His Answer

God answers our prayers in His own time, in His own ways.

Over the last six months, my heart has hurt like no other time in my life. So many changes…so many trials…so many prayers left unanswered…at least that’s what I thought. I stepped back, away from God. Life wasn’t going the way I planned. I didn’t quit on Him, I just stopped begging. The hunger that was in me subsided…waiting for me to return with God’s word & His touch to feed my soul.

I’m still struggling to find my way back to feel His arms around me. All this time, He’s never left me. He’s always been right there, whispering, beckoning me, pulling me back in the right directions every time I stepped out into the darkness.

There is no substitute for the arms of the Father. There is no counselor like my Jesus. There is no person in this world that can fill the empty places of the heart like the Great I Am. He is all, and everything in life. Without Him there is no point of being.

Abiding in Love

I've spent the better part of the last four years since I was saved trying to put into words what the presence of the Lord in my prayer life is like, so others would want to experience the same. This is the best I could come up with:

It's excitement and sorrow at the same time, it's peace and agony, it's spiritual love like nothing I've ever experienced either emotionally or physically with another person. Sometimes it's sudden, sometimes it wraps me in the sweetest slow embrace, then rocks my soul till I'm completely spent. Every muscle in my body is tired, but every nerve is still reaching out for more. I laugh, I cry, I mourn, I hurt, I love...I've become a junkie, seeking His presence every chance my life allows me. He comes to me when I open myself to Him, and never pours out more than my heart can hold.

I will never be the same. I will never be the person I was. I can't imagine not having Jesus in my life.

Do you have this with Jesus? Do you need Him like a man lost in the desert needs a drink of water?

Time with Him

I remember that place where I felt completely alone…that place in my heart devoid of love and hope…that place that seemed so displaced from anything Godly. I remember thinking I wasn’t a bad person, I just wanted what I wanted. In my mind it was okay to do “this” because I had been hurt and thought I deserved “better”. I lived my life according to my idea of right and wrong, instead of abiding in the presence of the Lord and letting Him live in me.

Spending time with the Lord opens the heart, and frees the mind from bonds we didn’t even know had us bound. By spending time I mean: reading the Word, praying, listening, soul searching in the presence of the Lord, turning off the TV, shutting down the computer, putting the cell on silent, and setting aside TIME with no interruptions or distractions, focused on Jesus!

You don’t have to be a certain age, of any particular denomination, or even have a laid out study plan…you just need time, a Bible & a quiet place. When you find yourself in His presence…revel in His love, and rest there awhile…Please, let me know how it goes!

John 15: 1-14

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%2015:1-14&version=31

God Is Sovereign!

God is sovereign! He is in total control of my life! Over the last few months I’ve struggled with a stronghold that I have laid down over and over, only to pick it back up within days or even hours. It has been torcher for my soul. I am reading through the Bible from beginning to end, but got a little bogged down in Jeremiah. So, after finishing Jeremiah I jumped over to the New Testament, and read through most of it, which was all familiar, but I always learn something new. It amazes me how my Bible Study for the day or week fits right in with what I needed to renew my spirit. Even more, it boggles the mind when Bro. Tommy’s sermons, radio commentaries, even the online Bible study that I get through email at work all pertain to the same subject!

Here is one even better than that! This is not what I wanted to blog about, but after you read this, you will know why I did.

I have had a few friends praying for me to be free of this stronghold. After listening to “Clear the Stage”(link below) for a second time out in the Refuge tonight, while praying for the teens that might need to be freed from their own strongholds, I suddenly couldn’t wait to get home, get into scripture, and get out on the deck to my quiet place to meet Jesus. For the first time in weeks, there was no rain, and the night was very bright! I prayed again for God to free me, to use this to His glory and allow me the ability to share Him through my writing. After several minutes, I came back in to the house and opened my Bible.

Now, remember, I got bogged down in Jeremiah. Day before yesterday I decided I needed to go ahead and get back on track;…God always seemed to use the path I was taking…so I thought I would give Lamentations a try. Have you read Lamentations? Oh, man! God is punishing Jerusalem! It’s in complete desolation, and Jeremiah is expressing his suffering for their pain. It’s very dark and scary to think that God could be that angry with us for our disobedience. Chapter 3 is full of graphic images of suffering and spiritual pain, but verse 24 spoke to my heart: “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I hope in Him!” I was so struck by that verse, that in all that suffering, all I had to do was allow myself to believe that He would bring me out. Yeah, yeah, I’ve been told and told myself over and over again. I quickly changed my Facebook status to Lamentations 3:24.

Here is where it gets really good. My friend Jamie lent me a book called “Praying God’s Word” by Beth Moore. It’s several chapters of Beth’s knowledge and insight into different kinds of strongholds, then lots of scripture rewritten by Beth as prayer. D A Y...Before…yesterday…I stopped jumping around reading what I thought I needed in this book, and began reading the first part of each chapter and then praying a few scripture. I picked up “Praying God’s Word” after finding Lamentations 3:24 and being so struck by that verse. I began reading the next chapter on overcoming despair. Now, when I started reading I realized it was about loss…more specifically, loss of a loved one. As I read the tearful pages of three women and their loss, I realized it could pertain to most any kind of stronghold that causes despair…and I was in despair. I was balling my eyes out as I finished these little stories, and started to read the first of the scriptures Beth had chosen. To my shock, it was Lamentations 3:22-25, with my verse right smack in the middle of it.

