The Reasons Why I Walk With God

Walking with God makes things easier and brings me hope. You may not realize it but walking with God is so much better than walking without Him. And here is why:

Walking with God makes things possible. The Lord never said our lives here on earth would be easy. We are going to go through tough times and we are going to struggle along the way. But our time on earth will be worth it. We are here to spread God’s love and light to others. That God is our Savior. God gives us the assurance of His presence and power in our lives when we trust in Him. With Him I can endure the trials and heartache this world brings.

Leviticus 26:12 says “I will also walk among you and be your God, and you shall be my people.

So many people worship so many different Gods of this earth trying to find peace. But I worship the Lord of all peace.

He is my comfort. The Lord is always walking beside me. He goes through every situation with me. He loves and cares for me and is always by my side. I have comfort in knowing that He is always with me and will be here in every situation I endure. He is a shoulder to cry on and the one who lifts my head in times of joy. His arms are always open.

“Even though I walk through the darkness valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” – Psalm 23:4

He is my constant help. No matter what I go through, I know God will be there to help me. When I cry out for help, when I’m frustrated and angry I cry out to Him. When I’m upset and feel like I cannot go on any longer God is there to pick me up. He never judges me by my choices. He picks me up dusts me off and moves me forward.

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses; but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet He did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” – Hebrews 4:15-16

Walking with Him is an unnecessary struggle. When I am not walking with God, I struggle even more because I am completely on my own. I have to figure things out by myself and things are more difficult than they should be. God is a light to my path. He shows me the way, but without Him I have to find my own way through the darkness. Why struggle when I have God to guide me.

“When Jesus spoke again to the people, He said, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” – John 8:12

No Pity Parties

I had a therapist tells me years ago that I had to try and only have 1 pity party a week. I thought “It’s not like I plan to have these, they just happen.” After I left his office I remember thinking this is never going to work.

Well as it turned out once I started to notice when I would start pitying the more I became aware of it the more I learned to pull myself out of it.

We all go through hard times, disappointments, and even setbacks or delays. When faced with challenges it is easy to feel sorry for ourselves, our families, and circumstances or to complain about the way things appear. Yet, what we focus on during such times has the power to change not only our circumstances, but how long we remain in the valleys,

We’ve all been there. Our health, or a loved one’s is poor health. We may find ourselves laid off from our job. Maybe even our greatest dream suddenly appears distant or completely out of reach. No matter what the circumstances are, when times are tough it is easy to feel sorry for ourselves or complain endlessly about the way things are- or the way they should be. Yet, there is power in choosing not to dwell there.

While it’s normal to have a period of sadness in the face of loss, trial, and disappointment, there should never be a permanent place for it. After a while we have to rely on God’s strength. We need to pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off. After all, pity parties and endless complaining have no place in God’s Kingdom.

Still it is often easier said that done. We can become familiar with feeling sorry for ourselves or complaining. It can become comfortable and far easier that actually moving forward. Particularly when we consider that moving forward requires us to step out of our comfort zone and into a place of unknowns.

We have to realize that it’s a problem that needs to be corrected. The first true step is action. It involves making a choice – a choice to change.

How long it takes to reach the end of ourselves, our self-destruction, our pity parties and complaining varies. It is easy to blind ourselves to these things and in that we often fail to realize we need to change. Yet, the first action is deciding that not only does a change need to happen, but that we are ready to change.

Broken Spirits And Illness

Mental illness often begins begins with a wounded or broken spirit. Depressed and discouraged people do not stay healthy mentally or physically.

It is important to protect your heart and your spirit. Once your spirit has become wrapped or broken, your emotional well-being will start to decline. Our souls can be whole or they can be fractured. It can be broken into multiple pieces this is where I believe Satan can come in the wreak havoc on us.

The Bible says there’s a spirit award departed Saul and that he was tormented by an evil spirit. If theirs anyone we should look at we should look at Saul to define the difference between mental illness and broken spirits.

When it’s a malevolent entity influencing someone, the goal is to push them off the deep end. The difference with mental health is that it often feels like anguish and that doesn’t lead to a place of destruction.

Many people are physically Sick today because they have problems in the emotional realm. Sickness often begins because of a broken spirit. Depressed and discouraged people do not stay healthy for long. I wounded heart is the life of the flesh.

How many times have we gotten things out of order. We say, “well if we get healed everything else will be all right.“Could it be that the physical affliction is simply a symptom of a mental problem that has not been dealt with.

