly with today’s verse. I think we can apply it to all people, not just women. Can you imagine what the world would be like if we didn’t have jealousy? Can you imagine what the world would be like if we had healthy competition where everyone was respected? Imagine how different politics would be if we did what it said in this verse and did not let evil come out of our mout

15 Promises to those who say the rosary.Today’s episode is a bit different. Today there is not a scripture verse. Instead I am going to explain about what the rosary is and then list the 15 promises given to those who pray it regularly. There is a lot that is going on in the world right now. In our country and all around the world. Our country is pretty divided. We are kicking God out of this country one decision at a time. During this truly difficult time, I look to strengthen my faith and lean into God’s grace, strength, and protection. Who couldn’t use a little more grace and strength right now?I have found a number of structured prayers that have really helped strengthen my faith. The first of these is the rosary. When I moved to New Jersey, one of the wives in Tony’s squadron had started a home rosary group. I did not know what that even meant, but I had just moved to a new place and I did not anyone. I thought it would be nice to get out of the house and meet some new people. I also knew I needed something more, as I had a new born baby and was just learning how to be a mom. A home rosary group is a group of people that gather at someone’s home and say the rosary together. One person leads either the whole rosary, or you can switch leaders each decade, whichever you prefer. Whoever is leading the rosary says the first half of the prayer and then everyone else says the second half of the prayer. It was so nice to be gathered with a group of women that all wanted to say the rosary each week. The rosary is a group of prayers that you say, usually using a set of rosary beads. I knew there were many benefits to saying the rosary. I have read them before. There was a time, probably after I first read these promises, that I was saying it every day. However, the enemy has a way of putting things in the way so that you are suddenly “too busy” to say the rosary, or he convinces you that if you can’t do it perfect, then you shouldn’t bother. Remember that the enemy is a master at half truths and lies. He does not want us saying the rosary because he knows how powerful it can be. As soon as you begin to say the rosary faithfully you will notice that things will begin to come up during the time you set aside for rosary, or you will find yourself forgetting about the commitment. I decided to talk with you about the Rosary today because I came upon the promises that Mary gave to us and I remembered why I was saying the rosary every day. I know the rosary is a longer prayer than most of us might be use to, but it is only 20-30 minutes out of your day. If you get a full 8 hours of sleep at night, that means you are still awake for 16 hours. That is 960 minutes in your day. The rosary takes 20-30 of them.The Blessed Virgin Mary promised to Saint Dominic and to all who follow that “Whatever you ask in the Rosary will be granted.” She left for all Christians Fifteen Promises to those who recite the Holy Rosary. They were imparted to Saint Dominic and Blessed Alan.1. Whoever shall faithfully serve me by the recitation of the Rosary, shall receive signal graces.2. I promise my special protection and the greatest graces to all those who shall recite the Rosary. 3. The Rosary shall be a powerful armor against hell, it will destroy vice, decrease sin, and defeat heresies. 4. The Rosary will cause virtue and good works to flourish; it will obtain for souls the abundant mercy of God; it will withdraw the hearts of men from the love of the world and its vanities, and will lift them to the desire for eternal things. Oh, that souls would sanctify themselves by this means. 5. The soul which recommends itself to me by the recitation of the Rosary, shall not perish. 6. Whoever shall recite the Rosary devoutly, applying himself to the consideration of its sacred mysteries shall never be conquered by misfortune. God will not chastise him in His justice, he shall not perish by an unprovided death; if he be just he shall remain in the grace of God, and become worthy of eternal life. 7. Whoever shall have a true devotion for the Rosary shall not die without the sacraments of the Church. 8. Those who are faithful to recite the Rosary shall have during their life and at their death the light of God and the plenititude of His graces; at the moment of death they shall participate in the merits of the saints in paradise. 9. I shall deliver from Purgatory those who have been devoted to the Rosary. 10. The faithful children of the Rosary shall merit a high degree of glory in Heaven. 11. You shall obtain all you ask of me by the recitation of the Rosary. 12. All those who propagate the Holy Rosary shall be aided by me in their necessities. 13. I have obtained from my Divine Son that all the advocates of the Rosary shall have for intercessors the entire celestial court during their life and at the hour of death. 14. All who recite the Rosary are my sons and daughters, and brothers and sisters of my only Son Jesus Christ. 15. Devotion of my Rosary

God Will Exceed Your Wildest Imagination!Ephesians 3:20 “Never doubt God’s mighty power to work in you and accomplish all this. He will achieve infinitely more than your greatest request, your most unbelievable dream, and exceed your wildest imagination! He will outdo them all, for his miraculous power constantly energizes you.”Wow, I think this is something we should all put on a sticky note and put it on our bathroom mirror. Actually, put it on several sticky notes and place them all around your house. It is such good advice. “Never doubt God’s mighty power to work in you and accomplish all this.” This is something we do often, or at least I do often. I doubt God can work in me. I don’t doubt it because I doubt God’s mighty power. I doubt it because I know I am broken. I know I sin. I know I am not worthy. I know I am not enough, and all the other things we tell ourselves when we hear that God wants to use us.What just came to me is that when we think like this, our focus is on ourselves. Listen to what I said above again and try to count how many times I say I. “I doubt God can work in me. I