Truth That Changes Life

We all face hard questions. Honest questions. Questions that can haunt our lives.

Am I a good person? Do I really matter? Does God see me? Is God good? If so why are there so many areas in our lives lye lame, with people passing us by, unable or unwilling to help us? It is in these moments we want someone willing to stop and notice us, to bend down and get into the dirt in our lives, to enter into our struggle and help us.

In Acts 3, we see Peter and John encounter a crippled man at the temple gate and they stopped. They noticed. They decided to make contact. Riches weren’t to them but the ability to value was, in Verses 6-7 of Acts they had no silver or gold, but what they did have they were willing to give to the lame beggar. With the authority of Jesus’s name He didn’t leave him to do it on his own, he assisted him, taking his right hand and giving him a helping hand. Peter had a hand to offer, and value to give.

They saw that a man was in need was worth touching. He was a man who needed someone to see him as a human being made in the image of God. He had so much more to offer. After he got up, he went into the temple courts praising and stirring up wonder and amazement about God. We also need to remember that we can get up. We can still up amazement and wonder about God. We can stir up the praise within us for God whatever it is were facing.

We are loved, and God has a plan for us. God wants to use others to help us see that and use us to help others to help us see that, and use us to help others see it in themselves. We should never doubt the power of one person reaching into the life of another with some written or spoken words of love, proclaiming in the name of Jesus Christ. That has the power to bring someone back on their feet.

Seen. Known. Loved

Has it been difficult to find meaning in your life? Perhaps we know what we’re most interested in, but how do we know if it is our purpose? These longings rooting our desire to feel God’s presence in our lives, which beginning when we know He communicates with us.

For those of us who experience love primarily through words. We need to hear the words of God for us: “Though the mountain shaken and the hills be removed m yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed.” (Isaiah 54)

I’ve learned in my life that we scurry about trying to find things that will fill the hole in our souls. Until you know you are seen, Known, and Loved by God that hole never fills.

God loves you. He has compassion for you. He sees you and is working to make peace with you. The words of affirmation that God gives very one of us is more powerful than the temporary and often shallow words we get online or around the people, we are around every day. That is the true anchor to our souls. God’s words are powerful because within His words there in love we don’t have to work for or strive to maintain. God loves you. He says it, and the fact is you can experience that love on a daily basis. Particularly if you are an affirmation kind of person. You can let God’s love in by hearing God’s words. Via the Internet you can read God’s words to you or pick up a the Bible and start reading and experience live and companionship in a way you may never thought possible.

The Promise Keeper

As we journey through life, struggles and heartache are inevitable, and they cam leave us wondering: Is there anyone we can trust?

In Psalm 143: 8-12 David tells us that the Lord is trustworthy in all His promises and that He is faithful in all He does. If you’ve ever experienced a broken promise, or someone has gone back on their word, this verse illuminates fresh hope in the midst of dark and difficult circumstances.

David knew that God makes promises. This is an amazing revelation to remember and hold onto. After all, who are we that God would promise us anything? Yet out of His love for us, He established many promises that are not hidden or secret. We can easily find them in Scripture. God is not human that He would lie to us, His children. When God makes a promise to us,nit will be accomplished through His sovereignty.

God is also trustworthy. David knew that he could count on God to fulfill His promises. He is dependable, reliable and worthy of His greatest promise, by sending Jesus to die on our behalf so we can have eternal life in Him.

If God fulfilled thins sacred promise out of love for us, how can we doubt He will keep the other promises He has made?

God is faithful. Not just occasionally, or simply when He decides to be. God is faithful in all He does. God is loyal to those He loves. He is one hundred percent devoted to His children and nothing will ever change that. The vow He made to us is eternal.

Life is challenging. People will disappoint us. And, yes, as much as we try, we may fall short in keeping some of our promises to others. But no matter what happens in life, we can hold on to this profound truth: God will never break His promises. Never. He is trustworthy and faithful.

I’ve had a hard life it left me feeling I could never trust anyone. People always broke their promises. It led me to feel broken and lonely. Their was no-one I could trust. Then I realized God was always with me, and miraculously Has never broke a promise to me. I have learned theirs no one on earth I can fully trust. But I can trust that God will never break a promise. And that I’m never alone, even when I feel theirs no-one I can trust. God is trustworthy.

Life Is Precious, But Why?

Christians believe there is something special about human beings. People are not like anything else in the entire universe. People are not just the highest level of evolved life. The Bible says that people are made “in the image of God.” We share some of His nature; the ability to love and to forgive; the desire for justice; an understanding of good and evil. We also have something eternal in our nature. What some refer to as a soul.

The Bible says God made us ‘a little lower than the angels and crowned us with glory and honor.’ Life is a God-given gift. Everything that Christians believe about the sanctity of life flows from this.

The Bible makes it clear how much God loves us. He knows us individually. In Psalms it says of God, “God created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” God knows us all intimately. He even knows the numbers of hair on our head.

Christians believe that God has a total unconditional love for every person. No one is beyond God’s reach, His love or His forgiveness. He wants a relationship with every person. The center of Christianity is the belief that God, in the form of His son Jesus allowed Himself to be killed by crucifixion to enable the human race to have that relationship.