If you look at rest when example high stress least you high rate of sickness. Such things as good as a divorce, death of a loved one, or losing a job I’ll have emotionally explosives situations. These are said to bring on a high risk of sickness.

Proverbs 18:24 says, “ The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear?” When our spirit is strong it will sustain many physical wounds, we all know people who because of their illness should have been dead, but because of their strong spirit, they lived.

When a person spirit is broken or wounded, they can’t handle anything else. Even the most insignificant problem seems overwhelming. You can be physically weak, but if your spirit is strong, eventually your body will get well. But if your spirit is broken, and hopeless, hurt, Disappointed, and rejection take over, you can be destroyed not only emotionally, but physically.

A cheerful heart makes good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones

Proverbs 17:22

When our spirit is broken, it’s infect our physical body in many ways Mini emotionally ill people are being treated with drugs because your brain chemicals are out of balance.

Medical science takes the view that meditation of paranoia and schizophrenia are a result of chemical imbalance. I believe that is possible but I also question if you emotional state of some people are actually created in the chemical imbalance.

When our spirit is broken or wounded, the chemicals in our body will be affected and will change. Our heart will be faster, or a blood pressure may go up, among other changes. In order to stay well our spirits must prosper and be healthy.

If someone’s spirit is broken over and over eventually it will take a toll and not only our emotional well-being but our physical well-being.

The walls of our souls must be built up with no holes so that our spirit is continually protected. It wasn’t until I healed my spirit that my emotions and my physical health began to improve.

It wasn’t until I began renewing my spirit and spending time with God in prayer and having fellowship with other believers and I began healing both emotionally and physically.

I don’t think it was a coincidence that I just started getting better when I started my walk with God.

The Benefits Of Boric Acid

I was thinking today about a remedy that’s been around for generations that my father would use to get rid of mild infections for the families eyes. He used to use it also on our cats eyes. It was Boric acid solution. I used to think WoW he’s going to put that in our eyes – acid!

My dogs eyes have been draining lately and I thought I would do this. So I thought I would share the instructions. Here is how you make it:

  • 1 Cup Bottled Water Boiled
  • 1/8 teaspoon of Boric Acid Powder

Directions:

Use sterilized containers to make this solution. My Father would boil the water on the stove, turn the heat off and then add 1/8 teaspoon Boric acid and stir until it was completely dissolved into the water. Then he would cool it completely and keep it in a sterilized jelly jar. The ones they used for canning.

Then he would pour it in our eyes when we were kids if he thought we had an infection. I usually dip a cotton ball into the solution and squeeze it out into my eyes or my animals eyes. It always worked.

Boric acid is an antiseptic, antibacterial and anti-fungal. It reduces inflammation and itchiness.

Be careful. If you think you have injured or scratched your eyeball do not use this method. And call your doctor right away. Never risk your eyes.

You can pick up boric acid at Walmart, Tractor supply, or you can order it online just make sure it’s 100% pure.

Jesus Was A Jew – Really?

The question of who the man Jesus was is one that has dominated discussions for 2000 years. Many have tried to describe Him, and many artists have tried to capture His likeness. These decisions seem to make the topic more confusing, as historians did not find much to comment on Jesus’s looks and artistic renderings are inconsistent, including the way His racial identity is portrayed.

European art makes Jesus look European; African art going back centuries makes Him look African; Asian art makes Him look Asian. And American art makes Him look American with lighter hair and blue eyes. Despite these contradictory images, the Bible is clear about His genealogy and religious identify – He was Jewish.

There is Biblical and cultural evidence to support the stance that He was an ethnic and religious Hebrew, who reached across these barriers to bring all people to the Father.

The Bible provides 2 genealogies for Jesus in the Bible, tracing His earthly heritage back in time, one of them all the way to Adam. Coupled with the genealogical records in the Old Testament, it’s easy to trace Jesus’s heritage back through the history of the Hebrew people who became the Jewish nation. The 2 genealogies traced in the Gospel are generally accepted to trace Jesus’s heritage through both His earthly parents, and are targeted at 2 different audiences.

Matthew, the Apostle, was Jewish, and the primary audience of his letter was targeted at a Jewish audience. He begins his record with Abraham, the father of the Hebrew nation, and ends with Joseph, the man who raised Jesus and acted as his earthly father. The line-up of men in the genealogy run from the father of the nation, to David, to Joseph, which would have been culturally important for establishing Jesus’s Jewish heritage to that audience.