don’t doubt it because I doubt God’s mighty power. I doubt it because I know I am broken. I know I sin. I know I am not worthy. I know I am not enough, and all the other things we tell ourselves when we hear that God wants to use us.” I used the word “I” 12 times within those six sentences. Yes, when our focus is on us, or when our focus is on the task we are being asked to do, we will always fall short in our minds. We won’t believe it can be done because we know our limitations.However, if we focus on God and how powerful He is, it is easier to believe He can use us because He is God, and He can do anything. There was a woman at the Encounter Summer Intensive yesterday and she had a problem with her leg. She hurt it in a skiing accident when she was younger, and the doctors glued it all back together. However, it started hurting again. She is now 83 years old. The doctor told her the fix they did when she was younger was all disintegrating, and there was nothing they could do. I reminded her that although there might not be anything that the doctors could do, there is always something God can do.This verse is a great verse for anyone who has a great ambition to do something great someday. Maybe you want to be an extraordinary painter, or maybe you want to start a non-prophet to help people. Maybe you want to climb mountains all over the world. Maybe you want to be the best mom, dad, grandma, or grandpa you can be. Whatever it is that you would like to do, it is important to know that God can work in you and through you. It is important we don’t doubt this because God is powerful, and He can do anything!The next line in the verse is just amazing. It says, “He will achieve infinitely more than your greatest request, your most unbelievable dream, and exceed your wildest imagination!” Can you believe that? This gives us permission to dream big, to ask for big things from God, and to let Him help us accomplish our dreams. This verse shows us what a good, good father God is. He doesn’t just give you the bare minimum. He doesn’t just give you what you need to survive. He is not stingy with His mercy and His blessings. He lavishes them upon His children.The last sentence is great, too. It says, “He will outdo them all, for his miraculous power constantly energizes you.” This is definitely something we forget, or maybe we never knew it in the first place. God’s miraculous power constantly energizes you. Did you know that? Did you also know you can pray for supernatural energy when you don’t feel like you have any? I prayed this with my friend of mine, and she said she felt so much more energized for the rest of the day.We need to stop putting God into a little box. We need to stop telling Him what He can and can’t do. We tell Him He can’t use us because of this reason or that. We tell Him we can’t do this or that because we lack energy. We give up on our dreams because we figure they are not going to come true. We don’t doubt God’s power, but we doubt our ability to be a part of His plan; however, by doubting that, we are also doubting God’s power. We are putting a limitation on that power. We say, “Yes, you are all-powerful, and you can do all things, but you can’t use me.” Do you see how that is a contradiction? Either God is all-powerful, or He is not. Either He can do everything, including using you, or He can’t do any of it. We don’t get to pick and choose what God can and can’t do.God tells us so often in my Charismatic Prayer Group that we have to stop doubting Him. He constantly says, “If I tell you that you can do something, believe that you can do it.” If he says this each week, then you would think we would listen. However, our pull to not believe in ourselves is great. If we want to change this, we must shift our focus away from us. We need to focus more on the power of God and less on our own feelings of unwort

God’s Endless LoveEphesians 3:18-19 “Then you will be empowered to discover what every holy one experiences – the great magnitude of the astonishing love of Christ in all its dimensions. How deeply intimate and far-reaching is his love! How enduring and inclusive it is! Endless love beyond measurement that transcends our understanding – this extravagant love pours into you until you are filled to overflowing with the fullness of God!”Man, I am truly in love with the passion translation right now. It helps me understand the Word of God in a deeper way. Last night, I was talking to Deacon Joe, the director of the Boston campus of Encounter’s School of Ministry, and I told him that I feel like my mission is to bring God’s love to others. I want every person in the entire world to know and understand how incredibly loved they are by their heavenly Father.Love is lacking in this world. It is absent in so many areas. The love that we do have is nothing like the love of our Heavenly Father. People are desperate for love these days. Maybe we always were; I’m not sure. I do know that people feel unloved and unwelcome right now. Most people don’t feel comfortable in their own skin. They wish they were different in many ways.With social media and how easy it is to see what everyone else is doing, it is easy to compare yourself to what they look like, what material possessions they have, what vacations they take, and how many friends they have. When we start to compare ourselves to others then we start to be unhappy with who we are and what we have. Yet, who we are is who God created us to be. He gave each one of us unique strengths and weaknesses. How many of us can only see our weaknesses?Matthew 22:36-40 says, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” I think we all know this first one and find the first one of these two commandments the easiest. It is easier to love God than it is to love others, at least most of the time. If you are going through a really hard season then you might be angry at God, but for the most part, we can get on board with loving God the Father with all that we have.However, the second commandment listed here is one that many people struggle with. First, loving our neighbor doesn’t just mean loving the person next door. It means loving everyone we meet. It means loving our enemies or those who have wronged us. There seem to be a lot of unlovable people in the world—people who are angry or unkind. How are we supposed to love people who treat us badly? How are we supposed to love people that we don’t even really know? How are