Not My Will, But Thine

I have been grieving so much lately over failing again in standing up for my rights at work. It is what I devoted my last post to. God is so gracious. He is loving and patient with this hard-headed child. I really don't want to be that way. And yes, He has soften and changed my heart so much. But I still struggle sometimes at work when things just don't make sense. Of course, if you read my last post, I had a pretty good talking to myself. The non-Christian would come away proud of themselves if they went to their boss and said, "Hey, could you rethink things here?" and the boss said "ok". You knew it wasn't fair how it was being done, and your logic had a better plan and the boss agreed. Wouldn't that be great? No, not if you are a child of God. What would be great is for you just to do what you've been given to do, and do it with all joy. Your coworkers know what's what. They know what's fair. They know who is going above and beyond and who isn't. And if you claim the name of Christ, they are just WAITING to see how you react. They are waiting to watch you work. And if you work with all joy, then they are astounded! And like I said in my last post, somebody will eventually turn to God, want to know Him, and know this joy that you have. It is hard sometimes. Sometimes I just want things to be "fair" at work. I'm here to tell you that it probably won't ever happen, and we shouldn't even be looking for it. We should be looking for more opportunities to be the salt, light, love and truth of Jesus. And those opportunities best present themselves when we are gracious in mistreatment or an unfair work load.
Just when I needed the grace of my God, He shows up in the biggest way. I went to Fellowship Memphis website again this past weekend to listen to some more sermons by Brian Loritts. He is so filled with the Holy Spirit! I get very charged up when I listen to God speak through Brian. He has been doing a series on the beatitudes. He spoke on a Christian's rights. He said the same thing I have said in a few of my posts. He spoke on laying down your rights. He also did a sermon on mercy that blew me away. These things were exactly what I needed to hear, exactly when I needed to hear them. God is so cool that way. He's such an awesome God! At the end of Brian's introductory sermon on the beatitudes, he prayed a prayer that had me spiritually broken. I want to write about that prayer today. Every time you see something in parentheses, it is part of his prayer. It may not be a complete quote, just some of it. He prayed for God to help us in the "slow death, the death to self....death to my rights." That's it exactly. It is a death, and it doesn't happen overnight. You have to die to self and live for nothing but Jesus. It goes against everything we're taught from society. It goes against all of our common sense from a world view. Look at the commercials. Even buying the more expensive hair color because you're "worth it". Or you should go buy a fancy car because you've worked hard. Get the bigger house because you deserve it. Go on that expensive vacation because you've earned it. Have you ever heard a grouchy old person talk terrible and say they've earned the right to do so because they've lived long enough? Baloney! We have to die to our rights to everything if we belong to Jesus. "In the process of dying that I'm never more alive!" AMEN! When I stand up for my rights, I am nothing but grieved. When I lay down my rights and put Jesus first, I am filled with all joy! And most of that joy is in knowing that my King is magnified and glorified. And some of that joy is knowing that Satan didn't win that round! "Laying down what is rightfully mine that I find LIFE!" That's what the life of a child of God is all about. That is pure, true living. Dying to self is living in Christ. Dying to self is letting the light of Christ live through you. "That's the gospel." That's right. "Here in the land of the free, may we follow the way of Jesus and be willing to be walked on." Like I have asked before, as Oswald Chambers asked, are you willing to be a doormat? Are you? Are you willing to never be thought of again? Are you willing to be obscure? Are you willing to be nothing and in doing so, pray that your King will be everything? "Is there a place for protecting ourselves? Yes. Teach us how to navigate that." I recently, through much prayer, had to do that. It only comes with peace when it is done with much prayer, seeking the will and face of God. "Strengthen the brethren to lay down their rights. Others will smell the fragrant aroma of Christ and the gospel. Pray for courage to lay down our rights." WOW!! AMEN & AMEN!! What a thought of laying down your rights being a fragrant aroma of Christ! That blows me away! Do you want to give off your own selfish aroma, or do you want to look and smell of the sweet Rose of Sharon? Do you want to stand in your own self-vindication, or do you want to lay it all down for the glory of the King of kings and Lord of lords? Do you want people to notice you and your good logic and your desire of "fairness" for yourself, or do you want them to see Jesus? How can something so glorifying to God be so hard to learn? Why do we struggle so with dying to self? Because it goes against human nature to not think of ourselves. It is a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in you to accomplish this. You can't do it on your own. But if you plead at the throne room of all grace and mercy, Almighty God will be your strength. Get on your face, daily, and pray for His grace. Ask Him to make you like your Lord, whatever it takes. Oh God, only glorify Your holy Name! Let us die to self so that You'll have full reign to live through us!

Laying Down Your Rights

As I've said in previous posts, if you belong to Jesus, you have no rights. We should be daily dying to our rights. It is selfish desire to want to hang on to them. Jesus paid such a high price for us, and it is Him alone who has the right to decide for our lives. Any and every single time we stand up for our own rights, we hurt the name of Christ! And I did it again.
I've worked at FedEx for almost 26 years. I have worked in the aircraft parts department for the last several years. It's true that God has done a radical change in my life since getting saved in 2003. I am truly not the same person, praise be to God! But some of His lessons come quicker and easier for me than others. Standing up for my rights at work has been one of those painful, ongoing lessons. Painful for the most part, not because I don't want to lay down my rights, but because I am so grieved at how often I still fail. Although, I have come such a long way that I don't even recognize myself anymore. I used to demand my rights constantly. Now, it is only on occasion that the "rights" side of me shows it's sinful, ugly head. If you are in the workforce, then you will be faced, at times, with giving up your rights. The wicked world doesn't manage business the way a child of God would. They don't make decisions from the same heart, or with the same wisdom as one filled with the Holy Spirit. Are you willing to be a doormat in your workplace? Are you willing to get a workload put on you when you are already doing more than your share? Are you willing to be misused and taken advantage of? The bible says we should be willing to endure whatever comes our way and do it with all of our might. (Ecclesiastes 9:10) What if you are already doing your job with all your might? You see some of your coworkers getting by with doing nothing, day after day and year after year. And yet more is expected of you for the simple reason that you are dependable and a hard worker. How should you react when more is put on you and your coworker is getting a paycheck each week for doing nothing? If this happens to you all the time, you may tend to become disheartened. But the bible tells us we should do all our work as unto the Lord. For it is the Lord that we serve! (Colossians 3:22-24, Ephesians 6:5-8) Boy, it's tough. You may work in a place where you have endured hardship and unfair treatment for years. Maybe what you are being asked to take on is unfair. If you logic it out, it makes no sense at all to be asked or expected to work as you're being directed. Your common sense and what the world considers to be fair is what you really want. But what is "fairness" for the child of God? Don't you know that when you are asked to do something that is unfair at your job, that you are given the perfect opportunity to show the love of Christ? Are there those at work who know you are a Christian? Then they are constantly watching you to see how you work and how you react to what is asked or demanded of you. And yes, you could speak up and point out how unfair it is. And your boss could go along with you and you could get out of it, because after all, it's only "fair". It could be that your boss picks someone else to do that job because it really wasn't your turn, or they have been getting away with doing nothing and it's about time they had to do a little something. Do you think you will walk away feeling satisfied, justified? I'm here to tell you that you won't. If you are a true child of God, you will regret it. No matter how "right" you were to speak up for yourself and point out why you shouldn't have to be the one stepping up to the plate, YET AGAIN! Just do it, again and again and again. And do it with all joy. It will astound them. It will confuse them and amaze them. They will be perplexed. And someone, someday, will ask God how it can be so. I LOVE Matthew 5:16 which says, "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven." WOW! That's it. If you just do it, every time, no matter what, and do it praising God all the while, then there will come a day when someone finally turns towards this God that you serve. Someone will want to know the Jesus that gives you the strength to endure unfair treatment, and with pure JOY on your face. If you fight for your rights in your workplace, all you get are your rights! If you lay down your rights and trust Jesus in whatever happens to you at work, then JESUS gets all the glory! Don't you know that if you belong to Him, that nothing happens in your life outside of His sovereign will? If He allows you to be mistreated at work, then He has a plan for it. If He didn't want it to happen to you, then nobody on earth would have the power to mistreat you. So if God allows it, then you have to look at it as coming from His hands, not your boss's or coworker's. And if God is allowing it, then He is bringing about someone's salvation, or someone's growth in the Lord, and bringing all things for His glory and your good. (Romans 8:28) Maybe He is teaching you a lesson in humility, or patience, or any number of other things. But you can always trust that it is for your good. He wants you to keep your mouth shut and work with all your might. If you do open your mouth, it should be with all joy, singing and praising God.

