More Than a Year

It has been more than a year since I started this blog.
If are wondering why I only have about 25 post in a year the answer is simple, I have been otherwise preoccupied. This year, I fell in love.

It wasn't like I thought it would be.
It wasn't like it happens in the movies. There were no fireworks- although there was plenty of burning.
There was no flitting about- although there was plenty of excitement.
There was no flirting and giggling- although there was plenty of wooing and deep heartfelt joy.
Yes, dear friends I have fallen in love and it's not like the story book kind of love, it's better.
There was no riding off into the sunset- but I know there will be a "happily-ever-after", for the One with Whom I have fallen in love, is Perfect! He is Love Himself.
He is the only One Who will NEVER let you down.
He is the only One Who knows me inside and out, even better than I know myself.
He is wonderful, amazing, beyond what words can describe. He is better than the best. Bigger than my wildest dreams. More majestic than the highest rugged mountain peek. He is the only Way. All Truth and Life. He is All-in-All.
If you haven't guessed it yet, I don't know who your thinking of, but I can tell you one thing, whoever that is he (or she) doesn't even come close to holding a candle to Who I am speaking of.
He is above and beyond any and ever one or thing.
Words fail to describe even a small portion of His vastness.
He is Omnipotent, omnipresent, all powerful, above and beyond everything in this universe, and I love Him. But what's even more amazing than that- it shouldn't be that spectacular that I love Someone as wonderful as Him- the amazing thing is HE LOVES ME! He loved me even before I loved Him!(Rom 5:8)
He is so good to us!
Who know one name could mean so much? This one name holds so much wait. Thousands, perhaps even millions have died horendis deths rather than renounce this wonderful name. This name above all names.
Jesus.




Due to the fact that, as of May 22nd, I am now graduated from Ellerslie, I have started a new blog page which you can get to here http://www.usemyhands.blogspot.com/

Have time on your hands?

Have you ever had one of those days, or times throughout the day, where you just seem to have an odd amount of time on your hands and your not sure what to do with it?

Well my fellow sojourner have I got a wonderful time filler for you!

PRAY!
You might say “Seriously? Pray? You sound like my Mother (or whoever)” or “Well of course I could do that”.
My response: OF COURSE you could do that, but, are you doing it?

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ we have so much extra time on our hands that we don't even see!
Time spent in the car. Time waiting in line. Time brushing our teeth. Time in the shower. Time making dinner. TIME! Time that we are wasting! I to am guilty of this.
Dear Lord Jesus would You press upon each of us the importance, as Your body, to pray without ceasing!

Pray:

Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest. ~Mat 9:38
The American Church needs to be revived! There are so many ready for the gospel and we need laborers to go into these white fields. We need strong Godly men and virtuous, valiant women to rise up in this generation to proclaim, unashamedly, the truth of Who Jesus Christ is! To stand up for Truth and the purity of His Word!

Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body. ~Heb 13:3
If you are not now in a position where you can go and literally be hands and feet, you can still pray.
Pray for the mothers with HIV/Aids having to give up their little babies because they are to poor and too sick to care for them, even though that is all they have left in this world.
Pray for the HIV/Aids crisis in Southern Africa.
Pray for the orphaned and vulnerable children in Russia who are prime targets for human trafficking.
Pray for the little girls in slavery, who are treated worse than animals in the Brothels in Thailand and Cambodia.
Pray for the orphans in our own “back yard”, those who have no advocate right here in America, those under the banner of foster care. Who have been taken from their homes and the familiar (even if what was familiar was destruction it was, in allot of cases, all they knew).
Pray for those kids who are “aging out” of the Foster Care system, with no family and no stability, suddenly loosing the only thread of stability.
Pray for the babies in orphanages all across the world who have no one to hold them. Who have lost almost all emotion from lack of love and connection.
Pray for the little special needs babies in China who are scorned by society and abandoned by parents.
Pray for the boys and girls kidnapped and forced to fight in the LRA (“Lords Resistance Army”) in Liberia.
Pray Pray PRAY!