we supposed to love people who know exactly what to say to get under our skin?In order to understand how to love others, let’s take a closer look at how the Lord loves us. The verse above starts with, “Then you will be empowered to discover what every holy one experiences- the great magnitude of the astonishing love of Christ in all its dimensions.” When I looked up the word astonishing, it said, “causing a feeling of great surprise or wonder.” That is the Lord’s love for us. It is full of surprises and wonder. Have you ever been surprised by God’s love?I spoke with a young woman last night at an Encounter event who was blown away by God’s love. She had been suffering from concussions and a condition where her feet couldn’t sweat. She had gone to a healing service a while back and did not see a lot of relief from her symptoms. Then, after a day and a half or so later, she was completely healed of both conditions. She just couldn’t believe the love of her Heavenly Father. She couldn’t believe that He healed her of not just one condition but of both of them at the same time. She definitely felt the astonishing love of God that evening.Next, the verse says, “How deeply intimate and far-reaching is his love! Wow, this is incredible, too. God’s love is far-reaching. I have seen this far-reaching love in my life. My husband and I had been struggling for a long time in our marriage. It got to the point where I felt like we needed to get a divorce. I do not believe in divorce but us living in the same house just wasn’t working. We have three boys, and the constant fighting was not good for anyone. Although there was no doubt in my mind that we needed a divorce or at least a separation, I still didn’t want it. I went to God often, and I asked Him to fix our marriage. I asked Him to change our hearts. I asked Him to keep our family together. This was for sure a far reach as we were pretty broken. Yet, God fixed us. He changed our hearts and helped fix not just our marriage but our family, too. There is no questioning God’s love for you when you can see Him work so powerfully i

Witness Wednesday #121 More PopWe Stories (Marriage/Family)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 Marriage/Family Category. Satan is attacking our families and I think it can help us to see that God is looking out for us. Satan wants to destroy families but God wants to preserve them. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation also. I pray you know that God wants is there with you and if you invite Him into your family issues He can help.Zachary: 2016 started out as one of the most exciting years for me and my wife, Amanda. We were living in Calcutta, India; working at Calcutta School of Music and starting our own company to support local artists and musicians in the city. Amanda was expecting our first baby, Chloe West Ray, and she was due to arrive at the beginning of December. Amanda was in her third trimester when she became very sick one night. We admitted her into the hospital in Calcutta, India on a Monday night. Tuesday morning Amanda was feeling better and Chloe seemed to be doing ok too. Wednesday morning, before we were about to leave the hospital, we went in for one more ultra sound. I can still hear the doctor say, “We can’t find a heart beat” as if it was today. We found ourselves sitting in that hospital room broken and confused, with no idea of what the next steps would be.There were very few words of comfort that helped. Although people were praying and offering their words of comfort, it felt like a season of being abandoned by God. The dreams of holding our little girl were stolen and shattered. Grief is a funny thing. The initial sting and pain becomes dull over time, but the memories and dull ache continues. I don’t think our hearts are created for this world to overcome “grief” from tragedies or loss of loved ones; it becomes a part of our story, our life. We become a different person. The beautiful thing is that God stays the same and meets us where we are. I can honestly say God tangibly became my refuge in one of the darkest times in my life. He brought a healing into my soul like no earthly person could. We may never be the way we were before, but He shapes us into a new and often stronger person. I don’t think we get over grief until we leave this world.We found out the following year that we were expecting another baby. Due to the loss of Chloe, it was difficult to not allow our fear and worry to overwhelm our joy. We simultaneously jumped for joy, and breathed a sigh of relief when our son was born.Pam: My husband and I had 7 kids – he had 3 and I had 2. Then we got custody of our 2 nephews. Less than a month after we received custody papers, our nephews’ dad passed away. Their mom lived nearby, but didn’t have much to do with the children. That has always caused its own set of problems.When we were going to get the boys out of foster care, we had no idea how we’d provide for 2 more, except for the fact that God had always provided for the 7 of us! We were fully trusting in Him to provide for all 9 of us. He did just that! We always attended church with the kids. We served in the church and paid our tithes. God never let us down.Recently, we had been praying for a job that would allow us more time together and get a lot of debt off of us. Biblically, we felt this was right. God is answering our prayers through a job we now have. We can work closer together and prayerfully begin to make more money and to pay off our debt.Even though life with a triple blended family was tough, and there were times we wanted to give up, we didn’t. God saw us through. He is faithful and trustworthy. We hope and pray that our kids will remember that we gave and served, and that God was faithful. We are thankful!Most of our kids are grown now and one is in the service. We pray they will always remember that their relationship with God is most important!Theresa: In my past relationship, I walked on eggshells, was hyper-vigilant, and lived in fight or flight mode every day. His behavior was a constant up and down. He would ignore me, then act nice to make me think everything was okay, then abruptly follow it with rage. He would manipulate and gaslight me, keep me exhausted, and criticize me frequently. He’d make excuses for his behavior, never took accountability, and blamed me for everything. Nothing I did ever seemed right, and I slowly lost confidence in myself.