Now, I have just written every bit of this for myself, because even after more than 6years of salvation, I still fail. I failed last Thursday night. Before I was saved, I used to blow up at unfair treatment. Everyone knew not to make me mad. Unfairness drove me crazy. Lazy people make me crazy. There are so many people that take a paycheck home every week that they NEVER earn. I consider it stealing because they are taking what doesn't belong to them, what they haven't earned. They are supposed to be working for that money. I work, FedEx pays me. But so many don't work, and FedEx still pays them. It makes me crazy. But standing up for my rights when I have another straw added to my back only hurts the name of Jesus. And by the way, if Jesus allows more work to be put on you at your job, then won't He supply you with the strength to carry it out? Of course! And won't He supply you with the grace to fulfill that duty with all joy? Yes! Grace and strength are available in abundance if you will only ask!

I've written this entire post to myself. I am sick to death of my rights! I am sick to death of my sin! I want to glorify my King in EVERYTHING! Can you relate?

Sweet Obedience

In my last post, I talked about my struggle in ministering to other people. I have never been a people person. That's not a very good trait for the Christian to possess, since there are no lone ranger positions in God's army! How am I ever supposed to reach the world for Christ if I am not willing to do it one person at a time? If I am too afraid to have face to face interactions with others, how can I look them in the eye and tell them about the Hope within me? How can I put a loving arm around them and pray for them? How can I come alongside them if I'm not willing to get near anyone? Trying to stay all to myself goes against everything that God is teaching and growing in me. It is rebellion and it is disobedience! It is sin. God has made this very clear to me. There have been times in the past when I REFUSED to draw near someone! There was a person who had an addiction that I just did not think I could deal with, even though my Master CLEARLY was calling me to minister to them. I wanted no part of it because I could not get past their behavior, caused by their altered state of mind. I did obey Him a couple of times and drew near to this person, and it was horrible! And because I went with a total wrong heart, in my obedience to go, my presence ended up not being a good thing. I was so distraught about having to go that I went with a wrong attitude. I went in self-pity and frustration. And as much as I hate to confess it, I went in a somewhat state of anger towards God for even wanting me to do it. Wow, total sin! Who am I to question Jehovah God? Who am I to decide how I get to serve my Master? And who am I to doubt His help when He sends me? I've grown so much since then. And although I am amazed and saddened that I ever behaved that way before my Lord, I still have those tendencies. I have to stop quickly and realize it as soon as something starts to trigger those feelings. I never want to refuse to go again. So when He calls me to something that I'm uncomfortable with, I have to recognize those old feelings when they try to resurface, and get on my face immediately! I have to plead at the throne room of all grace and mercy for God's strength to carry out His plan. It's a constant battle for me.
I want so much to obey Him any and every time He calls me! What a privilege to serve the Most High God! I mean, come on, this is the One who spoke and created the heavens and earth! And He is giving ME the opportunity for blessing in doing His bidding. He has a perfect plan, and that plan calls for Dana Greenslade to be used by Him. WOW!! Chosen by God!! I am so undeserving! Look at what all Jesus did for me, and continues to do for me every single day. Can't I give Him my whole life, every single part of me? Can't I give Him anything and everything? Can't I go wherever He leads me? He's promised to always be with me. It's never in my own strength that I go.
About two years ago, someone at the church was doing an interview with me. I don't know what happened to it, and I surely don't remember everything I said. But I do remember talking about my son, Joshua. He was not saved at the time. He was living a very sinful life. I pleaded night and day with tears for his salvation. Joshua had already forbid me from talking to him anymore about being saved. So I pleaded for God to raise someone up to minister to my one and only child on this earth. It was my most fervent prayer, my son's salvation and God bringing someone alongside him. If someone would only share the Good News with him, maybe he would listen. Now mind you, I am a firm believer in the doctrine of election, God's sovereign right to choose. And I reckon that with prayer and evangelism. So I was faithful to raise my son up in prayer to God, and I pleaded for God to raise up someone to tell Joshua the things of salvation. I knew that the work had to come from the Holy Spirit. But I know that God uses different and many means to bring His chosen to the cross. I wanted so much, of course, for my son to be saved. I wanted there to be one man, in this entire world, who would love Joshua enough to ask him where he stood with the Lord. I wanted someone to care enough about him to discern Joshua's lost condition. I wanted someone to love him enough to confront Joshua's life of sin against a holy God. So I remember, during this time, when I gave the interview, talking about being willing to go when and where sent. What if God raised up some man to minister to my son, and this man didn't want to obey! What if he was uncomfortable around Joshua? What if he didn't particularly like my son and struggled with why God would want to send him? What if he told God that he really wasn't much of a people person? What if he felt like he really couldn't relate to Joshua? What if, what if, excuses. How would I feel if I knew that man had been chosen by God to minister to my son and this man decided he didn't want to obey? What if, now that my son is saved, God is raising up a man to be a mentor to Joshua, and this man just doesn't have the desire? My son doesn't have a godly man in his life. He needs godly council from a sound, older man who has been walking with the Lord. What if that man refuses to minister to my son because he just doesn't have anything in common with him? How would that make me feel, since I pray for God to bring a godly man alongside Joshua?

Every single person that God puts in your path to minister to, has someone in this world who loves them, most likely. It's a good probability that there is someone in this world who has been praying for them, and praying that God would raise someone up. You are an answer to someone's prayer. YOU! God looked to and fro throughout the earth and chose His servant, YOU! Not your best friend or your parent or your spouse or your child, but you! He counts you worthy to serve Him by serving this other person. He decided that you could be the one to undertake the task of starting up a ministry in that nursing home your friend's mother is in. He decided you could be the one to get a group together to help out once a month at St. Jude. He chose you to be the one to form a group that cleans widow's homes twice a month. Then someone will raise their hands to heaven and thank the Lord for bringing YOU! Someone might be able to lay aside that addiction because you were faithful to come alongside them and minister to them in their most critical hours.
Have you ever had anyone in your life, your family, that you have prayed for? Maybe they are not saved. Maybe they are having a horrible time with things and you don't have as much time as you would like to help. Or maybe you've given your help but they still need more. So you have prayed to God for Him to send someone. If you have, then know that when God sends you to someone else, more than likely, YOU are an answer to someone else's fervent prayers. Offer God your sweet obedience. Be a blessing today.