This is something we MUST do! Church of Jesus Christ, it is time that we found our way back to the prayer closet!
It's time that we not only find time in our day to pray, but MAKE time in our day to pray!
There are thousands dying each day and going to hell and we sit around and do nothing.
Dear Lord, plead open our eyes! Give us Your burdens! Press us to prayer!
Awake Your people from their peaceful sleep and burden them to PRAY!
Oh, Lord, we need Your grace (the power of the Christian life) to walk this narrow path.
Lord, our flesh balks at the idea of spending hours in prayer. It tells us that is too extreme, but if God's people don't get extreme once again then what is the point of being a Christian? If we are not radically giving our lives to You then what are we doing different than the world?
Lord, awaken us! Press us! Be LORD once again of Your people!
Thank You Jesus for the grace, hope, joy and love that is found in You!
Thank You that when we seek You with our whole hearts we will find You.
Thank You Lord that You are enough, that Your grace is sufficient.
I love You.
In Jesus name I pray. Amen.

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Fortification

There is a walled city, a fortress.
In this fortress lives the High King.
This High King loves His people and does everything He can to keep his people safe from the enemy without. But for some strange reason His people keep leaving the gates to the city open, or sometimes they don’t keep up their part of the wall and it falls into disrepair.
The King longs to see all of His people safe, but His people just keep letting the enemy in.
The King tells them what to do, how to close the gates, how to keep up the walls, in fact He gives them a whole instruction manual on how it is done, but still the enemy keeps getting in.
Why is this?
Maybe it is because the people don’t realize the danger they are in until it is too late. They don’t even realize that they are leaving the gates open and the walls in disrepair, that they are either letting happen or causing the “breaches”. Then when the enemy slips in through the cracks and wrecks havoc on their lives the people turn to the King and say “How could you let this happen? You are supposed to be our protector!”
The King looks out at His people with sorrow and says “How can I protect those who won’t be protected? Who won’t even close the doors to the enemy?”
I don’t know about you, but this hits a little close to home for me.
I don’t know how many times I have let Satan squeeze through the door or the cracks in the walls, without ever realizing it.
What causes these “breaches”?
Sin, unforgiveness, letting in or pondering things that are not of God, ect.
Essentially, us feeding the flesh and listening and buying the lies of Satan.
What combats these lies and fills in the breaches? Jesus Christ.
Through the power and truth of His Word. Through His Spirit indwelling and enabling us to see these breaches for what they truly are. Through the realization of knowing what we have and what we need and wrestling until the braking of day for the fulfillment of that need.
By gaining a true understanding for what a breach is we can began to see the things of God and the things that He wants to accomplish through us.
God does not want us to be bandied-about by the enemy.
There is a time to lay down one’s life, but even then we are not laying it down before the enemy, but before God Almighty. For His Kingdom and His glory.
So how do we tell when something is from Satan and not form God, and therefore a breach?
Well these are some of the things that we know are from the enemy and we need to stand against:
Fear, Anxiety, Depression, Guilt, Confusion, Insecurity, Family Problems, Spiritual Defeat…
These are thing that we know are not form God. Therefore we resist them. We say “NO” to the lies the enemy tries to pass off as truth.
We are not to fall under any of these things. That is not how the triumphant Christian life works.
We submit ourselves to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee. (Jam 4:27)
God has a plan for our lives and I believe He wants to work this fortification in us so that we can turn and help others with the same vulnerabilities as we had.
Jesus has a perfect plan. Let’s seek and find Him.

To Tremble

The sacred task of handling the Word of God

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” John 1:1-3

The Bible is the holy word of GOD. The God of ALL. The God, who created all, knows all and was here before all. He has all power and all authority. With one WORD He can create or destroy.
He is ALL IN ALL.
Our puny minds fail to grasp even a small portion of this truth. It is far beyond our wildest imagination.
We serve a BIG God (and that’s a HUGE understatement).
If we could only grasp a small fragment of this, then what would our reaction be to the Word of God?
We certainly would not allow it to be twisted, reshaped, molded to fit human thoughts and agendas, and trampled in the dirt like it is being today.
We would stand up and fight for it. Give our lives for it. IT IS THE WORD OF GOD!
The Bible is very clear on how we should treat it:

"Whoso despises the word shall be destroyed: but he that fears the commandment shall be rewarded." Proverbs 13:13

For all those things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been, saith the LORD: but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembles at my word . . . Hear the word of the LORD, ye that tremble at his word;
Isaiah 66;2,5
And ye became followers of us, and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Ghost:
1 Thessalonians 1:6

Not only are we supposed to heed the Word in text, but we are to bend to the Word in person.
John 1:14, 17 says “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth... For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.”

Jesus Christ is the Word of God!

He is the one we bend to. To Him belongs all glory, praise, worship and adoration.
We must fight to keep the word in text because when we mess with the word of God in text, we mess with the Word of God in person.