Even God Gets AngryExodus 4:14-15 “Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses and he said, “What of your brother Aaron the Levite? I know that he can speak fluently; even now he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you his heart will be glad. You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth; and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and will teach you what you shall do.”In mentoring this month I have been teaching about our emotions and how our emotions aren’t universally good or bad. This is something that is easy to say and hard to believe. There are definitely some emotions we think are good, and some we think are bad. For instance, we don’t think it is “Christian-like” to be angry. When we are angry, we are probably not going to share that with our Christian friends because being angry isn’t what God wants from us. It isn’t just anger, either. There are a whole host of emotions that we struggle to reconcile with our faith.We might think, how can I be disappointed in this situation when God has given me so much? How can I be angry when God has blessed me and my family? How can I be impatient when I know God’s timing is best? How can I be sad and grieve the loss of a loved one when I know they are in a better place now? Do you get the idea? We struggle to understand how we can feel what we are feeling. We also tend to feel guilty for some of our feelings, and then, on top of our original feelings, we now add guilt and shame to them.Emotions can be tricky. I am not trying to say they are easy. I do believe we should let ourselves feel all of our emotions. Emotions are our body’s way of warning us of something. They bring something to our attention so we can deal with it. However, if it is an emotion we don’t like or that makes us feel uncomfortable, instead of exploring it to see what it is trying to tell us, we ignore it, stuff it down, and pretend it is not there. Stuffing our emotions down can be bad for a few reasons. One of them is that when we stuff our emotions down over time, they build up, kind of like the pressure in a volcano. Then, one day, they explode all over someone, and usually, it is not the person who gave you those unwanted feelings. It is usually some innocent bystander who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and said the wrong things. Unfortunately, I think we have all been in that situation at one time or another and we have all regretted it.Another reason stuffing down our emotions can be bad is that if we ignore them, we can’t hear what they are trying to tell us. Our emotions might be telling us we need to get out of a situation, that something needs to change, or any number of other things, and yet if we ignore them, we are not getting any of their messages.This can be avoided in part by not stuffing down our emotions. We can give ourselves permission to feel whatever feeling comes up. We can examine our feelings and see what they are trying to tell us. We can bring our feelings to the Lord and ask Him to help us understand our feelings. Our feelings are not bad. It is ok to feel all the different ranges of feelings. God felt a wide range of feelings, and so did Jesus. God is only good. If he felt angry, then how could anger be bad?It says in the verse above that “the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses.” Just before this verse, God was telling Moses that He wanted Moses to go to Egypt and free the Jewish people. Moses, like many of us, had lots of reasons why he was not qualified to do the job God asked him to do. What if they didn’t listen to him? What if they didn’t believe God had sent him? God gave Moses all sorts of answers to these questions. Every excuse Moses gave him, God responded with an answer. Then Moses continued to ask God to send someone else, and God got angry.I love this because I can relate to God’s anger in this situation. It makes me think of my kids when I ask them to do something, and they have a million excuses for why they can’t. It doesn’t matter if you shoot down 1 million excuses; they will always have just one more. It is so frustrating, and I can imagine it would be even more frustrating for the Lord. I mean, He is God. He knows everything. If He says you can do something, you can do it. So, I can see why He would be angry that Moses didn’t trust him.In verses 10 & 11, it says, “But Moses said to the Lord, “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” Then the Lord said to him, “Who gives speech to mortals? Who makes them mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” The Lord is telling Moses, I know you, I made you. I know what you can and can’t do. However, I am the Lord, and I can do all things. If God can make the deaf hear or the blind see, then don’t you think He could give you whatever you need to do whatever He is calling you to do? That is a lesson for another day,

We Are Saved By God’s GraceEphesians 2:3-5 “The corruption that was in us from birth was expressed through the deeds and desires of our self-life. We lived by whatever natural cravings and thoughts our minds dictated, living as rebellious children subject to God’s wrath like everyone else. But God still loved us with such great love. He is so rich in compassion and mercy. Even when we were dead and doomed in our many sins, he united us into the very life of Christ and saved us by his wonderful grace!”I love verses like this because when the Bible points out the things I am doing wrong, I know I am not the only one doing them. If I were the only one, or if only a few of us were living by whatever natural cravings and thoughts our minds dictated, then God wouldn’t put it in the Bible. The verse starts by saying, “The corruption that was in us from birth was expressed through the deeds and desires of our self-life.” We were all born with original sin. Adam and Eve were born into a perfect world. There was no sin; there was only love, and they got to stroll through the garden at night with the Lord. Their heavenly Father would come to visit them and talk with them.However, they were tricked by the serpent and ate the fruit from the tree of good and evil. I don’t know if they were misled or just enticed. The devil was laying out a pretty good picture of how God was trying to control them by telling them not to eat that fruit. The serpent told them they would be like God if they ate the fruit. Who wouldn’t want to be like God, right? So they ate the fruit. The interesting thing is that they were already like God. God made us in His likeness and image. They were already like God. However, once they ate that fruit, sin entered the world, and it didn’t want to leave.This is the corruption from birth that the verse is talking about. We are all born with