Submit Your Will

As children of God, He will call us to obedience in so many different areas, so many varied aspects of service. There are always going to be some areas of His calling that are easier for you to obey than others. If you're inclined to be a people person, then Him calling you to minister on a one-on-one basis with someone else is going to be something you are comfortable with. But God doesn't always allow you to stay in your comfort zone. In fact, it seems to be the norm that He will call you away from it. But of course He will always equip you, whatever He calls you to. It's never a matter of not being equipped by God, but it is sometimes a matter of willingness to go where He sends you. That is the case with me. As I have shared in previous posts, I have never, ever been a people person. I have never been comfortable around other people and would be happy on a deserted island. If there was such a thing as a lone ranger Christian, I would be the first one in line! Having to interact with others has been something that God has been growing me in the last 6 1/2 years. I have to admit that I haven't always gone willingly, with a cheerful heart. Sometimes it feels as if He is having to give me quite a nudge. There are times when I hope He will just forget about something He is calling me to. But more times than not, He will keep bringing it back up, giving me yet another opportunity to obey. Have you ever had something that your Master is calling you to, and all you really want to say is, "Jesus, would You mind this one time just dropping it?" Or how about this one: "Jesus, can we just move on to something else?" He's not likely to do it. Oh yes, there have been times when He gave me an opportunity to obey Him by making myself available in someone's life. I would balk at it and the opportunity left, not to return. Someone else was sent in my place, and that someone else, no doubt, received the blessing and reward for their obedience and willingness to go. I forfeited it! If God has planned to reach someone and He calls you to be the one to go, if you don't, He will raise up someone else. He will give you the chance to be the one used to bless that person He is reaching, or helping. It's your choice whether or not you are willing to go. If you choose not to obey the first time, He will sometimes give you another chance. But there are times when that particular opportunity never presents itself again. It's gone forever! I always wonder, when I refuse to obey and be sent, who the servant was that was sent in my place. Who was the one; faithful, joyous in obeying the voice of his/her Master? Did they even hesitate or did they jump up and go, all the while thanking their Lord for another opportunity to serve Him? Did they pray for the grace and strength to do all that was in His heart in the situation, and pray that He would get the glory? Was their heart blessed tremendously afterwards? And once I have thought about all these things, I grieve over my lack of love for my King. You know, if I truly loved Him as I should, as He deserves, I would NEVER say no! I would never hesitate to obey Him in WHATEVER He calls me to, regardless of how much it goes against my nature to do so. When I was young in the faith and still so unsure that God would take care of me when He sent me to someone new, I would sometimes think, "Oh God, anything but that! Lord, please, I just CAN'T minister to THAT person! I can't relate to her! Lord, I would just make a mess of things!" So many excuses. I tend to keep a laundry list of reasons why I can't, but anything and everything beside "Yes, Lord", is SIN!!
Beloved, do you ever struggle with obeying your Lord when He calls you to something that goes against your nature? Do you balk when He calls you out of your comfort zone? Just know that it has happened, at one time or another, to the strongest saints in God's army! It happens to the least too, like me. If you struggle in this area of unwillingness to come out of your comfort zone, know that God is aware of your weakness. He wants to strengthen you so that when you DO obey, and you go where He sends you, when He gives you success in what He calls you to, then HE will get the glory! His mighty Name will be magnified and glorified. He will be praised and honored, as He should. You will sing to the mountaintops of how your God gave you victory! You will praise Him for His grace and strength, and the help from His mighty right arm. He is fitting us for the battle. He knows we need help. If we were confident in everything He calls us to, then we might tend to become proud of our own abilities and forget where it all comes from, Him. Don't loose hope. Don't give up. Keep asking God for more opportunities to obey and serve Him. Ask Him to use you in whatever way He decides! And then trust Him for the strength to carry it out. He is faithful and He will do it. Then, He will be glorified and you will be blessed with a heart full of joy for being counted worthy to serve the King of kings and Lord of lords!

A Mother's Heart

Can you imagine being the mother of our Lord? Mary was "highly favored". (Luke 1:28) I should say so! Any child is a gift from God. But can you imagine being the woman who was given THE Gift? She was just a young girl when the Holy Spirit came upon her. It is speculated that she was probably between 14 and 17 years old, just a baby herself. But this girl was a godly girl. She was a devout Jewish young lady who loved Jehovah God. She was a servant of the Most High. And she was chosen to be the mother of Jesus Christ. WOW! I know how I feel about my own son. He is 28 now. Jesus was 33 when He went to the cross to die for our sins, including the sins of Mary His mother. She wasn't saved and taken to heaven just because she was the mother of Jesus. She had to have her sins forgiven in the same way as every other Christian who will be in heaven for all eternity. There was no good work that she could do to earn salvation and her place in heaven, not even bearing God's only Son! Now, if one could get to heaven on their own merits, Mary was the number one prime candidate for this type of works' salvation. How much better work is there than to bear God's Son? And she was obedient in the fact that she and Joseph raised Jesus in a devout Jewish home. They were good parents, faithful to bring Him up according to all the Law. If you could get to heaven by good deeds, this would surely qualify. But no, Mary had to come to the cross of Christ for forgiveness of sins. She had to look upon Jesus as more than just her precious Son. She had to look to Him in paying her sin debt. She had to admit her sin and ask Jesus to cover those sins with His blood. There came a time when she had to look upon the cross as something more than just a means of her Son's suffering. As painful as it was for her to watch her Child in such horrendous agony, she would have had to thank a holy God for sending that Child of hers to the cross to suffer so, in order for her to be in right relationship with her Father! She had to put aside the pity of watching her Son suffer, and even praise God for that suffering, that shedding of perfect blood, the only blood that could cover her sins. If she never turned to Jesus' death on the cross and viewed it in light of salvation, and asked God to save her, then she would not have gone to heaven. She would be in hell along with every single other person who rejects the Gift of eternal life. It's hard to imagine. If it were Joshua, would I ever be able to separate my pain of watching him be tortured, beaten beyond recognition, nailed to a cross and hung there in agony until death, and be able to lay my own heartache aside long enough to thank Jehovah God for it? Every Christian shutters when we think of what Jesus suffered so that we could go to heaven and be with Him for all eternity. But even so, we are still very grateful that He did. We know that if He had not been willing to do that, we would all spend eternity in hell, and rightly so. That causes us to rejoice in the fact that He did do it for us, and rejoice that He rose from the dead to be exalted to the right hand of God the Father. When Peter told Jesus that He would never go to the cross, Jesus said to him, "Get thee behind me Satan!". (Matthew 16:23, Mark 8:33) Would He have not said the same thing to His mother, had she wanted to stop Him from dying? Of course He would. And God didn't offer Mary a special way to get into heaven just because she was Jesus' mother. No, she had to come to the cross the same as everyone else in heaven. As a child of God, saved by grace through faith, she had to have praised God for sending His only Son down here to die for her sins. But as the mother of this Son, I imagine that the pain never left her. Simeon told her when Jesus was just a little baby, that a sword would pierce her own soul. (Luke 2:35) But would she have wanted to stop it when that day finally came and she was faced with the fact that her Child, the spotless Lamb of God, was going to suffer for the taking away of the sins of the world? (John 1:29) Did she want to scream out "NO!"? Whatever her thoughts were, she knew that Jesus had to go...it was why He came in the first place.
It makes me think about how tightly we hang on to our own children. Even when they are grown, we can tend to want to shelter them from what God is allowing in their lives. NEVER pity your child right out of the will of God! God may be bringing about something in your child's life that will bring great honor to the King! Maybe it is something painful that will save their life later on down the road. Maybe it is a critical step in their being broken bread and poured out wine in service to their Master. Maybe it is something horribly painful that will be the catalyst used in bringing about their very salvation! Maybe God is raising up another Martin Luther, or one for our day like John MacArthur. Would you want to stand in the way of your child being raised up by God to be used mightily for His kingdom, His glory? Does God not have the right to choose whatever He wants to do in your child's life, whether you understand it or not? Whether you agree with it or not? Of course He does! It's natural to hurt for your child but you cannot let that stand in opposition to what God is trying to accomplish. Don't put your arm around your child and lead him/her right out of the will of Jehovah! Love them, pray for them, strengthen them in the midst of it. But just like Mary must have done where her own Son was concerned, thank your heavenly Father for whatever He chooses, and praise His holy name through your tears. In this, God is well pleased!