In Pilgrims Progress- Christiana
There is a scene where Christiana and her sons and their companions are in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. They come to what appears to be a huge chasm. A ways down birds appear to be drift slowly two and fro. Far across the other side of the yawning chasm is the Narrow Way. What are they to do?
Wait! What is this? As they look closer they realize that it is only painting on the rock. There isn’t really a chasm at all. It was all a trick of the enemy to throw them off of the right path.

This is what is happening to the Word of God today.
We are allowing it to be tampered with. At first it may just seem like a little bit of harmless paint, but it’s not. We are allowing the Rock to be tampered with.
If we truly believe that the Bible is what it says it is, the Truth, The Word of God, then we must stand up for this truth and fight for it as if it truly is the Word of God.
We must also take every word in it seriously. We do not mold the Word of God to fit us and our agenda; we bend our will to the Word of God.
If we continue to let the Rock be tampered with more and more people are going to be turned away from the true Narrow Way. And the Lord will not receive the glory that is His due.

"And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he does judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God."
Revelation 19:10-13

This is our God. This is His word. Tremble before it. Reverence it. Obey it. Fight for it!

The Battle Still Rages On

There are two Kingdoms, Darkness and Light.
These two Kingdoms are at war and they have been for thousands of years.
The outcome is already determined, the victory already ours, yet the battle still rages on.
Why is this?
Well I think God gives us a pretty good picture of this proclaimed victory that still requires a battle, in the story of the children of Israel and the Exodus out of Egypt
In Exo 4:21 it says “And the LORD said unto Moses, When thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand: but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go.”

The Lord purposely hardened Pharaoh’s heart.
Why did He do that?
To make things harder on poor Moses? He didn’t even want to go in the first place.
Why didn’t God just make Pharaoh let the Children of Israel go? He can do it He’s God, right? I mean, shouldn’t He at least be softening Pharaoh’s heart?

The LORD gives His reason in Exo 14: 4 (As if He even needs to. He’s GOD. He can do what He wants. But He’s good and He loves us and wants us to know Him)
“And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, that he shall follow after them; and I will be honoured upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host; that the Egyptians may know that I am the LORD. And they did so.”

The Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart because He had a plan. Not to make Moses and Aaron’s lives more difficult. He hardened Pharaoh’s heart that He might receive honor and that the Egyptians might know that He is the LORD.

Moses and Aaron were asked to fight the battle with Pharaoh for God’s glory. Yet in themselves they did not fight. God fought for them, they simply obeyed.

This is the same kind of battle God is calling us to fight. The battle that has already been won. The battle to bring glory and honor to the name of our King; that all the earth may know that He is LORD, for He is worthy to be praised.

In order to fight this wonderful, impossible-without-God, battle we must be willing to leave all that we have, Just as Moses left his home in Midian, and fallow the commands of the LORD.
We must obey the commands of God when He tells us to “throw down our rod”; even if we’re not sure that He will let us pick it up again.
We have to be willing to step out in faith and stretch out our hand, believing that God truly will part the red sea.

And just like He did with Moses, Aaron, and the children of Israel, He will be faithful to deliver us from the hands of the enemy.
Not only will He deliver us, but if we believe, He will fill us with His Spirit. So that we might be used (like Moses and Aaron) as tools in the great plan to set the captives free from the bondage of the enemy.
He will dwell in and trough us and enable us to go forth, and by the power of His Spirit living through us, set the captives free.

“Thy Kingdom Come. Thy will be done, in earth as it is in Heaven.”~Mat 6:10
It’s already done in heaven. Let us fight to see it done here on earth.
For the Kingdom and His Glory!

Sweet Conviction

Sweet conviction, Oh what bliss!
My Jesus set me free
T'is such joy to feel His rod
Gently probing me

I will not listen to the lie
That t'is unkind of cruel
T'would be much worse to stumble on
Without His gentle rule

His guiding hand ever upon
to comfort probe and keep
T'would be sorry, without a shepherd
To be a wayward sheep.

So do not tremble, dread or fear
My Lord is at the helm
He knows the things that must be done
To reach the heavenly realm

So gently will He guide you
Through valleys of death and life
and you will reach that sweeter land
no more to harbor strife

But e'er to dance before your King
"All glory honor and praise"
Will be the song we are will sing
And worship all our days


Inspired by the session "Pain" given by Eric Ludy