original sin, and that is why Catholics believe you should be baptized as soon as you are born. Once you are baptized with the Holy Spirit, sin can’t say, it must leave. However, because we are human, our choices can allow sin to creep back into our lives. This sin that creeps back into our lives is expressed through our deeds and desires of our self-life. When sin creeps back in, we tend to live for ourselves instead of for God.I was listening to an Encounter Ministry talk yesterday, and the teacher talked about how she had a niece or a friend’s child whom she spoke to often. When the girl was little, my teacher would say things like, “How did you get to be so beautiful?” or “How did you get to be so nice?” and the little girl would say, “That’s just the way God made me.” There is such an innocence in this response. However, once we get a bit older and the world corrupts our thinking, and our sin crowds our minds, then we forget that this is how God made us and that He made each one of us just as we are for a reason.Once we allow sin to creep back in with our deeds and desires, our thoughts get distorted. We start to hate who we are, what we look like, what we sound like, and everything else about us. I was at a women’s conference once, and the speaker said that she asked everyone in the audience who hated their body to stand up, and 90% of the women stood up. She didn’t ask, who would change something about their body if they could? She didn’t ask, who dislikes something about their body? She asked who hated their body, and 90% of them stood up. This is the work of the enemy. We are not born hating our bodies. We are born with so much love, and then this broken world pollutes our minds and bodies.The line in the verse says, “ We lived by whatever natural cravings and thoughts our minds dictated, living as rebellious children subject to God’s wrath like everyone else.” This pretty much sums up my struggle. I have so many cravings and thoughts in my life that seem to dictate my life. Some things seem like they are not really a big deal, but when we really examine them, we see that they are not good for us. Do you have any cravings that take your focus away from God? You have thoughts that take up all your focus and that you are thinking about all the time. If you have ever had an addiction, you know exactly what I am talking about. I am lucky in that the addictions I have had have not been life-threatening, like drugs or alcohol. I am lucky that my addictions have not affected my life in ways like losing my family or losing my job. However, that doesn’t mean they were damaging.When I was addicted to TV, while I still am, but now I manage my addiction, I would watch TV all day long. I would not get anything done while the kids were at school, and I wouldn’t do anything after they went to bed, either. I would watch hours of TV a day. I can only imagine how different my life would be if I had spent that time growing closer to the Lord, growing my spiritual life, reading books to further my knowledge, or really anything else that would have been productive. The enemy kept

Be An Advertisement of God’s Immense PowerEphesians 1:19-22 “I pray that you will continually experience the immeasurable greatness of God's power made available to you through faith. Then your lives will be an advertisement of this immense power as it works through you! This is the mighty power that was released when God raised Christ from the dead and exalted him to the place of highest honor and supreme authority in the heavenly realm!”I love this verse and the translation. I am really enjoying reading the passion translation. There is so much passion in what is said. I try not to use the same verse more than once as I think there are over 31,000 verses in the Bible, so it will take us a long time to get through them all. However, when I read this translation of this verse, I felt called to use it. This verse might just be my life verse. It is definitely one I will write down on a sticky note and look at often. This verse sums up the goal of this podcast and my life. I want my life to be an advertisement of God’s immense power. I want everyone in the world to know and understand what it means to have the Holy Spirit living inside of them.Can you even imagine if just 10% of the people in the world knew the power they had living inside them? If just 10% of the world’s population knew the power they had living inside of them, that would be 790 million people. Can you imagine that? Now imagine every Christian in the world knew the power they had living inside them. That would be over 2.4 billion people. Can you imagine how much change could happen if we had 2.4 billion people walking around experiencing the immeasurable greatness of God’s power made available through their faith?But we don’t need to start with 2.4 billion people. Let’s start with you. Do you truly understand the power you have residing within you? Do you comprehend that the Holy Spirit dwells within you? The verse states, this is the mighty power that was released when God raised Christ from the dead and exalted him to the place of highest honor and supreme authority in the heavenly realm. If you have been baptized in any Christian denomination, then you have the Holy Spirit within you. If you have doubts, you can read all about it in Acts 2:1-13. When Jesus was preparing to ascend to his Father, He promised to send us a guide.I don’t know if you know this or not because I didn’t know it for the first 40 years or so of my life, but the Holy Spirit that Jesus asked the Father to send to us is the same Holy Spirit that Jesus had inside of Him when He walked the earth. It is the same Holy Spirit that helped Jesus heal all those people. It is the same Holy Spirit that helped Jesus multiply all that food. It is the same Holy Spirit that helped Jesus perform all the miracles He performed. It is also the same Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead. This verse reminds us of that. It says, “This is the mighty power that was released when God raised Christ from the dead.”Can you believe that? I don’t know about you, but when I first heard that, my brain kept repeating it as I tried to wrap my head around this idea. I found it so hard to believe that I had the same Holy Spirit that Christ had flowing through my body. The same Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives inside of me and it lives inside of you too! How amazing is that? The next thing that came to mind is a question I want to invite you all to ask yourself. What am I doing with that power? How am I using the Holy Spirit? Or, I should say, how am I allowing the Holy Spirit to use me? It's a personal responsibility we all have, to utilize this incredible power within