In the Storm

Storms come into each of our lives. The trick is to know where they come from. Storms may be a trial that we are going through that the Lord is wanting to teach us something. At other times storms may be something that we brought upon ourselves and yet at other times it could mean the enemy is out to snare us.
    If the storm you are facing is one of your own making, take heart to know that God will not let you flounder in the storm. He is there to guide you to the port He wants you in. Circumstances of our choosing gets us in all sorts of trouble. When that happens...IF you are a child of God...then He will  help you thru it. But only if you ask for help. You see God is not going to pull you out of something that is your fault just because He can. he wants you to ask for His help. He wants to help you get thru whatever it is. Sometimes we have to live through the storm knowing that God is in control no matter what.
   If the storm is something that the Lord is wanting to teach you, the best thing to do is wait it out. He will not let you sink. He wants to teach you something valuable, something that he wants you to understand. Not every storm comes from the enemy. Like I said last time....Satan cannnot be everywhere at once. God has plans for us, He tells us that. He has plans to make us prosper. Plans that sometimes we don't know anything about. If that is the kind of storm you are going through, let Him guide you. Don't try to do it all by yourself. He wants you to grab hold of Him and let Him be your teacher.
   If the storm is something that the enemy has thrown at you, that is the time you need to call on Jesus to help you. The only way you are going to defeat the Devil is by the BLOOD of JESUS CHRIST. Period. Jesus paid the price for our sins. He paid the price for our victory. he paid the price for us to trod upon the enemy. Jesus is the only way you are EVER going to beat the enemy. Stop trying to do it all on your own. We cannot win this war for souls...and our own in particular...without the strength of Jesus to back us up. The Devil will just laugh at us like he did when soome men were trying to cast out demons...the demon said..."Jesus we know and Paul we know but who are you?" The enemy is not scared of you if you do not have Jesus Christ in your life.
   Dear friend...if you do not know Jesus as your personal Savior I ask you ask Him to forgive you of your sin and ask Him into your life as your Savior and Friend. HE will come in and give you life like you ahve never known before. Remember the storms of life are going to happen....do you want to face them all alone, or do you want the Lord to help you through them? you decide.

To Tell or not to tell

When is it right to NOT tell someone that they are really ill? Are you trying to protect them or are you trying to control them? Is it really ok not to tell someone that they have cancer? Then the next question should be WHEN do you tell them?
  I believe that the person who has Cancer should be told as soon as possible so they wil have a fighting chance. I wonder sometimes if people are scared of what might happen. Do they think that their loved one will not want to live? Do they think that their loved one might kill themself? I believe that all of those thougths cross peoples minds and more than once or twice.
   How can God get the glory of HEALING someone with cancer if they are not diagnoised and treatment started? ONLY God can heal. he heals through Doctors and Surgeons, but it is really God who heals.
  Let the Lord heal your soul. Sin is like cancer. It will eat away your soul if you do not cut it out of your life. The only way to cut it out of your life is to ask Jesus Christ to forgive you of your sin and to cleanse you as white as snow.
  It is truely something where you can take something RED to change the color of something BLACK to WHITE. That is what happens when Jesus cleans you. It is by His Blood that you are made whole. Don't let the sin eat away your soul. Go to the Great Physician Jesus Christ.... your appointment is now...the Holy Ghost is calling your name, waiting for you to answer "Here am I"

Like Roaring Lion...BEWARE!

March sure has come in like a lion. The Word tells us that satan is like a roaring lion who is walking about the earth looking for people he can destroy with sin. Satan's "life"s mission is to take with him as many people as he can to hell.When God asked him what he had been up to he replied...."Walking up and down the earth". This means that he CANNOT be everywhere at the same time like God can. Satan is a CREATED being. He was brought into being by God the Father. He was the most beautiful angel ever made. His name even means "Morning Light". This beautifulness became sinfulness for Lucifer. He let pride into his ...for a lack of a better word....into his life. That pride developed into hatred for his creator God. He wanted everything that was given to God. he wanted the praise, the worship and the power of God and he intended to take it from God.
   We are told that God cast Satan and his followers from heaven down to the earth. here is where they live. Contrary to a lot of belief , they are NOT in hell yet. Because Satan said theat he was "walking to and fro uoin the face of the earth." I believe that there is a place that he has carved out as his lair, but it is not hell yet as we would think of it as hell.
  Hell was never intended for human beings. God made hell for Lucifer and his followers as a punishment for their rebellion. The old devil does not want to live there eternally, even though he knows what will happen in the end. He is fighting with all he has to take as many people with him.
   Children of God are his enemies. We are the ones who stand in the gap for our lost loved ones. We are the ones who know how to get ahold of God when we go before Him and pray. It maybe our prayers that keep someone from falling. The devil uses all kinds of things against us...why just Christians....or whay does it seem like it is only Christians who the devil bothers? it is because non-Christian's BELONG to him already. Why would he bother someone who he already has under control?
   Our ONLY hope lies in Jesus Christ. He is our LIGHT, our SALVATION, our HELP in a time of need.  Jesus has conquered the grave. He has broken the chains of darkness that bound us in our sinful nature. Once we give our lives to Jesus, and live for Him, the enemy tries to come in like a flood and destroy what Jesus has given to us. Peace. Life everlasting. A grand inheritance.
  Oh soul, do you know Jesus Christ as your Personal Savior? If you do not, now is the time to ask Him into your life, Ask Him to forgive you of your sin...ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.... Live as if He is coming back in the next breath you take because He just might come back then. We are to look up for His returning at all times.