A Gift to Jesus

If you belong to Jesus, have you thought of what gift you might give Him this year? Some people don't even think in those terms. You have those that only think about what THEY want for Christmas. You have others who spend all their time buying and preparing gifts for family and friends without hardly a thought of themselves or even a thought of Jesus. And then there are those who think about what they can give their Lord on this, His birthday. If you are a Christian, then I invite you to examine your heart and your life before your holy God. There is at least one thing that He wants from you in your walk with Him, in your life before your Master and King. Could it be that He is longing for your time? Have you been rushing in and out of His presence, or perhaps not making any time for Him at all? Is Jesus an afterthought? Are you spending 99% of your time baking and shopping and decorating, and then giving your Savior the leftovers of that minute or two that is not given for everything else? Are you running around until you are at the point of exhaustion, then climbing into bed without even reading a single verse in your bible, or without falling on your knees or getting on your face in prayer and praise to your God?

What about giving Him your thoughts? How is your thought life, by the way? Do you spend a lot of time thinking about things that the Lord has not given you yet? I'll give you an example: Do you spend all your time thinking about that boyfriend you want, or that godly husband you long for, instead of thinking about the reality of your heavenly Husband? If God has not yet blessed you with someone special, maybe He is waiting for you to give HIM the time, thoughts, and devotion He deserves. If you spend very little time thinking about Jesus now, maybe He knows that if He blessed you with a partner, you would be likely to forget Jesus all-together, or seldom spend time with Him. Try spending more time thinking on the loveliness of your King and see if your intimacy with Him doesn't grow. Give Him that gift. What about sin that pops into your head unexpectedly? Do you expel it immediately or do you allow your mind to linger there for a little while? Jesus knows all of your thoughts and it is very easy to quench and grieve the Holy Spirit! Does your mind stay so preoccupied in the everyday troubles of life that you don't make any room in your brain to think on Him? Do you let life's stresses keep your thoughts gloomy or depressed? Do you spend so much time worrying about how to make ends meet or how to get everything done on your "to do list" that you don't leave room in your head to think about all the ways in which your God has been gracious to you? Do you make it a point to take time to think about all of His blessings and forgot not all His benefits? (Psalm 103:1-4) Do you take a few minutes out of your busy day just to reflect on His gracious answers to your prayers? Or maybe think about how His mighty right arm delivered you out of trouble? Your time is precious. How much of it are you giving to your Lord?

Maybe He wants you to give Him your gift of a thankful heart this year. Maybe life has been full of trial and tribulation, and you are forgetting how to be thankful for whatever it is He allows in your life. There are those who feels as if they are entitled to a bed of roses and a life of ease. When the storms roll in, some people have a hard time trying to find things to be thankful for, then offering a prayer of thanksgiving to their God. You know, sometimes God may delay giving you relief from your grief and pain until you thank Him in the midst of it! And He doesn't want us to only thank Him for the "big" things, He wants us to thank Him for ALL things! (1 Thess.5:18) He loves when His children smile up to Him, even through their tears, and praise His holy, worthy Name! When is the last time you thanked Him for saving you, even if salvation came 20 years ago? How about thanking Him for saving your child, spouse, family member, or someone you have been praying for for many years?

Do you read your bible? The bible is 66 love letters straight from God to you. It's a gift, a precious gift. Everything you need to live a godly life before your Lord is in the bible. It is your instruction manual. It contains your marching orders. It is your source of comfort in times of heartache and trouble. Why not tell Jesus that you will give Him a gift this year. Why not dedicate time out of each day to give to your Lord in reading the bible and meditating on what you have read. Spend time allowing Him to speak to you through what you read that day. Start out giving him 30 minutes a day, and see if He doesn't grow it from there. Tell Jesus you love Him enough to give Him that time every single day and watch how He blesses it.
Here's a big gift, one that is so hard for people to give. Give your Master your right to yourself! Oh how often I try to take back my right to myself after time and time again I confess to give my all to my King. If you are a child of God, you have no rights. Jesus owns you. He paid such an immeasurable price to purchase you and redeem your life! Yet it is so easy to grumble against the Lord for what He allows in our lives. We think we deserve better when in fact, all we really deserve is hell. We don't like the way someone talks to us or how they treat us because we think we deserve better. But the bible tells us that Jesus was treated more unfairly than anyone who ever lived, without opening His mouth. (Isaiah 52:7) He is our example. And although we sometimes fail, we can ask Him for His grace to be salt and light in this dark world. There are times when someone takes advantage of us and we get upset because we think we were "done wrong". This is not a spirit like the Lord's Spirit. We should joyously take the mistreatment of others, all the while exhibiting the love of Christ, so that He will be magnified and glorified.
We sometimes think we should have the right to choose our service to the Lord or how and where we want to be, and the job we want to do. This year, give Jesus your entire life, no matter what He chooses, and serve Him with all joy. Give Him your willingness to be nothing, so that He will be seen as Everything in your life, to the glory of God the Father!
Maybe what Jesus wants from you is something totally different than what I have mentioned. Ask Him what He would like from you, and then do it, give it to your King. Honor His worthy Name by giving Him whatever He wants from you. If you do, YOU will get a blessing in your heart of a closer relationship with your heavenly Husband. He is the giver of all good things.

Jesus in Your Circumstances

The holiday season is a very lonely time for so many people. There are those that feel as if nobody cares for them, and these feelings tend to mount during this time of year. And in the society we live in now, many people stay isolated in their homes, convinced that love and compassion will never come to them. There are those who long for a spouse to share their lives with. But for the child of God, Jesus is our heavenly Husband. He cares so much! He understands the hurt and pain of loneliness. He longs to comfort you with a comfort that just can't compare to who or what you will find here on this earth.
There are those people who long for a friend, someone close to their hearts that they can share their life's experiences with. Friends tell each other things and come alongside one another. It is nice to have someone that you can confide in and someone you know will always be there when you call. Jesus is waiting to be your Friend. If you belong to Him, then you have a Friend like nobody on earth.
Sometimes you may find yourself in situations and you just wish you had someone to give you good council. Maybe you are faced with some tough decisions and you long for someone wiser than yourself, whom you can turn to for advice. Jesus is that One. All wisdom belongs to Him. He longs to be your Shepherd. He is omniscient. There is nothing He doesn't know and no problem is big or hard in His eyes. It is so comforting to know that if you belong to Jesus, you can call on Him anytime night or day, and He will always be there for you. God never misleads His child, and He is always ready to give you His council.
My point is this, you don't have to go it all alone in this world. You don't have to do life all by yourself. Coming to the cross doesn't mean that all your problems go away. Usually, if you are walking in right relationship with your Lord, then your problems will be multiplied in this wicked world. But it means that you will always have an Advocate. You will always have Jehovah God on your side, fighting for you. You will know that you are loved and that you are cared for. You will have strength beyond measure because you will have the strength of the Lord your God. Beloved, if you are still without Christ, please ask Him to save you. Please repent of your sins and tell Him how much you need a Savior. Tell Him you know that He is God and that He died in order to save you. Plead for His precious blood to cover your sins and for Him to give you eternal life. Your problems might not go away but you will have a peace and joy unspeakable! And it will be the first Christmas in your entire life that your joy and peace will be real, and will last forever and ever!