Beth’s rewritten prayer:Merciful and faithful Lord, because of Your great love I am not consumed, for Your compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” Lord, You are good to those whose hope is in You, to the one who seeks You.

I immediately went back to my quiet place, fell on my face…, and cried out in praise. He had just told me that I was going to be free, that He would use it to His glory and that I needed to tell this story! It was 10:06 pm when I first began praying. After weeks of not being able to get my words into writing, by 12:49 am I am finishing up this blog. Tell me God is not in complete control.

Clear the Stage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8sKURkM3Es

I highly recommend the book Praying God's Word, by Beth Moore

Internet Evangelism Resources

Internet Evangelism Resources

Carnal Struggles

We have the power within us to spark desires and lust of all sorts. How we chose to wield that power says a lot about our inner character…not the character we show our peers…but the character we hide in our minds. The character we let out in private conversations and emails. Let me be brutally honest…we are beings that gravitate to the affections and admiration of others. Good friends or even friendly agitators could find themselves fulfilling some emotional need lacking in the other’s life. Once emotional needs are being met, it is a small step to physical needs without appropriate restraints. Too many times, we let our emotions and desires dictate our choices. We don’t stop to consider the cost to other people in our lives.

I have watched couples go from happy loving marriages, to depraved relationships spawned by reckless thoughts, words and actions. None of us are immune to it…we think we are until someone fails to guard their lips or their eyes or their hands, and inappropriate possibilities are set loose in our mind. We might never have thought about such things otherwise, or maybe the thoughts were already there, we just did not entertain them because we had no cause to believe they could become reality…or that the other person might actually want to be a part of those thoughts.

This is all very personal to me, both in pain caused by others and pain I have inflicted myself. My Grandpa left us when I was 11. He drove off the family farm and left us…for another woman. The farm was sold. The family gatherings were fewer and farther between, and I remember sitting on the porch for hours, watching and hoping Grandpa would come back. My Grandmother cried for what seemed like months, then tried to commit suicide several times. Even after 27 years, she still can’t be in the same room with him, and we’ve had to train our kids not to mention him at all.

The more I write about him, the more I want to cry. You see he’s not in my life anymore…not like those wonder filled days I spent on the farm as a child. I might see him once a year now. I have such a great sense of loss when I think of him, that it is just too hard to spend any real time with him anymore. He still calls me Sis, and he still has that warm, raspy, loving voice (A man in our church has the same voice, and I think of my Grandpa every time I hear him speak). But my kids will never know the man he once was. So many memories…so many missed.

Don’t get me wrong…I love him, and I wish, I wish, I wish I could have gone hunting or fishing or feeding with him a few more times. I wish I could sit comfortably and talk for hours just to hear his voice. I wish I could snuggle up next to him, and tell him how much it hurts, but he knows. He made a choice he thought was right for him. He thought he was leaving his wife for a better life, but he ended up losing so much more. He knows the pain he caused, and has become just a shell of the man I knew.

I think the life I knew then is why I love living where we do…out in the country, on a hill, with a pond in the field behind our home. Frogs and birds filling warm nights with the same beautiful song I remember from my Grandpa’s farm. And the smell…in the spring and summer the cedars give off a fragrance that reminds me of the creek bed where we used to swim. I miss him.

This is what we don’t consider when we make those selfish choices based on our wants and desires. We forget the lives we are changing…the hearts we’re supposed to love and protect…we forget that we have a purpose…God placed us here to fulfill some purpose, and throwing away His blessings of family, friends, ministry…is like stomping on the Blood of Christ, and shaking our fists at Him like it’s not good enough. When in truth, we are proving that we were never worthy in the first place.

Ephesians 6:10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. 12For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Your Story

As I sat in the choir loft waiting for revival services to start last night, my eyes glancing from one friend to the next, I began thinking of their stories. Each one had a unique set of obstacles they had overcome: drug or alcohol addiction, depression, loss of a child, military wives, long term illness, abuse, renegade teenagers, teenage pregnancy…and the list goes on and on. Then my eyes rested on the beautiful lady sitting next to me…a woman with so much faith, yet so much to shake her fist at God in anger…but she doesn’t. She means so much to me. She is my friend, my singing partner, my confidant, my counselor and my mentor. She prays for me when I need her, she listens when I go on and on, and she holds me accountable for those weaknesses in my life. I just pray that I am those things to her also.

She used to share her story through her testimony and singing ministry, but circumstances have robbed her of the joy of that ministry. But why not share anyway…we get so bogged down in life, and we forget that our story is everyone else’s story too. We all have a story. We all have tragedy and triumph that in the end was a blessing from God to share with others. Why don’t we? Why don’t we take the opportunity to share the glory of God’s work in our lives with those struggling in the same problems? What’s your story?

Romans 15:17-18 (NIV) Therefore I glory in Christ Jesus in my service to God. I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me…