God is in Control...no matter WHAT!

When things look bleak and dark, that is the time to remember WHO your help is. My church family is going through a lot of trials and tribulations. It seems like one problem is solved and the enemy throws another one at us.
  GOD is in CONTROL! No matter what the enemy tells you. He will keep things messed up if he only gets a chance. BUT I know this one thing. My God is in control.

I Belong the The Lord

I belong to the Lord. How do I know that? Well In Isaiah 43:1-7 it tells me. "Thou art mine", saith the Lord. When He called I answered. He called me out of a sinfilled life. He called me to teach a SUnday School class and then He called me to preach His Word. I answered each one of those calls. I gave my life over to Him. I teach and now I preach His Word.
  He said that when I go through things He will be there. He will keep me. He will notr let the rivers overflow me. Like Job, He will keep my from death. Even if the enemy is out to kill me, steal from me, or even destroy me, GOD will not let him. Job lost everything. Yet he didn't sin. He stayed faithful to the Lord. Paul, had been beaten, stoned and ship wreaked...and more than once. Yet he said that he counts it a blessing.
   God said that the Jewish people would come back from all over the world. And we have seen that happen in 1948 when Israel became a nation. They have had to fight for their land off and on since then but they are a sovereign nation. This is the beginning of the end of time. Jeremiah 23:3 says that Gods remnant will be gathered from all over and that they would increase.
   This can also be looked at as the Rapture of the church. When we think not the trump of God will sound and the dead in Christ will be raised....from the north, the south, the east and the west. the oceans will have to give up her dead. The lost men and women who are missing from a war or kidnapping, if they are saved and ready they will rise up to meet the Lord in the air. And then those of us who are still alive....of Praise the Lord...those of us who are alive and remain...WE shall be caught up together to meet HIM in the air! What a wonderful promise of God.
  God has never lied. If He promised that these things will happen then they will happen. He cannot...no he WILL not break His promises to us. Are you ready to go? If you ae not I am asking you to please ask the Lord to forgive you of your sins. To come in and cleanse you. Then not to stop there but to come into your heart and life and live for Him. The only way to the Father is through Jesus Christ and Him Crucified.

A New Birth

As the first month of 2012 closes, I am reminded that there is always a season and a time for everything under heaven. There is a time to be born...

A time to be born. Not just a physical birth but a spiritual birth. Nicodemus asked Jesus, "Can a man enter into his mothers womb and be born a second time?" Jesus said that what He was saying is that our HEARTS  need to be born again. Our souls need delivery from hell and the only way for that to happen is to ask for God to forgive you of your sins.
  Once we ask God to forgive us, we are also asking Jesus to cleanse us from our sinful life by His Blood that was shed on Calvary. Jesus said that there is only ONE way to the Father and that was through Him, Jesus. No other name has the power to save. No other coulod have ever done what Jesus Christ did for us.
  The new birth happenes and then most people think..Ok...I'm done now. I don't have to do anything else my whole life to go to heaven. that is not so. You have to change your life to reflect your belief that Jesus has washed you white as snow and you now LOVE Him.
   Change the people you hang out with. Change the way you dress. Be seperate from everyone else. Jesus said that we are to come out from the way we had walked. The road you are on now is so much different than the one you had just been walking. Prove it to yourself and others. If you truely asked Jesus into your heart, you will WANT to live your life for Him.
   Look into your heart. Have you been walking the way your should be? Are you just simply walking a road and feel like you are going nowhere? If you feel lost or stuck, then go to the Lord in prayer. Ask Him if you are where He wants you to be. If you do not hear an answer, then YOU have started walking down the wrong path. Get on the straight and narrow and live your life to the fullest.

Learning new things.....

