So many times in my life, I reached out to God and it seemed that He did not listen to me. Must have been playing golf or something. My prayers went to the ceiling and no farther since I knew that if I were to pray, they had to go all the way to heaven, wherever that is. It must be terribly far away. I simply did not have his phone number memorized. That was how I felt.
So many days of me talking, so many days He said nothing. The silence was overwhelming me. And I felt so miserable because I just knew that, of all His children, I must have been the one that got away, was shunned. Apparently, I had asked too much. It could not be accomplished. Unworthy.
The truth, however, is so much better. The Father has us in the palm of His hand. He is watching us all the time, hoping that we will talk with Him. Notice I said WITH Him, not at Him, not necessarily to Him. With Him. He wants us to have a relationship, a fellowship with Him. When you have a friend, a really good friend or family member that you love dearly, you will talk with them in person and on the phone, email, whatever medium you find. God is right where you think He is, with you. It does not take a prayer to rise to the ceiling, just talk to Him. He is here. Seek Him and He will answer.
He told us to seek His kingdom first (Mathew 6:33 -But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you.) instead of always wanting, wanting, wanting. It took me a long time to learn this. Sometimes, I feel that I have not yet done so. There are times when the prayer does not seem to go anywhere. But you know what I did when I felt that? Praise! Thanksgiving! I thanked the Lord for all He has done. I praised Him.
Do you understand that we do not have to see the end result before we can thank Him for what He does? Recently, I was pleading for something very dear to me. It did not seem as though God heard me. Then, I realized that my prayer was one of doubt and unbelief. If I truly believed God’s Word then I must apply it to my situation. Put my faith on the line. I did so thanking my Lord for that thing as if it were accomplished. I could see the end result before it occurred.
First, take the time to get to know your Father. He wants to tell you many things. However, if you are only wishing to talk, you cannot listen. If things get in the way, thoughts that are negative to the situation, you cannot hear. Put all that worldly stuff out of your mind and just get into the refuge of the Lord, the secret place of the Most High.
(Psa 91:1-2) He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall rest under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of Jehovah, my refuge and my fortress; my God; in Him I will trust.
Because you can trust in the Father, you will find that He is willing to talk with you, guide you and strengthen you. When you dwell with the Lord, your faith will grow. In time, you find that hearing the Lord becomes easier and easier since you are willing to rest in Him, allow His course for your life instead of your own. And that is how the joy of the Lord will come to you!!! What a blessing!!!
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I wanted to publicly thank my Lord for the fact that I am an American. That does not mean that I am slamming any other place in the world. It simply means that God put me here, right now in the day and hour and I thank God for that. I think that it’s vitally important that we spend some time each day thanking God for those things that He has provided to us. In that area, I know that I fall very short. So, today, the day after the 4th of July, when all eyes are on the fireworks and giving thanks for the country we live in, I now give thanks for all that my Lord has given to me.
No, I do not intend to put the list here. Frankly, at this point you should be inserting your own list of thanks. I know that we spend more time wanting to thank God on Thanksgiving but we should be thanking Him each and every day. We should be giving Him all of our attention at some point in the day so that He can give us the boost we need to get past all the nasty things in the world.
So, take just a bit of time today, tomorrow and each day from now on to stop and talk to the Lord about those things that bother you, the things that you need to get a handle on, things that you worry about. Give it all to Him. He wants you to do that so that He can handle it for you. Take the time to get to know your Lord. He’s waiting right where you stopped talking to Him. He’s right where you left Him all those years ago.
Yes, I thank God I am an American but I also thank God that I am a Christian, a saved one, one who has asked Jesus to come into her life and be so blessed! I am so honored and blessed! Thank You, Lord Jesus, for going to the cross in my place! I am so blessed that I do not have to be without You! Praise God!
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I have come to the conclusion that most folks believe that God is this amazing Sugar Daddy up in heaven just sitting around waiting for someone to beg Him to point and say “Bam, you got it!” when they want something. In fact, I have seen people mad because God didn’t pony up what they wanted as soon as they demanded or begged for it. A few posts back, I was talking about using God like an ATM machine. That is still the case with the people who simply will only believe God if He does it right, the way THEY want it done.
Actually, that has absolutely nothing to do with the scripture they are expecting to use to get what they want. You know the one:
(Mat 7:7) Ask and it shall be given to you; seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened to you.