The Baby Grew Up

Do you like to think of Jesus only as that sweet little baby in a manger? When someone says the name of Jesus, do you instantly think of Him as He was when He first came down here to earth to die for our sins? I have heard people respond to the question of what they think about Jesus by answering, "Oh, I love the sweet baby Jesus!" There is nothing wrong with loving Jesus. To love the Savior is wonderful. But there are people who never take their thoughts or feeling of Jesus past His being a little baby. To some, if they keep Him "baby" in their minds and hearts, they never have to deal with the fact that He is coming back to the earth next time as King and Judge! The story of the baby in a manger is only the first part of the story. It's gets better! Well, it gets better for the Christian. That Baby grew into a Man. That Baby is and was and always will be the Most High God! He is fully God and fully Man. He grew into the God-Man who went to the cross to die for your sins and mine. That sweet scene of an innocent baby turned into a scene of the innocent, spotless, sinless Lamb of God who died a violent death to save us from our sins. If you like to think of Jesus as that little baby, I want to ask you to consider the fact that you are missing the best part of who He is now. He is Savior. He is Lord. He is King. The Father has exalted Jesus and He now sits at the right hand of God. He will one day return to this earth. He will one day judge the sins of the ungodly. He will one day bring everything hidden into light. If you die without Christ, there won't be a single sin that you have ever committed that He won't reveal....every wicked thought, every wicked deed. You will, before being sent to hell for all eternity, bow before Him and recognize Him as Lord.
The true believer has thoughts about Christmas that leave us in awe of our Savior! This Baby was the One who spoke and created the heavens and earth. We think of how He loved us so much that He humbled Himself to come down here to die violently so that we could have our sins forgiven and be in right relationship with Jehovah. The Christian longs for the glorious Day when our Master will return! We long to see Him exalted, to be magnified and glorified before all the earth! We love to think of Him in all of His splendor and glory, King of kings and Lord of lords! We often find ourselves looking up to the heavens and with much joy and anticipation saying, "Come, Lord Jesus!"
What about you? How do you think and feel about Jesus this Christmas season?

Deuteronomy 10:12

I don't know how many times over the last few years that I have read Deuteronomy 10:12. But it wasn't until this last time that it about knocked me off my spiritual chair. I am blown away! God is talking to Israel right before they take possession of the Promise Land. And He tells them, "What does the LORD your God require from you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways and love Him, and to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul." Verse 13 completes the thought with "and to keep the LORD'S commandments and His statutes which I am commanding you today for your good." Not everyone cherishes the thought of fearing God. Unbelievers should fear His judgement and wrath. They should fear His thoughts towards them, because if they aren't saved, when they die they will be sent to hell for all eternity. That should make every child of Satan fear a holy God. But many times the bible talks about believers fearing God. We never have to fear things like death or what other people say about us or can do to us. But we do fear our God. The Greek word for fear is "phobos". It's where we get our word "phobia". The Greek means: fear, dread, terror, reverence, awe. Believers reverence God as a controlling motive for their life. We are in awe of Him. Even though as believers we can never loose our salvation, we can still be disciplined by our Father for our behavior, for acting in a way that is not in keeping with His holy nature and in keeping with the commands He gives us. Read Hebrews 12:5-11 on God's discipline for His children. In fearing God, we understand how much He hates sin. This reverent "fear" has a great impact on how we live our lives before Him. We are in awe of God's capabilities, and the fear of our Father inspires obedience! The fear of my God will aid me in living a life of respect for Him and His holiness. Because I love and fear Him, I will want to obey Him. I will submit to His righteous discipline of me, and I will worship Him in awe and adoration. This and more is what the fear of the Lord means to His children.
It is so critical to walk in all of God's ways. Psalm 25:4-5 is something that I pray with tears to my Master: "Show me your ways, O Lord. Teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me. For You are the God of my salvation. On You I wait all the day." I know that I know that He has honored this prayer I have been praying for the last 2 years. He is the one that showed it to me, and gave me the wisdom to understand how important it is to long for this. If you are a true believer, you can't walk outside of God's will while still maintaining any peace and joy whatsoever. If you are living and walking in sin, you are not growing in the Lord, and you will be very aware that God has turned His face from you. There is NO walking outside of God's ways that is worth it. I often pray and tell my Shepherd that I don't want to take one single step outside of His steps. I don't want to wander even one inch off the path where He leads me! If He isn't going before me then I don't want to go! And beloved, there is no way to walk in all of God's ways if you don't learn all of them by reading your bible! And beware if God has been laying it on your heart to be faithful in picking up His word and reading it, and you not obeying Him. The Holy Spirit will prompt you if you are a true believer. You best heed that prompting. When you are saved, the Holy Spirit will come to live inside you and you will be filled with a measure of wisdom and understanding. But there is no way to grow in the grace and knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2Peter 3:18) like you should without reading His word! God's not going to give you all the knowledge of Himself that He wants you to have by spiritual osmosis. You have to read your bible to know all of His ways, to be able to walk in them, period. And if you are not, then you are in sin and God will eventually deal with you.
He then tells us to serve Him with all our heart and soul. First, are you serving your Master in some capacity? If you belong to Jesus, He has some form of service in His plan for your life. Have you let HIM decide your service or are you choosing what you enjoy or what puts you square in the limelight? This is wrong if it's what you're doing and you will wear yourself our. God will make sure of it. He is your Master and He alone has the right to decide how and where you serve Him. It may be something that you think you are totally incapable of doing, or something that you have no inkling for. It shouldn't matter what you think or feel. Obey Him and do what He calls you to. If you are faithful and obey Him, then He will equip you with the ability to carry it out. And once you are faithful to obey, then He will give you a joy unspeakable in this service to Him. If you try to decide where you want to serve, it will never be as good as it should be. And you won't have the success in that service like you would if you would let Jesus put you where HE wants you. I'll give you one example. And no, I don't know anyone in the choir who is doing this, it's just an example. You may be thinking you're doing a really great service to the Lord by singing in the choir. Besides, you have a beautiful voice and the congregation loves your solos. But Jesus has let you know that He wants you serving in the nursery that hour and attending service the second hour, when they have a band instead of a choir. And you aren't needed in the band but Jesus needs you in the nursery first hour. But you've never been very fond of listening to screaming babies or having to change dirty diapers, so you choose to disobey your Master and sing in the choir. And boy, you get some really great solos and it's nice when people tell you how much your song touched their hearts. But you know what...instead of enjoying the praise of others, you need to ask Jesus how HE feels about your song. Could it be that the song that you think is a wonderful sacrifice of love to your God is a horrible screeching noise in His ear because of the heart in which you are offering it to Him? When He knows the fact that you're not really offering it to Him, you are offering it to please yourself and the ears of others, it will not be a sweet offering to the One who matters. He will not accept any offering of service you give to Him when He clearly lets you know that you are out of His will. Don't fool yourself. God will not be mocked. So when you pray about serving your Lord, ask Him where HE wants you to serve. Don't choose for yourself. We're human and tend to like the limelight. You may choose a service that puts you in notice of the whole congregation when your Master is wanting to put you cleaning the church toilets. You may want to lead your church in women's events when God is calling you to clean houses of elderly people in your neighborhood because they can't afford to have it done. And He is wanting you to witness to them while dusting their furniture. As Oswald Chambers would ask you: Are you willing to be nothing more than a doormat in serving others for the glory of your King? I'd like to add to that question: Are you willing to never be thought of again, and just go quietly and serve your Master? Are you willing to do whatever He calls you to, even if it means never receiving any recognition or praise from man? That one was tough for me when I first started the process of understanding serving my Master. It's human nature to want someone on this earth to notice that you are giving your time and talents, or even your money, to the cause of Christ. But that goes against what the bible teaches me. Jesus wants to continue to grow us, and get us to the place where it doesn't matter if another soul ever knows what we do in serving Him. He will be glorified! And if we never here a nice word down here on this earth for all the things we do in serving Him, one day our King will look at us and say, "Well done, good and faithful servant!"
Serve your Lord today! If you are serving where you like instead of where He wanted, then seek His face on how to get right with Him. It's never too late to obey the voice of your Savior, your Master and King.

