What It Means To Be A Daughter Of God And Why It Matters.

I thought since it’s “Mother Day” I would write about something more precise today.

God is your Father and you are His daughter. But what does it mean to be a daughter of God? Why is being a daughter of God significant? Does your life reflect your identity as God’s daughter?

Throughout scripture God demonstrates that He clearly loves His Children- those He has both created and called.

It is a enormous honor for us to be considered daughters of God. No other creature in the universe has this opportunity. We are His children, His daughters.

As His child you are the unique right to go before Him and ask for anything we need. As His beloved daughters, we can be assured that we are welcome in His presence at any time.

Regardless of the situations we may find ourselves in, God opens His arms and allows us to approach His throne and bring before Him whatever concerns us in that moment

Just as a good earthly father invites his children to come to Him with their hurts and sorrows, so our Heavenly Father invites us, His beloved daughters, to lay our burdens down at His feet.

What It Means To Be A Daughter Of God?

It means you are deeply loved, beautifully cherished, and truly belong. It means you are His, and you have all the benefits of being His. It means your loved, recklessly, relentlessly, and redemptively.

As A Daughter Of God, You Are Loved By Him.

The Apostle John writes about this amazing love the Father has for us and how it’s demonstrated by he fact that He calls us His children. But more than that God demonstrated His incredible love for us by sending His Son to walk our roads and live a sinless life that we could not. He ultimately gave His Son as a sacrifice on our behalf.

John 3:16,says “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Som, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”

As A Daughter Of God, You Belong To Him

One of my favorite books in the Bible is Hosea. In it God illustrates His love for His people through the life of the prophet.

At the time, Israel had wandered far from God’s call. And much of Hosea is spent describing God’s pain over the sinful and wicked ways of His people.

In the first chapter. Hosea’s wife bore a third child. Go’s commanded then to name their son Lo-ammi, which means “not my people.”

This was to demonstrate that He would no longer call Israel His people.

But in verse 10, God promises that in the future, then would be called “children of the living God.”

No matter what we have done, when we come to Christ we become daughters of living God.

We are no longer considered “not His people,” but through the Cross, we are declared His children and we belong to Him.

In fact, more that 40 times in Scripture you can read God’s beautiful declaration that we are His. The original verses are spoke over the nation of Israel, and through Christ’s sacrifice we are a,k welcomed as His own.

To be considered not simply friends of God, but daughters and heirs is a high honor indeed.

When the world seeks to drag us down and such the hope out of our hearts, we can be reminded that the One who created and sustains the Universe calls us His daughters. His children, His heirs.

What Do The Four Horses Of The Apocalypse Represent?

Much has been written about the four horses of the apocalypse. Painting depicting the four horsemen of the apocalypse have been created. This is a intriguing topic for many people.

Unfortunately, much of the information on the internet about this is false information. Some claim the four horsemen are a myth. Such claims reveal a great lack of misunderstanding of Biblical prophecy. Consequently, some claim the four horsemen of the apocalypse can be found in the book of Ezekiel and Zechariah in addition to the book of Revelation.

Four Horses In Ezekiel

Some claim the four horsemen of the apocalypse can be found in the prophetic book of Ezekiel. A search of the book reveals that horses are mentioned sixteen times in twelve verses in the book of Ezekiel: (17:15; 23:6; 12, 29, 23; 26:7, 10, 11; 37:14; 38:4, 15, 39:20). But never are they described as “four horses” nor are they ever described as being of various colors.

This is an important point as we will discover when we look at the book of Revelation. This means it is an error to claim the four horsemen of the apocalypse are described in the book of Ezekiel.

Four Horses In Zechariah

However, four horses are mentioned in the book of Zechariah (Zechariah 1:8-11), Zechariah 1:7 tells us that the prop his writing and in verse 8 he says,

I saw at night, and behold a man was riding on a red horse, and he was standing among the myrtle trees which were in the ravine, with red, sorrel and white horses behind him

Zechariah 1:8

Notice that the prophet does not mention the color of all four horses. He only mentions the color of three horses: red, sorrel, and white. These horses appear again in Zechariah 6, it should be noted that “sorrel“ refers to a mixture of red and white.

Now in Zechariah 6:1-6 four chariots are mentioned and each chariot is pulled by a group of horses, which are of different colors. The first horses are red and the others are black, white, or dappled (Spotted). Then verse 5 explains these roses are the “four spirits of heaven.” Finally, verse 6 says that the black horses went north and the red horses went south. Verse 7 explains that the black and red horses patrolled the earth.

Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse – Revelation

The term of the “four horsemen of the apocalypse” is only properly found in the book of Revelation. That is, since the book of Revelation is the only book in the Bible that is actually called “The Apocalypse OF John,” “the four horsemen of the apocalypse” does not refer to the horses in any other book of the Bible. These four horses are only mentioned in the book of Revelation.

The White Horse

Therefore, we should say the four horsemen of the apocalypse are found in the apocalypse are found in Revelation 6:1-8. The first horse, the white horse is described in verses 1 and 2.

Then I saw when the Lamb broke one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures saying as with a voice of thunder, “Come.” And I looked and behold a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.

Revelation 6:1-2

Verse 4 explains that the meaning of the color white represents peace. That is the color white symbolizes a time of peace due to the antichrist’s control over the earth. This corresponds to the first 3.5 years of the seven-year tribulation.

The Red Horse

The red horse is the second horse and it is described in Revel6:3-4. The passage says,

When He broke the second seal, I heard the second creature saying, “Come.’ And another, a red horse, went out and to him who sat on it, it was granted to take peace from the earth, and than men would slay one another; and a great sword was given to him.

Revelation 6:3-4

Verse 4 explains the color red. It represents killing or blood. This is a description of what will happen during the last 3.5 years of the tribulation period.

The Black Horse

The third horse is black. It is described in Revelation 6:5-6. The passage says,

When He broke the third seal, I heard the third Living creature say “Come.” I looked, and behold, a black horse; and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard something like a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, abs three 1 quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not damage the oil and the wine.”

Revelation 6:5-6

Just as we have recovered in the previous verses, the following verse, verse 6 explains the meaning of the symbol. Black represents famine. This will also happen during the last 3.5 years of the tribulation period.

The Ashen Horse

The fourth house is ashen. It is described in Revelation 6:7-8. The passage says,

When the Lamb broke the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying “Come.” I looked and behold, a ashen horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death, and Hades was following with him. Authority was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the earth.

Revelation 6:7-8

Ashen symbolizes death. The color ashen is a pale greenish gray, which represents decay. Revelation verse 6-19 reveal that death will characterize the last half of the tribulation.

The four horsemen of the apocalypse can only be found in the book of Revelation since the Greek title of the book is the “Apocalypse of John.” No other book in the Bible is titled “The Apocalypse.” In this book the four horsemen represent general conditions that will e it’s during the tribulation. White symbolizes victory or peace during the first half of the tribulation. The other horses symbolize killing or blood, famine, and death during the last half of the tribulation.

All through scripture God warns us that if we do not obey His commands there will be pain, suffering and death. Whether people heed this advice or not. It will come to pass.

Inspiration For Change

Ways to help rediscover your inspiration to make lasting changes.

Most of us have a,ready forgotten about the resolutions we made for the new year. The easiest thing to do would be to just forget about it until next year, right? Maybe not.

It’s only the month of may and it’s not to late to tap back into that sense of inspiration you had back in January. And it’s not to late to are your desired changes or at least explore what got in your way of the new habits you were going to make.

Here are a few ways you can explore your specific situation and how you can use these reflections to learn and grow any time of the year.

Clarify Your Why

Why did you select the goals you did for this year? Why were they important to you? Changing a habit is hard. Changes that stick do so because the reason behind them is stronger that the urges to engage in your old habits.

Here Are A Few Prompts:

  • Write down what your life will look like if you put your new habits in place.

Be as detailed as possible and include the emotions you and others around you may feel.

  • Write down what your life will look like if you don’t

Again, use as many meaningful details as possible, including the emotional experiences.

  • Ask yourself how important it is for you to make the desired changes on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the most.

If your rating is a one, you probably don’t have good enough reasons for this change. So, let it go. You have better things to worry about.

But if your rating is greater than a one, list your reasons for why your rating is

greater than one. Why isn’t it just a one? Write down why any change is important and in what ways you are ready. Make this list as personally meaningful and detailed as possible. Put it some place convenient so you can reference it down the road.

  • For Example, say my goal in the new year was to pay attention to my diet and add more fruits and vegetables and fewer processed and refined foods, if I were to imagine what my life would look like with these changes. I like to imagine myself being able to walk with my kids 2 miles to the beach without getting tired.

When I imagine what my future might look like without these changes, I imagine myself dying without seeing my grandchildren born. I imagine my kids wishing they had there mom to help them with their babies.

With this In mind, the importance of this change is clear. I would put at least an 8 on the scale of 1-10. And the reason why it is so high is that I love my kids and want to continue being there for them. I don’t want to burden them financially or emotionally in ways that I have the power to avoid.

I also want to wake up every morning and have energy to enjoy every minute of life I have. I keep my list by my bed and look at it every morning before starting my day.