People who expect God to simply move heaven and earth to give them anything they want are pretty delusional. God loves us. True. He is our Father and does not wish to hold anything from us. But the fact is that there are things that, if we had them, would actually make matters worse for us. Sometimes, I do not see that either but i do not have the vantage point that God has…seeing from beginning to end. I suspect that if we all were able to see our lives as God sees them, we would make incredibly different choices in our lives. But since we cannot, we must give the guidance job to God.
Just wanting, wanting, wanting does nothing to help either you or the people God intended for you to help in the world. The reality is that God isn’t a lottery, a bank, a Sugar Daddy and although He is extremely….the the largest extreme possible….rich, that does not mean that he needs you to be that too. The thing is that He will bestow that on people as He chooses. We must do our part. Our part is to be a good steward of what we are given. We are to get into the Word of God, study as much as possible, learn what God has to say and then go out and do as God has chosen you to do. Yes, you are chosen. He seeks you to seek Him. He loves you so much. Don’t sell God short with the begging and the pushing. God knows what is going on in your life.
Life is not always going to be the way you want it or like it. Things do happen. God will be with you through it all if you let Him. Take the time to be with your Lord and Savior today. It is well worth the effort.
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I answered this question on another other blog. I love that question. Gets some people thinking. But it got me thinking because of the variety of answers. So, I will also pose the question…Do YOU believe in God? I find that so many do not. Others believe…sort of. What a dangerous time for people to believe this way. It makes me so sad to see that people will believe so many things that are not of God, not good for them. I do realize that God is a gentleman and will not push His will on anyone. However, sometimes I just want to shake the secular right out of folks.
We are living in the coming of the last days of this age. I say that because it is not the end of the world contrary to what many people believe. There’s that word again….believe. You know, you can believe just about anything if you put your mind to it. You can believe that the ground is going to produce a money tree but that does not make it so. That’s the problem. People tend to believe about anything but what is the truth? Doesn’t anyone want to know that?
I do realize that not everyone is going to be willing to believe that a man was born of a virgin, grew up in this world but never sinned, performed a lot of miracles, taught things that most people would not accept, died on a cross at Calvary and was resurrected on the third day at which time he began to walk the earth for another several days, then rose up to heaven. Yes, that would be a tad hard to swallow for me too if I did not know that I know that is the Gospel truth! God loves you! God loves me too. I originally had a problem believing that but I do now. Awesome!
Does God believe in you? Most definitely! He is the Creator. He gave us everything and believes that we are worth it to become saved from this sin natured world of evil and nasty things. He wants us to know Him better. We can have a close, personal relationship with Him if we will pray and study God’s Word, if we will talk with Him as if we are related because we are related. I am an adopted child of God through Jesus Who died for me on the cross, taking away my sins. Do I still sin? Of course I do but God forgives me each time if I ask Him. What He does not forgive is someone who willfully and knowingly sins and has no remorse. We must be willing to turn away from that sin and run to Him again.
So, the question here is Do you believe in God? I raise my hand high as I say, YES! I do! He is the best thing that ever happened to me…my husband is second and he’s okay with that because God is the best thing that ever happened to him too!!!
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We have potholes dug into our street. They can be hazardous to the car’s health. After a whole lot of rain not too long ago, my Mom’s gravel road was so potholed that we dragged bottom and felt like we were going to be slung through the air. The potholes were deep, to say the least. The big problem is that because of those potholes, it is probable that our car repair woes were, at least in part, due to that road and our own street. Potholes. They are a danger to us all especially if we hit them at full speed.
Potholes on the Christian path work the same way. I don’t know about you but when I became a Christian, it wasn’t really explained to me that my life would be MORE filled with trials than before. But when I complained about it one time, I was referred to Paul and that wild boat ride he took. Yeah, that was special. But God was there with him and told him that while they would lose the boat and all the contents, none of the lives would be lost. It was true!!! No one died and they should have. That boat ride was awful, the sea tossing and turning, the boat breaking up. Those people should have died but they did not because God said so. Paul listened to God and was not afraid of the storm despite the fact that it looked like they would all perish. The rest of the people on the boat believed they would die. But God said they would not and it came to pass just as He said.
We will always have potholes in our Christian walk. That cannot change until Jesus comes or we go to heaven. Those potholes can be really deep at times but God is with us. Sometimes the potholes are quite shallow, just a small difficulty, and we think that it might just be too small for God to bother with. Not so. God wants to be part of ALL of your life, including the smallest things. Nothing is too small for God to handle. Nothing is too big either. Now, it may not be handled in just the way you want it to be handled but it will be taken care of. Take the time today to talk with God about your life. Seek His guidance before any decisions even the small ones. You will be surprised at what God can handle, even the potholes in your Christian walk.