The emphasis on Abraham would have set up Jesus’s credentials as the Messiah, and showing the connection to David through his son Solomon would have shown how he fulfilled some of the prophecies about the Messiah. It also makes sure to hit all the important moments in Isreal’s history. “So all the generations from Abraham to David to the deportation to Babylon to Christ was fourteen generations” (Matthew 1:17). Matthew’s records hold cultural and historical information supporting Jesus’s heritage.

Luke’s gospel follows the genealogy of Mary. She is not mentioned by name, but that would have been common during the 1st century. The connection to David is reinforced, this time through his son Nathan. It is important to trace Jesus’s linkage around the 1st century, Jewish heritage was passed matrilineally, through His mother. While certain aspects of the Jewish culture and religion are passed through the father, such as priesthood, the birth tight to be considered Jewish comes from the mother because of the general consensus of interpretations of the Torah and the Talmud (Jewish religious texts which include the Bible.

The genealogy is the biological connection to David. Unlike Matthew, Luke was a gentile (a person who is not Jewish), writing to another gentile – a friend of his named Theophilus. Luk traces Jesus’s heritage all the way back to Adam. The reason that it was important for Luke, and the gentile audience, is because it is a good reminder that Jesus was not just the Messiah for the Hebrew people, but for all people.

Jesus was also a Jew in the religious sense, though He had a perfect understanding of a right relationship with the Father, where mankind has misunderstood it. Jesus was called a Rabbi, or Teacher, and preached in temples throughout Isreal during His 33-year ministry. He followed the Holy Days of the Jewish calendar and had an observable relationship with God. Though the religious practices of the day do not exactly align with contemporary Judaism, at that time, He would have been considered a religious Jew by the Roman authorities. Other Jewish leaders, including the Pharisees, would have considered some of His teachings heretical.

In Jesus’s time there was a strong desire for the Messiah to come because of the oppression of Rome. The Messiah was perceived in a similar way as He is today, but many also believed He would overthrow Rome, leading to an independent Isreal.

Like today, devout practitioners of Judaism would have observed high Holy Days, many which involved a trip to Jerusalem if possible. They followed Levitical law, giving tithes and sacrifices as required. Historians categorize this period as the Second Temple period. Solomon’s temple was gone, and Herod constructed the second. The influence of the Pharisees and Sadducees increased, and they added the to rules and regulations of the laws to Hebrew traditions.

Jesus commented on this issue, “But you say, If a man tells his father or his mother, what you would have gained from me is Corban (that is given to God) – then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making good the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down (Mark 7:11-13). Even though there was religious corruption, there were many honorable and sincere Jewish believers waiting for the Messiah.

Matthew 5:17, says “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law of the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but the fulfill them. Jesus’s teaching were the ultimate of the law, rather than new and contradictory. He took the rules and prophecies from the I, d Testament and explained them I full, rather than from the limited and flawed view of man. He highlighted the limitations of the law to redeem a soul, and that following the rules does not fix the inner man’s sins, that is something only God can do.

He laid this premise out cleat in the Sermon on the Mount:

You have heard that it was said to those of old, You shall not murder; and murders will be liable to judgment; But I sat to you that everyone who is angry with his brother (or sister) will be liable to judgment.

Matthew 5:21-22

You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery; But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with , lustful, the intent has already committed adultery with her (or him) in their heart

Matthew 5:27-28

These are two of several examples of Jesus highlighting that the point of law was not only to prevent wicked actions, but to also turn a mirror inward, and require the individual to repent of their inner sins, which prevent someone from being righteous before God. Because no one can live in perfect righteousness on his own, Jesus paid the price for the is a of the world so that their righteousness can be attributed to the sin er, saving that person from judgement.

Who’s the primary focus of Jesus’s ministry was His people, the Israelites, but He still reached out to the Gentiles (us). He shared the Gospel with the Samaritan woman. When the Centurion in Capernaum reached out to Him to heal a gravely ill servant, He said that if Jesus commanded it, the servant would be well. even if Jesus did not take the physical journey to the home. In response, Jesus devoted, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Isreal have I found such faith. I tell you many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven…” ( Matthew 8:10-11. Here, Jesus declares the future salvation of the Gentiles.

The Messiah came to save both the Hebrew people and the whole world. He reached out to both groups. He discipled 12 Jewish apostles, who became the formidable force behind the beginnings of the church, bringing the Gentiles into the family of God. Through His death, Jesus saved the Gentiles just as much as the Jewish people.