A Holy God

I'm reading in the Old Testament again. I can't decide what excites me more, being in the New Testament with all the writings about Jesus and all the critical instructions from Paul, or the Old Testament where the holiness of God is so powerfully displayed. Right now I am in Deuteronomy. I stay in awe of the power and holiness of Jehovah God when I read the Pentateuch (the first 5 books of the bible). I can't even imagine being one of the Israelites and seeing all the miracles of God when He led them out of Egypt. Can you imagine walking across the bed of the Red Sea, a DRY bed, and on either side of you is a wall of water, held in place while you pass through? I try to picture that. I wonder if they were in awe or were they afraid, or just what emotion they had. I love the story of the people at Mt. Sinai. God told Moses that He would come to them in a thick cloud so that the people could hear when God spoke. In Exodus 19 God tells the people that neither man nor beast was to go up on the mountain or even touch the boarder, or else they were to be put to death! Verse 16 says that on the morning that God came, there was thunder and lightning flashes and a thick cloud on the mountain. There was a loud trumpet sound. The Lord descended on the mountain in fire and its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace. Then it says that the whole mountain quaked violently! Awesome! There were a couple of different times when they had no water and God brought it out of a rock, gushing, flowing enough to quench both man and beast. He still provides so wonderfully for His own! There's a story in Numbers chapter 12 that talks about Moses' siblings, Miriam and Aaron. Because of jealousy, they were grumbling and gossiping about their brother Moses. And of course God sees and hears everything so this was really foolish on their part. (We've all been guilty of gossip at one time or another in our lives, and it is sin. Gossip is a sin anytime, but you best be careful gossiping about one of God's servants!) Moses was God's chosen man and he was a very humble servant of the Most High. So it displeased God greatly to hear them gripe against their brother, and gossip about him. Miriam was the principal offender in this so she was the one punished. Verse 4 and following tells us that God called the three siblings and told them to come to the tent of meeting. He came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the doorway of the tent. God then called Aaron and Miriam to come forward. Oh no, can you imagine? Surely they had an idea that they were in trouble. I'm sure they sensed that this wasn't good. Can you imagine being called to the "front of the class" by God Himself? He proceeded to remind them of the fact that He and Moses had a "mouth to mouth" relationship, and that there was nobody more faithful in all His household than His servant Moses. And that Moses actually beholds the form of the Lord! Then God proceeds to ask them, "So why then weren't you afraid to speak against My servant?" That was the last thing He said but it wasn't the end of it. When He finished saying that last sentence, He departed. It says that His anger BURNED against them. And when the cloud was gone, Miriam looked and she was covered with leprosy!! Immediately Aaron starting apologizing to Moses and begging him to ask God to forgive them and heal their sister. Moses pleaded for God to heal her. God said to put her out of the camp for 7 days and then she would be clean. Wow, that is so awesome! God is a holy God, and nobody is exempt from His punishment. Unbelievers receive His wrath. Believers, when necessary, receive His chastisement. He is holy, holy, holy! All His judgements are perfectly righteous. God took grumblings against Moses personal because they were really against Him, because Moses was God's spokesman, His representative. But Moses wasn't exempt from God's punishment either. Here you have a man that was chosen out of all the men on the earth to lead God's people out of captivity. Moses was God's very faithful servant. Num.12:3 says that Moses was more humble than any man on the face of the earth. He obeyed God and did everything God asked him to for all those years. But then he angered God by not obeying a command that God gave him about getting water for the people. God told him to speak to a rock and it would produce water. Instead, in his anger against his fellow Israelites, Moses struck the rock, twice. He took the focus off of God's provision and he disobeyed the command to only speak to the rock. God was so angry that He let Moses know that Moses would NOT have the privilege of going into the promise land. And in fact, He told Moses that instead of going to the promise land, Moses was going to DIE soon!! Can you believe that? Here this man had been faithful for 40 years and lead these people all that time and now he wasn't even going to get to go to this wonderful land. Man, that's pretty stiff punishment! One might think that God would let it slide with an apology. After all, Moses hadn't had things easy for the last 40 years, and that was a lot of years of buildup in frustration in having to be the leader of such "stiff-necked" people. But God is a holy God and His judgements are righteous and perfect. It hurt Moses that he was not going to get to go. He pleaded with God to change His mind but God wasn't budging. God had already told Moses that he was allowed to go on top of the mountain and get a look at the land, but that he wasn't going. Apparently Moses didn't want to give up. He really wanted to be allowed to go to this land that he had been anticipating all those years. So he kept asking. It came to a climax in Deuteronomy 3:23-28. God was angry and when He had heard all that He was going to listen to on the subject He said, "Enough! Speak to Me no more of this matter" And then He told Moses something to the effect of, "Go on, go to the top of Mt. Pisgah and get you a good look around at the promise land cuz you AIN'T goin!!" I remember reading the story for the first time about 6 years ago. I remember being shocked when I got to that point. It would have made sense to me at that time to read that Moses had been able to talk God into changing His mind. After all, Moses was so faithful to his Master for all those years! Surely God would relent and feel sorry for Moses and let him go. So when I read where God told him that he was going to have to settle for nothing more than a good look around, and to stop bugging Him about it, I was shocked! But it made me realize just how serious one single sin is in the eyes of a holy God. All those years of service didn't tip the scale of God's judgement and punishment for that one single sin! That ONE SIN kept the faithful servant of God from the one blessing that he longed for. Beloved, that's what I want you to see. God is so good and He takes such good care of His children. But He is holy, holy, holy! He demands reverence for His holiness. You cannot sin against a holy God and get away with it. Even if it feels as if you have, you haven't and you won't. If you are a child of His, He will be patient with you, for He is long-suffering. But if you continue in sin, he will punish you. You will feel the rod of His loving correction. If you are not saved, then you may go your entire life feeling like you are getting away with sin. But a day will come when He'll cash in all of your I.O.U.'s and you will be sent to hell for all eternity for those sins against the Most High God. Whatever the case may be, get right with God now! Don't put it off. He is the same God today as He was in the days of Moses. Whatever the case may be, don't let His punishment or His wrath fall on YOU!