us.Have I given the Holy Spirit permission to work in my life? Have I invited the Holy Spirit into my life? Have I asked the Holy Spirit to guide my thoughts and my words? Have I asked Him to guide my actions? God believes so strongly in free will that He won’t push His way into our lives. He waits to be invited, and He comes where He is welcomed. Some of the things we may be blaming God for may be things that happened because we didn’t invite God in. Some things may happen because we thought we could do it all on our own. Or, maybe you didn’t know you needed to invite God in. Either way, I want you to know now so you can ask Him from now on.I said earlier that my goal for my life is to be an advertisement of the immense power of God as it works through me in my life. For me, this means being used by God to heal people, to be His instrument to restore the blind and open deaf ears. To be His instrument to heal cancer, MS, fibromyalgia, and all sorts of diseases, for there is no cure. I pray the Lord uses me for creative miracles such as growing arms and legs. I pray the Holy Spirit works through me to multiply food, resources, and any other way the power of the Holy Spirit wants to work through me. I pray the Holy Spirit tells me what to do, and I do it.However, this doesn’t have to be everyone’s goal. You can have the

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

Witness Wednesday #120 More PopWe StoriesToday’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose two testimonies from the Healing Category. I know so many people who are looking for a healing right now and I think these stories will offer some hope and encouragement. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles and healing can happen in your situation also.Allison: At the age of 23, I looked back at my life and I couldn’t think of a time when I felt healthy. I had struggled with chronic illness ever since I could remember, and I still didn’t have a name for all the symptoms that I was experiencing. It was years of trying to explain what I was feeling but not getting any answers. I felt alone and misunderstood.At times, I wondered if God even cared about me at all. The summer before I turned 23, things took a turn for the worse. I got into a car accident which left me feeling overwhelmed with guilt as it was my fault. On top of that, my symptoms were getting worse. Fatigue, aching joints, nausea, anxiety, depression, memory loss…the list goes on and on. I didn’t think I was going to make it. In fact, I asked God to just take me home because I didn’t want to endure the pain any longer.I met with one of my pastors for prayer about the car accident a few weeks later, (at least that’s what I intended on discussing.) But God. He had different plans. Somehow the whole meeting ended up being about my health. Towards the end of the meeting, my pastor looked at me and said “Allison, I think you have chronic Lyme Disease.” I would be lying if I said I wasn’t annoyed. I spent years of my life trying to get to the root of my health problems and no doctor could even give me a diagnosis, so how would a pastor know anything about my health? The next day I cried out to God. I asked Him to show me if it was true, and if it was, to lead me to the right doctor.He answered. Loud and clear. Multiple times over the following weeks He confirmed it. Through a stranger, I was given the name of a doctor in my town who specializes in treating Lyme. I had an appointment with him, and it turns out my pastor was right. After years and years of waiting, I had an answer. Today, 6 years later, I am healed. I ended up getting treated by that doctor, and God used him to save my life. I know I wouldn’t be here today if God hadn’t intervened.Through this journey, God has shown me His faithfulness. I know now that He heard me every time I cried out to Him. He is the God that sees me. He sees you, too!Emily: Hello, I’m Emily. I’m a 10 time Breast Cancer Survivor. Yes, you read that right, ….TEN.It all began with a stomach ache in 2008. As I went to my doctor for a routine exam, she found the Cancer! Of course, I had to go through an ultrasound and mammogram first, but my doctor had saved my life by detecting this early, I thought.I was 33, had 3 kids, (ages 6, 2, and 8 months) and a full-time job teaching 1st graders at a public school. Cancer? Who has time for Cancer? I was told it is an aggressive form and difficult to treat, because doctors don’t know much about it. I have Triple Negative Breast Cancer. I fought with everything I had through chemo, radiation and a lumpectomy.God and I spent a lot of time talking about how I was going to win this battle and with His help, I did, for 4 1/2 years.The Demon itself returned in March of 2012, just before my 5 year clear mark. I was devastated, scared, angry, frustrated and MAD at God. Why was this happening to me again? Why do I have to go through this again? This isn’t fair! God carried me through the second battle, just as He did the first with just as much grace and comfort.Fast-forward to 2022. I’ve now had TWO double mastectomies, a lumpectomy, ten biopsies, a DIEP flap reconstruction surgery, 3 more rounds of chemo (78 total treatments), 3 different types of radiation (67 total treatments), and Proton therapy (35 treatments) to try and kill this cancer. It has reared its ugly head 10 times and this is going to be the last!!!Just a month and a half ago, I learned about a new drug that people were having success rates with. It was a Godsend and true miracle. An email delivered to my inbox revealed something we’ve been waiting for for 15 years!!!! The product is working and I will have another scan in February to hear that there is NED (No evidence of disease)!!! I am positive after reading the success stories!I tell my story to say