Understand Your Cravings

Craving is at the root of all suffering. Craving takes on many forms: we crave a new outfit, a new job, or for a habit to become easier. Cravings are quite uncomfortable, and we soothe this discomfort with some action, usually with behavior that distracts us from feeling and provides temporary pleasure. This craving doesn’t map onto the craving at all.

It’s like going shopping for that new outfit and trying on clothing that you know would look better if you lost 20 pounds. Or craving that new job but instead of taking night classes to up your chances of getting that new job. You go to the club after work and drink just to forget about the job you currently have. It works out temporarily but it does not get rid of the craving of what you really want. Unfortunately we seem to repeat bad behaviors or cravings. Not only does it become more hardwired in to our brains the root craving also persists,

So when we decide to head to the freezer for a second serving of ice cream to set us up for more sugar cravings or the the bar after work for drinks, to hide how we really feel about that job. We also don’t make any meaningful changes needed to satisfy the real craving inside.

To break free or this cycling we need to understand it. To do this we need to slow down and observe what is happening in our bodies and minds when craving an old undesirable habit.

We need to recognize what are thoughts and feelings that come up. Sit and notice the sensations with full attention and curiosity. You will notice that when you do the urge of of engaging in the old habit passes in a wave. Do you do this a for several days you will likely discover that you can be with the feelings and urges with have to act on them.

To take this one step further see if you can identify the real need behind the urge. Are you bored? Tired? Thirsty? Needing a physical or emotional connection.

Sometimes our goals falter not because we don’t have good reasons to change, but because we think we don’t deserve better. We tend to judge ourselves harshly for our failures.

Explore what gets in the way of the changes you want to make with curiosity rather than judgement. What happened before or after the behavior you wanted to change? Are there identifying triggers?

How To Keep A Positive Mindset No Matter What

Do you ever find yourself stuck in negative thinking, entertaining what Congo wrong, or mulling over sad memories? What things do you do to keep a positive mindset?

Chances are, you’ve probably had someone tell you to “Cheer up” or “look on the bright side.” And while there’s no doubt they can mean well, it can be difficult to keep a positive mindset all the time.

Cultivating a happy mindset puts you in the right mood to compound your happiness with happiness-boosting behaviors. To focus on ways to keep a positive mindset, we need to focus on ways to become cheerful, content, and pleasant toward others: finding reasons to laugh, practicing being polite, searching for the positive in situations and finding a way to escape mentally.

Here are some simply ways to keep a positive mindset and focus more on joy instead of negativity.

1. Find Reasons To Laugh

Laughter has the obvious side effects of making you happy, along with lowering your blood pressure and stress levels, helping ease conflicts, and strengthening social bonds with others. What’s less obvious is that your laughter goes a long way toward making others happy. There are several ways to come up with more occasions to laugh.

  • Indulge in others attempts to make you laugh. This makes them feel good, as we all enjoy being the one to make another laugh, and it helps diminish our self-centered tendencies by forcing us to really listen to what others are saying.
  • Force laughter if you have to – such as when a child is telling you a joke for the 20th time. This will delight them and their emotions will be bounced back to you, so your forced laughter may very quickly become real,
  • Take yourself less seriously and be willing to laugh at yourself more. This often has a cheering effect that dissipates the stress of the situation, while defensiveness makes you ruminate on negative feelings. For example, if your like me, I tend to put things in stupid places. I’ve put the remote to the tv in the refrigerator. I sometimes inadvertently take the remote with me to get a snack and sit the remote down to get to what I want. Then spend the next 30- minutes looking for the remote. Instead of getting stress and upset or getting mad at myself because I can’t find the remote, I find ifI just laugh at myself “WoW I did it again.”

2. Practice Politeness

To be come more pleasant and kind toward others, focus on practicing good manners and conscientiousness. In our busy lives, we often skip over politeness because we’re too caught up in our own stresses. To work against this, be on the lookout for small ways to be considerate of others – such as giving up your seat on the bus, or letting someone with only a few items at the grocery store cut in front of you, when you have a cart full. Or offer to help a elderly person with their groceries or return their shopping cart for them. I only takes a few minutes a day to bless someone.

3. Be A Better Conversation Partner

I admit this is one I struggle with this one. Recently I went to a concert with a friend. While standing in line she struck up a conversation with a stranger. By the time we were at the end of the line she knew all about them. I struggle with talking to people I’ve don’t know. It may be because of my social skills (being I didn’t learn any as a child). But it is something I need to work on.

One place that many people are guilty or bad manners is in conversation. While speaking to someone listen carefully and make sure that you’re not coming off as rude.