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When I was a kid, I wondered why anyone would pray at meal times. Even as an adult that question came up every so often. So, why do people pray at meal times? If it’s important, why not pray at a meal when out to eat? I wondered about this for so long. But God taught me the answers to these questions and it is so simple. But then, God is trying to teach us the simple things not because we are so stupid that it takes that but because the things of God are simple. They just seem complicated because we tend to make things complicated. We are human, after all.
There are a couple of reasons to pray over one’s food. The first thing I learned about that was that we need to be thankful that we have it in the first place. We need to be thankful that God provided it. Now, for many years I did not see it that way. I saw that one person or another worked for the money to pay for the food therefore God didn’t provide it, someone else did.
God is in control. Period. It may not always look like it but He is. He provides food and shelter and all sorts of things in His time, not necessarily the way we want but He does provide what we need. So, when the food is on the table, regardless of how it got there, God provides. We believe that it is important to acknowledge that fact in prayer. We, therefore, thank God for His provision.
Another reason for praying over one’s food, especially out to eat food in restaurants, is that you have no idea where it’s been. I know that sounds funny but the truth is that we do not know what is in the food nor do we know the circumstances that came about when the food was being prepared. Literally, the disciples prayed so that they would not be ill from the food they ate. So, we are to pray to thank God for the food AND we are to pray for our own well being where the food is concerned as well.
At those times, we must give God the thanks but it also gives God control of the situations too. That is so important. God is a gentleman. He will not intrude where He is not asked. If you think you can handle the problem yourself, God will step back and let you do it. But, ultimately, God is always in control!! I take great comfort in that fact. And I am certainly going to give Him all the praise for the food I eat and the fact that we have it at all. I hand God the controls of my life with those prayers as well. And after what He did for me, He can have it!!! Thank you, Lord!!!
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Jim Croce sang the song “Time In A Bottle” but my life feels that way sometimes. Everything is compacted into this little space without wiggle room. My day goes from busy to nothing in a split second and back again. But the worst problem is that my time with the Lord is what suffers. When that happens not only do I suffer so do all those that God wanted me to help. 
I hate that. It makes me extremely sad.
The big problem is that in order to maintain a good relationship with anyone in your life, there must be contact. Those of you who have distance relationships know that if you do not do that, your relationship tends to die out. Even if the person is just a block away, if you do not contact them they feel like you do not care about them. I do not want that to happen with my relationship and fellowship with God.
So today, I am going to take time to talk to the Lord and I hope you will do the same. It is amazing what you can learn from Him if only you will take the time to listen to Him.
In addition to that, I have a place for those who like videos. Godtube is here!! I know it’s been around for quite a while but I had not heard about it until one day I stumbled into it…actually stumbled it. Please take the time to visit there because it has some amazing videos. One that I wrote about back in Oct. is A MUST See Video For Us All! That about says it.
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I ask that question because tonight mine were opened by a comment on this blog. I had written a post that talked about “man made gods”. Those are the things that take you away from God, our Father, and what He has to say. It takes the time away that you could be praying, studying and thinking about what God says. And we all have that problem. All of us at one time or another find ourselves being swept away by something in the world. All of us!!
Is that strange to you? Preachers, pastors, ministers, laypersons in the church all have one thing in common, they are human. Each are subject to the same failures and the same problems. We all have them. What makes the difference is what you do with the failures and problems. If you decide that the problem, failure or the event takes your attention from the Lord, that becomes a man made god in your life. That man made god can overwhelm you before you know it. That’s what happened to me. My life took me over. Things got too big and busy. So, I stopped writing here. I cannot do that and be true to my Lord.
God has asked me to post here because He teaches me things to pass on to others. I have failed in my job if I do not do that. For one month, I did not post because my life came in and took over, the worldly god took my time. I allowed that to happen. But our Father is greater than any local god. He is greater than the world!!! And if you are of God, no worldly thing can defeat you!!! Come on! Defeat that fear, that worry, defeat that problem that so besets you. Our God is greater than the god of this world or any man made gods.
(1Jn 4:4) You are of God, little children, and you have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.