Treasures of RedemptionEphesians 1:7-8 “Since we are now joined to Christ, we have been given the treasures of redemption by his blood—the total cancellation of our sins—all because of the cascading riches of his grace. This superabundant grace is already powerfully working in us, releasing all forms of wisdom and practical understanding.”As soon as I read that verse this morning, I knew it was the one I needed to use, as this is something we all get stuck on. We all know and understand that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, but when we look at our sins, we think they are too bad for Jesus to forgive. I love that the verse says, “Since we are not joined to Christ, we have been given the treasures of redemption by his blood.” I love how it reminds us that redemption is a treasure. It is something of great value, and it wasn’t easy to give that to us. It is important to remember what Christ went through to provide us with our redemption. He had to die on the cross for us to have this treasure of redemption.Next, the verse says, “the total cancellation of our sins-all because of the cascading riches of his grace.” Let me read that last part again for those of us who get stuck here. It says the total cancellation of our sins. It does not say the partial cancellation of our sins. It doesn’t say the cancellation of the sins that aren’t too bad. It doesn’t say the cancellation of some of your sins. No, that is not what it says. It says the total cancellation of our sins. That means even that one sin that you feel like He could never forgive, He already has.When we decide that our sins are too big for God to forgive, we are telling Him that we don’t think Jesus’s sacrifice was big enough to cover our sins. Do you know what a slap in the face that is? Jesus went through agony to provide us with redemption, and we are essentially saying no thank you to that redemption. We are saying we appreciate what you did, but it just wasn’t enough for the gravity of my sins. When we do this, we are letting our pride get in the way of the love that the Lord has for us. Is this what we want?Trusting in the forgiveness of sins requires faith. It requires us to believe the Lord’s Words. It requires us to believe in the Lord’s love for us. Why else would He send His son to die on the cross for us? God’s unconditional love for us cannot be separated from what Jesus did on the cross. If God didn’t care about us so much, if He didn’t love us so much, then there wouldn’t have been a cross. He would have let us deal with the consequences of Adam and Eve. God did not create sin and He certainly didn’t create a world full of sin. God created us to live in Harmony with Him in the garden of Eden. Can you imagine what that would have been like? Eating anything we want except that one tree. Taking a stroll through the garden with God at night. That must have been paradise.I don’t want to forget to talk about the ending of this verse either. It says, “all because of the cascading riches of his grace. This superabundant grace is already powerfully working in us, releasing all forms of wisdom and practical understanding.” Did you know God gives us graces? I love that this translation says, “cascading riches of his grace.” I think this is a great illustration to show how generous our God is. He is not holding back His grace and rationing it out in case He runs out one day. He knows He will never run out and He pours His grace down on those who ask for it. Do you ever wonder why it seems like some people have more favor with the Lord, or some people receive more grace? I believe it is because they ask for it. When is the last time you asked God for some grace in your life? When is the last time you asked God for some favor?God is a good good Father and if we ask He will give it to us, unless we are asking for something that is not good for us. Don’t be afraid to ask the Lord for anything you need. I believe He loves it when we come to Him and make big requests becasue it shows him that we believe He can do it. Sort of like when we need to open a jar. We don’t ask someone to help us unless we think they are strong enough to help us. We ask them because we believe they can open that jar. The same is true with God. We are not going to ask Him to find a way to help us pay our mortgage if we don’t believe that he can do it. So, by asking Him for big things, we are actually showing Him how much we believe in Him and I think He loves that!Now, back to His Superabundant Grace. We all have this grace working powerfully in us. How do you think you do all the hard things that you are able to do. Through God’s grace. I love that it says in the verse that His grace is already releasing all forms of wisdom and practical understanding. I didn’t realize or know until fairly recently that God gave us wisdom or knowledge. I mean I might have read it in the Bible and I might have known it on some level, but I didn’t actually know we could ask God for wisdom and th

Unstained InnocenceEphesians 1:3-4 “Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm has already been lavished upon us as a love gift from our wonderful heavenly father, the Father of our Lord Jesus—all because he sees us wrapped into Christ. This is why we celebrate him with all our hearts! And in love he chose us before he laid the foundation of the universe! Because of his great love, he ordained us, so that we would be seen as holy in his eyes with and unstained innocence.”When I read these two verses this morning, I thought they were so beautiful. They begin with “Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm has already been lavished upon us as a love gift from our wonderful heavenly father.” Isn’t that beautiful? Did you know that your heavenly Father is lavishing spiritual blessings on you? The word blessing in this verse is a translation of the Greek word eulogy, which means “to speak well of.” Since God is acting in this verse, we can say that God has spoken good things about us or pronounced good things for our benefit. The good things that God has decreed for us are probably beyond our ability to number.Can you imagine your heavenly Father showering you with blessings? Did you know that is what He is doing? I know sometimes it doesn’t feel like you are getting any blessings, but this might be because you are in the middle of a hard time. You might not be able to see the blessings because you are so focused on the hard thing that is happening. You might think there is no way God could be blessing you because of all you are going through.This isn’t true. God can bless us in the middle of a hard time. He can bless us whenever He wants to. You might be wondering what that may look like, what it would look like to have a blessing while in the middle of a hardship. That could look like someone you know checking on you to see if you need anything. It could look like your friends and family bringing you meals when they know you have no time to cook. It could look like you getting a job promotion right when you need it the most! Have any of these ever happened to you? What about when a stranger says something to you out of the blue and it is exactly what you needed to hear?God is not just blessing us, He is lavishing spiritual blessings upon us. This can go against our picture of God. We all have a picture of God in our head and for some of us, probably a lot of us, it is not a picture of a wonderful heavenly Father. Many of us picture the heavenly Father similar to our dad growing up. So if you had a loving Father growing up the idea that our heavenly Father is loving is easier to grasp. However, if our earthly Father was not outwardly loving and was hard on you, maybe expected a lot out of you, then