As my husband and I started this new year we decided to read the Word each day together. Now you might think that just reading the Word together is not anything new, BUT it is. I bought the Bible in a Year Bible and now I read out loud to my husband each day and then we discuss what we just read.
  I am finding that I am learning so many new things that I have never thought of before. Like just how good a farmer that Jacob was. He told his father in-law Laben that he would take all the animals that were spotted, neck ringed, and brown from Labens flocks and cattle herds as his payment for working for Laben. Now this was AFTER he worked for Laben for 14 years. Laben said "OK. Cull them all out of my herds and flocks all those that had any kind of blemish....". So Jacob did. The Word tells me that Jacob built fences to put his animals in and let them bred. He kept them so well watered and feed that they multiplied fast.
  Labens sons saw this and complained to Laben and told him that Jacob had bigger herds and flocks than Laben had. They were jealous because Jacob was doing so much better than them.
   It got me to wondering something. Was Jacob still sneaky, and conniving? Or was he a just man? Part of me says he never did change his behavior. I'm talking about cheating Esau out of his birthright and then Esau's BLESSING. The blessing that was rightfully Esau's. The other part of me believes that Jacob did learn a lesson. That God gave him the intelligence to multiply his cattle and flocks.
   It was interesting to learn also that Leah and Rachel put aside their differences and told Jacob that they should go back to his house because Laben their father never did pay Jacob their "bride price" that he would have had to pay. Instead Jacob worked for Laben to get his two wives.
   So that is something interesting that I have learned.

Training up Children

Training up a child....this is way different than raising kids. Training means that we are to put effort into the development and charater of our children. When you train for something you put as much thought and time into it so that it will produce what you want.
  Training up children is the same way. How do we want our children to behave as adults or even as children? Is it ok for us to just allow our children to do anything they want to do? Is it ok to get them out of trouble because they made a mmistake? Is it wrong to expect them to deal with things themselves?
  If I want my child to act like a young lady or young man , it is my job to show them how to act and not just in public. When children see with their own eyes by our example, they will treat others like they are taught. If the only thing you do is yell and cuss and threaten others, then that is a lesson that will stay with children and will follow them in their lives. They will act the same way. here is a  true story.....
   "One day a little girl about 4 years old was playing with her babydoll. She sat there rocking the baby, feeding it, changed it's diaper then laid it down on the chair. A little while later the little girl picked up the baby, tried to feed it, tried to rock it even checked the diaper.As I sat there in the Doctor's office watching her, I noticed that she was getting upset. The little girl stood up off the floor with the babydoll put it in the chair again harder than she did the first time and said, "Your getting on my nerves!". The mother of this child looked at her and laughed."
   I thought to myself, I know what is going on in that home. This child will grow up to parent like she is being parenting unless her parents change their style.
  It is not ok to always get children out of trouble. I believe the first time a kid makes a mistake that as parents we are to help them but if they make it a habit of doing wrong, let them fix it by themselves. As parents we have to set examples and one of those things wedo not like to do is see our children fall. But unless they get their knees skined then they will never learn a valuable lesson. People fall and get hurt, that is life but what is needed is that as a parent I show my child how much he/she is loved and what is expected of them. It is wrong to always do for your child. How will they ever learn to deal with the world if they are never expected to try when they are young? Just something to think about.

Sleepless nights and Prayer

Sleepless nights are the perfect time to pray. There is always a reason that a person cna't sleep. One of them maybe that the Lord has impressed upon you to pray for someone or something in particular. Another reason could be that the enemy does not want you to have the rest you need.

I can remember one time my Papa telling me to pray when I can't sleep. He said it puts you to sleep every time. Well I thougth "Of course it does! Prayer is boring." This was way back in the day when I was not a Christian. It was my Papa's way of wittnessing to me about the love of Jesus Christ even though I didn't know it.

Prayer is such an important part of my life now. I really enjoy talking to my Lord. I have learned to stop and listen too. Even though I am a "talker", I know that God don't care that sometimes I ramble on, He never gets tired of what I ahve to say.

Paul said that we are to be in prayer constantly. Now that don't mean that we are to be on our knees all the time and do nothing else in our life, no, what he is saying is that we are to be in the attitude of prayer. To praise the Lord for no reason at all just to say "I love you Lord" To life His name up in praise. When we are in that attitude of prayer it will come much more easily to pray for a need when we are called upon to pray.

Be ready at all times. Be sure that you can go to the Throne of God and petition Him for things without having to make sure you are clean and ready to go before Him. That is another thing that Paul talked about. Die daily. This means make sure that there is not one sin or thing that stands between you and God. That it all is under the blood of Jesus Christ our Savior.

So the next time you cannot sleep, try praying. God will answer your prayer one way or another, be it that you go back to sleep or that you sit up and post something on the computer that may help someone else in the world.