A Father's Love

It's hard to believe but there are actually Christians who feel like there is nothing for them in the Old Testament. If it wasn't for the OT, I would not have the tremendous blessing of understanding the aspect of God as my Father, and all the joy that goes along with that knowledge. The first experience I remember after being saved 6 1/2 years ago is praying to God about my true feelings. I wanted so much to share with Him and to come clean about my heart. I understood that He knew anyway but I remember how important it was for me to confess it out loud. I felt like if I said it out loud, I wouldn't be able to turn back. I knew He had saved me and I knew I was going to heaven, but I longed for more than just a mediocre relationship with Him. My heart was yearning for something and I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but I knew where I needed to start. And I know now that even those longings inside me came from Him. Isn't that such wonderful love on the part of my Father? He knew before the foundations of the earth what my specific needs would be and He knew just how to fill them. And it all began with an honest confession to my God. This conversation took place not long after my conversion. The first thing God showed me after I was saved was the fact that I hadn't been saved at the age of 13, like I had thought for 29 years. He didn't want me mislead about when salvation had occurred because He has plans to use me in that aspect of His ministry. There are millions of people in America who think they are saved because they said some prayer a thousand years ago but never had any change in their life, never had the Holy Spirit come to live on the inside of them. All they had was an emotional moment and someone assured them that they were saved and that they never had to worry about it again. So they go on living their wicked lives without another thought of God, thinking that they have their fire insurance. And because God wants to use me to plead with people to examine their claim of salvation, He let me know quickly that my salvation was not at the age of 13, but at the age of 42. The next thing was to give me a longing for beginning to grasp His love for me as my heavenly Father. When I was saved, I was very ashamed and sorry for all of my sins. I wanted forgiveness and He so mercifully gave it to me. When it came to talking to God about my feelings, I remember being extremely sad and felt a little hopeless. I was so ashamed to admit to this holy God the thing that I was about to confess. I felt like it was all because I was such a bad person and the whole thing was my fault. So with much shame and sadness, I made my confession. "God, I don't love you. I want to, God, but I just don't, and I don't have a clue how to start. I don't understand what it means that You, as a Father, could love ME. What does that kind of love from a father look like? How am I supposed to understand how to love you as my Father? I've never really been close to my dad. He's a great dad but for some reason, and whatever reason it was all my fault, we just never really developed a closeness. I know it is my fault because I have never been very lovable. I know that I caused more heartache than pleasure to my parents, God, and so it is a miracle that they ever even cared about me. I was such a bad child that I never even wondered why I didn't really have a close bond to my dad. And now God, I really have no clue what mine and Your love, and our relationship is supposed to be like. I just don't love You. And I'm not sure that I will ever really believe that You truly love ME! God, if it's even possible, will You help me?" Now remember, I was fresh out of the spiritual womb in my Christian life. I didn't know anything about the "things" of God. All I knew was that my heart was hurting and if anyone could help me, surely it was Him. And so I told Him everything about my feelings of this whole "Father" thing. What did I have to loose? It couldn't make things any worse in my heart, and perhaps things would be better. Little did I know that my Father was preparing my heart for one of the biggest blessings of my entire life. I can imagine how my loving Father was smiling down on me while I was crying, my heart breaking from all the emotions inside me of feeling so unlovable. I know He held me very close that night, His heart tender towards my tears and my fears and yes, even my doubts. There are inexhaustible truths in the Old Testament. It is rich! And that is how God was going to answer my prayer of wanting to love Him and wanting to start to grasp the idea of Him actually loving me. Don't ask me how it happened. There wasn't any magic verse. It was the whole of the OT. It was starting to see His holiness in the Pentateuch. Oh, you can't read the first 5 books of the bible without being astounded by the holiness of God Almighty! And it was in seeing how serious His holiness is to be taken! One example is in Lev.10:1 where Aaron's two sons offered "strange fire" on God's holy alter and He instantly killed them by sending down fire from heaven. And in verse 3 God said, "By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy, and before all the people I will be honored." Wow! And how about God's power and the fact that He takes seriously those who harm His servants, because when you talk bad about His servants without cause, you talk bad about Him. Numbers chapter 16 tells the story of Korah, when he and others rebelled against Moses. God took this so seriously that He opened up the ground and those wicked men, all of their families with the exception of Korah's sons, and all of their possessions went into the ground, to Sheol, and then the earth closed back up over them. And then fire came down out of heaven and consumed an additional 250 wicked men from the tribe of Levi. WOW!! That gives me chills every time I read it! Or how about the story in Numbers chapter 11 where the Israelites were grumbling against God. They were being fed every day by God who would send down food from heaven that the Israelites called "manna". This was the food that they ate for 40 years while wandering in the desert. They became tired of eating the manna and longed for the food they ate while slaves in Egypt. So they started grumbling to Moses against God, and asking for meat to eat. Oh, bad mistake. They were so ungrateful for all that God had done for them. (we are guilty of the same thing at times) God was angered when He heard their cries for meat. So He said something to the effect of, "So, you want meat? Ok, I'll give you meat. I'll give you so much meat that it is coming out of your nostrils and you get sick of it. You want meat? Fine, you'll have meat." God sent a wind that brought the quail in, and brought in so much that quail covered the ground. And then the bible tells us in verse 33 "While the meat was still between their teeth, before it was chewed, the anger of the LORD was kindled against the people, and the LORD struck the people with a very severe plague." Many people died at the hand of an angry, righteous God that day! There are so many stories like this in the OT. And there are many about God instructing Israel to completely destroy cities, and kill every living thing in them, including women and children. They were put to death for their wickedness against a holy God. The OT is FULL of awesome, awesome truths about an all-powerful God, very God of very God. And what He so lovingly laid on my heart was that this Almighty God was MY Father!! FATHER!! He's the GOD of this universe, and He is MY Father! Oh how my heart started to BURN with love for Him. How could it be? Why me? How me? How could a holy, righteous God choose to place His affections on ME? I never have or never will be worthy of such love! I'm nothing! I'm nobody! I'm unlovable! People only want to talk about God's love and it is true that He is love but He is also wrath. He is mercy AND Justice. Who am I? He could have killed me the very first time I committed a sin on this earth. And yet this fierce, wrathful, holy God looks tenderly on ME and tells me that He loves me so much that not only did He not kill me for my wickedness, but He sent His one and only Son down here to this earth to die for my sins! What manner of love is that? This God of the universe would LAVISH His love on me! (1John 3:1) I am overwhelmed with the knowledge that this God is Abba, Father to me and that He loves me more than I can fathom. And the most wonderful part is that I can't do anything to earn it and I can't do anything to loose it!! It's unconditional and that blesses my heart more than I can put into words. He loves me. He is a HOLY God, and He is my Abba. Wow! Child of God, if you've never read the Old Testament, don't break your Father's heart another day by disregarding His love letters to you. Pick up your bible and start with Genesis chapter 1 and read the entire Old Testament. Don't skip any of it. It is all there for a reason, even if you can't figure out what that reason is. God knows and He wanted us to have it and that's all that matters. There are Christians in other countries who are put to death for their faith. There are those who hide one or two pages of the bible, or small portions of it, and if it is found, they would instantly be killed. Just for being caught with one page from the holy Scriptures! Yet they are willing to risk their life to hang on to those precious words from God. They would rather be put to death for having it than to live without it! That should shame every single child of God who neglects reading their bible. Read it and He will bless you too! If you don't belong to Him and you find yourself thinking that I am special and that God could never love you like He loves me, I want you to know that you are 100% wrong. This same love is available to YOU, just like it is to me. Jehovah God will love you like you've never been loved, and it will never end. If you are not saved, then right now you are an enemy of God. But only confess your sins and ask Him to save you and you will be His beloved child forever! He will lavish His love on you too. I promise!