this is how you might see our heavenly Father too. But God's love is beyond our earthly understanding, and He cherishes each and every one of us.I know a lot of people who picture the Lord as an old man with a white mustache and beard sitting up in heaven, looking down on us and judging us. They picture God as someone who is just waiting for them to screw up so He can punish them. They are sure they are disappointing Him all of the time. I think this is why I chose these verses and why I like these verses so much.The second verse for today dispels this myth that God is up in heaven just waiting for us to mess up. It says, “And in love he chose us before he laid the foundation of the universe! Because of his great love, he ordained us, so that we would be seen as holy in his eyes with and unstained innocence.” First, it says that God chose us before He laid the foundation of the Universe. God chose you. Let that sink in for a moment. God chose you before He even created the universe. Does that sound like the act of a Father that is sitting up in heaven waiting for you to screw up so He can punish you?Next it says, “Because of His great love, he ordained us, so that we would be seen as holy in his eyes with unstained innocence.” Listen to that last part again, “so that we would be seen as holy in his eyes with unstained innocence.” God doesn’t look at us as if we are a wreck waiting to happen. In His eyes, we have an unstained innocence about us. God doesn’t want us to mess up. He doesn’t want us to sin or to fall away from Him. He loves us. He chose us. He wants us to be right there with Him for all eternity.God loves us. He looks down upon us as a loving Father would. Once we realize this our relationship with the Heavenly Father will become so much closer. If we haven’t really experienced true love in this world, then it might be hard to understand how much our heavenly Father loves us. One thing I am finding that can help with this is to read the scriptures. Read the Psalms, read the New Testament. Last week I read Philippians and this week I am reading Ephesians and they are just beautiful. The Bible is a living document. It is not just a book of words that the Lord told His people back in the day. The Bi

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

First I just want to apologize. I totally forgot that yesterday was Wednesday so I gave you a regular episode instead of a witness Wednesday. However, I know many of you love to hear the testimonies, so I didn’t want to skip it this week. So today I am bringing you a witness Wednesday, just a day late on a Thursday. Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose two testimonies from the Relationship Category. Relationships are hard. I don’t think we are sailing through life full of perfect relationships. 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 relationships, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles and healing can happen in your relationships also.Karina: When I think of my story, I think of pain, grief, overwhelming sadness, hurt, and betrayal. Then I think of hope, redemption, love, grace, miracles, and my salvation in Jesus.Five years ago, my entire world turned upside down. I experienced betrayal in my marriage after 12 years. I was in so much pain. My life seemed to have been one episode after the next of unfortunate events.I was so broken and so alone. I was in severe depression and taking depression and anxiety meds and using alcohol with it. I was doing anything I could to dull the pain I was in.I’m so thankful that God loved me so much that He pursued me in ways I’d never experienced before. I was blessed to become a part of a church. At a time when I was deeply hurting, I was shown the love of Christ over and over again. My pastor would say during his messages (and he still does) that I MATTERED to GOD. Honestly, I didn’t even know that I did. God never left my side and He revealed Himself and His love to me. I had never known love like this before and he poured it out on me in waves and waves. He walked with me through the trials and the storms and he saved me and restored me. Then God led me to become a part of a women’s group that has encouraged me, prayed with me and laughed with me. These women have become my sisters. We’ve shared a bond stronger than any blood relationship I’ve ever had. Words can’t describe the love in my heart that I have for each of them. God has healed me in ways I couldn’t see possible five years ago or even three years ago. He resurrected my dead marriage which is a miracle in a way because there was no way I could see this being restored or if reconciliation was even an option. That’s the God I serve. He is full of compassion, LOVE, mercy, and GRACE… He pursues us even when we turn our backs on Him. He loved me even when I didn’t love myself; He showed me I was His, that I was never forsaken; that I was chosen, a daughter of the One True King. He healed my heart, renewed my mind and made me brand new! The only way I can end this is by saying “Thank You, JESUS” ❤️Trent: Theme songs are an important part of our world. As individuals, I feel that we each have a personal theme song for our life. My name is Trent, and I am 19 years old. By no fault of my own, I was born into a family filled with extreme dysfunction. My earliest years were filled with domestic violence, extreme neglect, and extensive sexual abuse. I truly struggle to find the words to adequately describe the daily pain and suffering that I endured during my earliest years. I was hurt in every way imaginable. My theme song was one of fear.I feared for my safety. I feared that I would starve. I feared that I could not protect my younger brother. I feared that the pain would never end. I feared that I would never have anyone to love me.After a few traumatic years with those who gave birth to me, I was taken into the foster care system. I spent my early childhood traveling from one foster home to another. My theme song of fear amplified as I cried myself to sleep each night fearing that I would never have a family to call my own.I would like for you to think for just a moment about how difficult it is each time you experience a change in life. Now imagine that you are asked to gather your few pathetic belongings, place them in a trash bag, and get in a car to be taken to the home of a complete and total stranger. This happened to me not once, but 5 times over the course of my first 8 years. Fear was the theme that dominated my existence. Although my foster placements were not exactly ideal, I was introduced to God very early on and was able to cling to the hope that He had a plan for my life. I was young, but I kept hearing about this God who loved me no matter what. I was given a dog