Instead of feeling sorry for yourself because of your problems, grab hold of this! You are an overcomer! No problem is too great for our Father. No problem can defeat Him! No problem can defeat you!! Take the time to study and pray! Take time to talk to the Lord. He waits for your call! And it isn’t a cell phone!
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When a person is a Christian, meaning born again and having accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior, they then go on to grow in the Lord (hopefully). This is accomplished by studying God’s Word, praying and talking to God, going to a Bible believing church (there are many that are not) and just enjoying God for Who He is.
When I said hopefully about growing in the Lord, I meant that sometimes people do ask Jesus into their hearts but then they do nothing else either because no one tells them what’s next or they simply believe that they do not have to do anything else. The deal is sealed. That is not correct but people do have a lack of information. Those folks are for another blog entry.
Today, I want to talk about going back to your roots. Who can do this? Obviously, those who have left their roots, meaning family and friends, so they go back home. In a spiritual sense, we need to do the same thing. Perhaps you are too busy during the day to spend time praying or studying. Maybe you find that going to church is not for you.
In my case, the problem was that I just got used to not reading the Bible as much as before. Getting the kids off to school took a lot of time in the mornings. Then after that, things just seemed to get in the way…a phone call, breakfast (I always liked to do my study before breakfast because I could think better then), the morning news show, getting bills paid, the weather or anything else. Too many things were getting in the way of my study time. Oh, I talked about it a good bit. But that was all.
What’s wrong here? The Bible says the cares of this world enter in and choke the word.
Mar 4:18-19 And these are those being sown among thorns; such as hear the Word, and the cares of this world, and the deceit of riches, and the lust about other things entering in, choke the Word, and it becomes unfruitful.
At first, you hear God’s Word, it’s exciting and new. You react by enjoying the study time. But then, some other thing intrudes, not just once but day after day. Then it becomes a regular thing. I studied each morning. Then one day, I had to go somewhere. It intruded on my time. This WAS an emergency but it only happened once. The next time I tried to study, I could, but the next day, something else intruded and so it went. After a while, the intrusions were greater and more frequent. Soon, I found myself intruding on all the emergencies and phone calls to study. WOW!
So, what do you do about it? My solution to it was to go back to the study time. Yes, some things still tried to intrude, they always will. It will happen that way to you too. The reason is that the enemy does not want you to learn anything about your rights as a believer and the power behind it. God has given you, not only a spirit of power, love and a sound mind but the faith to deal with the enemy as well! How? By getting into God’s Word, reading to find out what and who you are in the Lord. Then act on that faith that comes from studying and reading God’s Word.
Now, if you have found yourself out there all alone, get back to your roots, when you asked the Lord Jesus into your life. He is waiting right there where you stepped away. He has not left there, you did. You can get right back on the path He has for you by simply asking His forgiveness and going back to what you know is right. And He will welcome you back!
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In a previous post, I mentioned a lyric with the words “man made god” in them. That phrase really bothered me for some time. In fact, it still does bother me. What is a man made god? As I stated in the other post, a man made god is whatever you are so focused on that it takes your heart from the One True God. It could be money, jobs, children, family, boat or car payments, house payments, overdue bills, whatever it might be. If your focus is on that instead of on God, then you have a man made god in your life.
God wants your full attention. He is, however, a gentleman and will not impose His will on you at any time. He waits patiently for you to see that all the worry in the world is not going to change what’s going on. He is waiting patiently for you to look at Him instead of your worries and situations. God tells us to rest in Him.
Heb 4:3 For we who have believed do enter into the rest
Psalm 91:1-2 He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall rest under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of Jehovah, my refuge and my fortress; my God; in Him I will trust.
It is especially important that we do enter into His rest. However, we cannot do that if we are focused on those man made gods out there. It might be your money worries but it could just as easily be that person you are wanting to get together with even though you are married. If that is what you plan, that is your man made god.
Man made gods in your life will slow you down or stop you completely from learning what God has in store for you right now. We live in perilous times and need all the help we can get from the Lord. He wants us to seek His face. He wants us to bear witness of His Son, Jesus. Paul says that he is not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We must learn to not be ashamed either. If the man made god in your life is stopping you, then you are too busy to witness of the Lord. That makes you ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
What can you do to change that? First, stop focusing on your problems and personal desires and start focusing on the Lord. If you do that, He will add all those things to you that you need as long as it lines up with God’s Word. If you desire things that do not line up with God’s Word, you risk His resounding NO! He wishes to give you the desires of your heart. But seek God first with those desires. Always seek God first.
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