Christianity teaches that people should respect themselves and each other. The Christian faith is a source of many of the foundations in society. The Bible teaches that it is wrong to kill another person; it is wrong to pay back evil with evil; that people should forgive those who do them wrong; that people should try and settle issues privately rather that go to court. Christians believe all physical bodies are special and deserve respect because God in the form of the Holy Spirit lives within them. The Holy Spirit enter the body when they accepted God.

In 1 Corinthians says, “do you not know your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?

The Season Of Isolation

Over the past eighteen months, we have become more isolated than we ever have been. While many are truly hurting because of everything this year has brought, others are dealing with hearts that are offended by what seems like anything. Some people are on edge, and rightly so, with so many of our lives having been upended.

Yet as much as the season of isolation and division has tried to convince us we don’t need people, we do. And I believe so strongly that the enemy of our souls would love for us to stay offended.

John 15: 12-13 tells us “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lat down one’s life for one’s friends”

A person’s wisdom yields patience; it is to one’s glory to overlook an offense.” This is one we should do often in our lives. We should want to pull through difficult season of life with important relationships in tact.

Have you treated everyone the same as you did before COVID? This season of COVID has put so much fear in our hearts and minds, we have lost the way we treat people. It has caused us to hate and lose our connection with each other.

The book of Proverbs is considered the book of wisdom. Chapter 19 is all about building a life of discernment and wisdom. The word “glory” used here is referring to a sign of growth and maturity. A person who has experienced growth knows how to recognize hurt verses offense. Hurt requires healing. Being offended requires a dose of letting go.

The result of being hurt is that we feel both hurt and offended. Taking the time to sort through this helps us to know how to move forward one step at a time.

The first step requires laying down the hurt or offense before God and not picking it back up. There are some places of hurt only God can heal. The second step requires letting it go. There are some things we need to get over and stop being offended by.

We all long to experience both spitting and emotional growth in our lives. We are all humans sorting through emotions and situations that leave us feeling challenged. Someone may need our forgiveness. And someone needs our willingness to overlook being offended. God will give you the strength to do whatever your heart need to do to lay down the off, and as you do, you will experience God’s glory.

Ask and it shall be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it shall be opened to you. Matthew 7:7-11.

Run Toward The Fear

True bravery isn’t feeling no fear, it’s being afraid and moving forward anyway.

I’ve always been fascinated by the way lions hunt. I have always been drawn to the feline tendencies.

I’ve learned that it’s the lionesses that actually do the hunting and the lion is the one to scare it’s prey towards the lioness. The male are obviously incredibly intimidating, with their manes and their ferocious roars, but it’s the lionesses you really have to watch out for,

The fact that lionesses do not have a big recognizable mane actually helps then sneak up on whatever they are hunting. They lie in wait, hidden in the talk grass, motionless like statues.

I listened to a sermon by David Barton in which he said that the males do play an important albeit small role. While the females stalk their prey from behind, the long of the jungle will come from the front and let loose one of those roars that gives him his spot at the top of the food chain. His sound is so powerful it can be heard from 5 miles away. Hearing that terrifying noise causes a gazelle or antelope to run as far as they can away from whatever made the sound.

What they don’t know is that as scary as it sounds, the one roaring is more bark than bite. So away they go directly into the path of the real threat: the waiting lionesses. In other words, the prey’s instincts are wrong. Going with their gut causes them to make the last mistake of their short, little lives.

It’s counterintuitive, but the right choice would be to override their emotions and run toward the roar.

It’s shocking how often that is true. When you run from things that scare you, you move toward danger, not away from it. If you fail to face your fears, they will always be right there behind you. You must suppress the little voice inside that’s telling you to get out of dodge. It is not your friend.

When you feel that panicky fight-or-flight sensation and you want to run away, do the opposite. Run towards the roar. You have come into the kingdom for just such a time as this. (Esther 4:14)

As a child my mother used to come in the put her hands around my neck while I was sleeping at night. As an adult I used to wake up with nightmares of her standing over my bed choking me. That would be all the sleep I would get after that. I had to decide that I would go through it running towards the roar. I started a journal that when I woke up having night terrors instead of being scared and screaming and crying I was going to be strong and let these night terrors have there way and just go back to sleep when it happened. It worked. Each time I decided to let it run its course it got easier.

God calls us to go to the places that frighten us so that we will fully trust Him. The only way for you to see God do the kinds of things He desires to do in the through you is to run toward the roar again and again and again.

We can see the tenacity of the Spirit in the life of David in the Bible when he confronted Goliath in the valley of Elah, he didn’t wan to face a nine-foot warrior who was spewing out death threats against the young shepherd.

So it was, when the philistine arose and came and drew near to meet David, that Devil hurried and ran towards the army to meet the Philistine. (Samual 17:48)

It’s incredible that David was willing to fight Goliath at all. The fact that he sprinted toward what seemed like a certain death is astounding. He killed the giant in the end, but first he had to run toward the very thing that terrified him the most.

What in your life are you being called to right now? What is your biggest fear right now? Run Towards The Roar.