  • One-uppers always respond to the speaker with a better or more extreme in their own lives. Like, “ Oh you think that’s painful? Listen to what happened to me a few months ago.”
  • Know it-all’s hijack the conversation to demonstrate how much they know about the subject at hand. Like, Did you know that in that region you visited in France is the only one where they speak Ch’ti?”
  • Interrupters cut off others in the middle of their sentences to ask questions or respond. This happens to me a lot because I think before I speak and people think I’m finished talking.
  • Non-listeners don’t actually listen to people they’re speaking to – instead, they’re thinking about the next thing they want to add to the conversation.

Beyond cutting out our bad conversation manners, we need to find ways to give the floor to others. You might respond to someone’s expertise with, “That’s interesting tell me more.” Or, follow up your addition to the conversation with, “What do you think about it?’

Pinpoint What Makes You Rude

Keeping an eye out for external factors that might be making you act rudely. For example I have a friend that when she drinks more than 3 alcoholic beverages she gets argumentative and obnoxious, and she regrets coming away from get togethers instead of feeling happy. So she decided to cut back her drinking when she’s out. For you it might be that the music is to loud or even being to hot or cold. (I know when I get cold I get irritated and seem to lash out at people for no reason). Once you find out what prompts your rude tendencies, find a way to mitigate it such as always having a sweater.

4. Search For The Positive

Many people instinctively prefer to be critical, rather than enthusiastic, about things – for several self-serving abs defensive reasons.

  • Being critical feels and is often perceived as a trait of sophistication or intelligence.
  • It’s very easy. Being critical of or detached from something, such as reality television or a cheesy band, is much easier that leaning into your enthusiasm for it.

While expressing enthusiasm might be the harder and more unpopular choice, it comes with the benefit of lifting others’ moods and making them feel more enthusiastic as well. Imagine that your friend invites a group out to see a college concert, she loves singing, but you find it boring, you don’t want to hurt your friends feeling so you go. She wants you to participate in singing along. and you end up singing along and actually enjoy the concert.

There are three ways to commit yourself to searching for the positive and expressing enthusiasm as much as possible.

  • Look for ways to be positive about everything, even the things you don’t like. For example, when you’re trying a new food don’t say “This had to worst taste and texture.” Instead try it, it might be fun trying something new.
  • Try to deliver criticism in a more positive way. Instead of telling your child, “Stop playing that recorder, you’re driving me nuts,” try you’ve practiced your recorder so much today. I think you deserve a break.”
  • Create a reminder to stick to positive comments. My friend complains about the same thing everyday. Every time she brings this subject up, I’m going to give her a compliment.

4. Find A Mental Escape

One thing that goes a long way toward adjusting your mindset is finding ways to avoid negative thoughts. Humans naturally have a negative bias – that is we, remember and ruminate on negative things much more than positive things. Of course, it not possible to avoid everything negative in our lives, but we can keep ourselves in an overall positive mindset if we create a mental escape that helps us avoid the rumination spiral that comes on the heels of a negative experience.

For example, a mental escape might be thinking about funny things that your partner or child has done. Lime writing down the little things in life that bring you joy. So remembering a happy time you’ve had with a loved one.

How To Find Identity In God

Have you ever watched a time travel film where the main character keeps going back in time to try and fix things, but when he comes back to the present, he’s made things worse? That’s what the past two years have felt like. It feels like we have jumped from one crisis to another.

As the COVID pandemic eases, a war erupts. A turbulent world, turned upside down by calamities, contagions and conflict. The world is silently crying out for a people to be filled with the Spirit, a people who get their strength and power from God to live in a way that conquers circumstances and doesn’t cower beneath them.

While we’ve all be deeply touched and changed by the adversity of this season. Like the disciples of Jesus our hearts have been formed and fashioned to face and fight even the hardest of situations. We aren’t alone, we have God on our side. And we cannot ever lose sight of that truth because it holds the secret to our true identity.

To do all God has for us in this life, we must know who we are. And our uncertainty about our identity is precisely why the enemy’s lies trip us up. John 10:10 spills the enemy’s deceitful mission, but it also reveals God’s ultimate plan for us when we believe in Him and who He’s made us to be, “The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

A child of God is our identity. We are in the direct lineage of the King of the universe. No lie of the enemy has the power to steak that from us. And because of that truth, our calling is clear. Our calling is ti know Him, and our mission is to show Him.

It doesn’t matter what ,it’s the world throws at you, the truth is that you are worthy of salvation because He saved you. You are worthy of love because Jesus loves you. You are worthy of more in this world because He empowers you.

We can partner with God and press into the future He has for us, no matter what that looks like, no matter what adversity comes our way, no matter what obstacles we face, no matter what.

John 10:7-10