Trust in the Lord

There's a song based off Psalm 36 that I love. It is by Third Day and these are the words: "Your love oh Lord, reaches to the heavens. Your faithfulness stretches to the skies. Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains. Your justice flows like the ocean's tide. And I will lift my voice to worship you, my King. And I will find my strength in the shadow of Your wings." When I am in the heat of the battle, I can sing this song to my Captain and the tears fall like rain. These are such incredible truths for the child of God to remember and claim during tough times of trial and suffering in standing for your Lord's honor. God wanted you to know about His attributes so much that the Holy Spirit gave David this psalm to write. Don't pass quickly over the words. Each truth is so important when you are in the fiery furnace of trials or persecution. His love is so big that if it could be measured, it would reach to the heavens. In other words, it is immeasurable. Who knows exactly how far it is to heaven. All we know is that the distance is great, and so is the love of God. I love to think about the faithfulness of my Savior. I love to know that He will never, ever leave me. He will never give me up or loose His grip on me. He will never cast me aside. Every single promise in the bible, He is faithful to keep. He cannot lie and He cannot break His promises. So when He tells me that He has loved me with an everlasting love, I know it is true. (Jeremiah 31:3) When He tells me that He, the God of this universe, actually has thought out and planned my life, it boggles my mind. (Jeremiah 29:11-13) Also by these verses I know that when I cry out to my Father, He hears me, for He is always listening to the cries of His children! Think about that. God, who has all these things going on all over the world, who knows where Bin Laden is, who sees every crime being committed, every child who is going to bed hungry, every single thing going on in this world, inclines His ear to hear me when I call to Him. Incredible!! He's never too busy for me. I never have only half of His attention. Along those lines, read the passage where He beckons me to call to Him and He will answer me, and He will tell me great and mighty things which I do not know. (Jeremiah 33:3) That astounds me! Great and mighty truths from the Everlasting God! WOW! Being a child of God is the coolest! I am so unworthy but I am none-the-less a child of the King, and I have immediate access to the throne of the Most High God! The psalm tells me that His righteousness is tremendous. Think of how majestic the mighty mountains are. Psalm 96:13 tells us that Jesus will judge the world in righteousness. That is scary for the ungodly, the lost people of this world. There are so many people here in America that think they will go to heaven because they are fairly good people. They will, because they have never been dressed in the righteousness robes of Jesus, have to stand before God in their own self-righteousness. God says that our own self-righteousness is as filthy rags. (Isaiah 64:6) This word "rags or garment" was the word for what the women wore during their menstrual cycle. During this time she was declared unclean in her filthy garments. God says that all of our "good" deeds, done outside of Jesus Christ, are as filthy menstrual rags. That's a pretty strong statement but it means that unless the precious blood of Christ has been applied to our sins, there is nothing we can do of our own to please Him or earn our way into heaven. If you die without having pleaded at the throne of God for the forgiveness of your sins and asking Jesus to save you, then you will spend eternity in hell paying for every sin you ever committed, which will all be deemed filthy in the eyes of a holy God. The only way to be washed clean is by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. This is in keeping with the next line in the psalm and will someday apply to your life and your sentence to hell. His justice flows like the ocean's tide. Never ask for justice, always beg for mercy. His mercy is what He extends to the redeemed. Mercy is having kindness extended to you when you don't deserve it. His justice is what the wicked will receive in hell for all eternity. We all deserve this justice and we all deserve to spend eternity in hell for our sins against a holy God. But only ask Him to forgive you and for Jesus to save you, and He will be merciful to you. But those who die in their sins without asking Jesus to save them will go to hell. They will stand before the righteous Judge of the earth at the Great White Throne Judgement, and every sin they ever committed will be revealed. Like 8:17 says, "For nothing is hidden that will not become evident, nor anything secret that will not be known and come to light." Wow, that's a very scary thought if you are not saved. Every single thing you have said and everything you have thought will be judged. The only way to go to heaven, having all your sins forgiven, is to ask Jesus to save you. Tell Him that you are a sinner; that you know your wicked sins have separated you from a holy God. Tell Him that you believe that He is God and that He died to save you from those sins. Ask Him to forgive you and come live inside you and be your Savior and Lord. Philippians 2:10-11 says, "So that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Beloved, if you are not saved, whether you just haven't gotten around to asking Him to save you or you don't believe in Him, or even if you are hostile towards Him, there WILL come a day when you will bow before Him. There WILL come a day when your tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. If you don't believe in Him, that makes Him no less real. And that Reality is going to be before you one of these days. But if you are on your knees before Him at the Great White Throne Judgement, it will be too late, for you are then on your way to be tortured for all eternity in hell, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matt.8:12,13:42,Luke 13:28) Have you ever been in so much pain that you have actually gnashed your teeth? Have you ever been tortured so badly, whether physically or emotionally that you could not stop weeping or gnashing your teeth? The bible makes it clear that you will be so tortured in hell that you will weep and gnash your teeth for all eternity, and never, ever get any relief! And before you are sent to your final place in hell for all eternity, you will be on your knees before the King of kings and Lord of lords. You WILL see Him, you WILL bow before Him, and you WILL confess Him as Lord. But it doesn't have to be before going to hell. If you would only ask Him to save you, it could be a time of beholding your King for the first time and joyously worshipping Him forever and ever. It could be with praise and adoration that you look into His face and see the nail prints in His hands and the piercing scar on His side, and you will thank Him for having suffered so that you could spend all eternity praising Him as King of kings and Lord of lords. Precious one, He is waiting for you, even now. Don't put it off another day. And if perhaps you don't believe in Him, ask Him to reveal Himself to you. He is faithful and He will do it. Whatever it is that is keeping you from bowing the knee to the King here and now, settle it, do it today! You may not have a tomorrow.

Join the Battle

If you are a child of God, do you take a stand for the gospel? Are you in the tough battle? It's hard to be in or stay in the fight sometimes because of the fierce opposition. But until the end, when the battle is finally over and Jesus wins the war, opposition to Him will remain out there in abundance! Jesus promised it and you can be sure it will come when you are standing for the truth. It's difficult sometimes. There will be situations when you face a hostile Jesus hater and you may be afraid to make any waves. There will be times when you face someone who knows their bible backwards and forwards and they twist it and try to use it to prove that the whole Jesus thing is a fairytale, or that Jesus wasn't really God. You may find yourself under attack and feeling inadequate to answer all the bible questions from someone who is trying to trip you up. Or you may come across a church goer who claims the name of Christ but lives like the devil and God calls you to take a stand for the truth. Yes, sometimes the battle is tough. Actually, it's difficult most of the time. If you claim the name of Christ and never have struggles with the enemies of the cross, you better examine yourself to make sure you are really saved or make sure that you are walking in right relationship with your Master. But when you do face those hostile people, there will be times when you want to just lay down and go with the flow, keep your head low, stay buried in the sand. But that is not what Jesus calls His disciples to. He calls us to battle... to war! He tells us to be strong and very courageous. Joshua 1:6,7,9) Our Captain tells us just like He told Joshua in verse 5 that He will not fail nor forsake us. I love the command He gives us in verse 7, just as He did to His servant Joshua. He tells us to do all according to His word, and not to turn from it to the right or to the left, so that we may have success wherever we go. Of course we have to realize that success in the eyes and mind of Jehovah God will not always be something we can see or understand, and we shouldn't try. Just be faithful to follow His leading in your life to His truth, for His honor and glory, and leave the rest up to Him. It's the work of the Holy Spirit to change a person's heart. You just stay faithful and do whatever He calls you to, and trust Him to do the rest. Proverbs 3:5 tells us to trust in the Lord, and do not lean to our own understanding. In all our ways acknowledge Him and He will make our paths straight. That's some pretty heavy duty commands and carrying them out is not for the faint hearted! Not all of the Shepherd's sheep are warriors. Some are scared and timid and are easily shaken. They have to be looked after. Some are like little lambs. I used to consider myself as such and I think often about how timid I was. I was afraid of the whole world. I never wanted to come out from under my bed, and this was when I was 47! I'm now 48. And there are days when I am standing for truth and it is hard and sometimes emotionally draining and I find myself wishing I could just crawl back under my bed. But reading several times through the bible and by the grace of God, growing in the knowledge of my Shepherd, I started longing for more than just the life of a scared little sheep. That longing came from God Himself. I knew that if I stayed a frightened lamb the rest of my life, I would still go to heaven when I died. But God allowed me to see more and more of the fact that it is a battle, a war out there and the warriors are so very few. After I had been saved for about three years, every single time I read Isaiah chapter 6, I couldn't contain my emotions. And by the time I got to verse 8, the tears would be streaming down my face. I wanted to raise my hand so bad and wave it in the air and say "LORD...LORD...here I am!!! Lord, see ME!! Lord, send ME!!" but sheer terror kept my hands by my side and my voice barely above a whisper for months and months. You see, I know how the story ends. It is believed that Isaiah was the prophet that was sawn in half. Hebrews chapter 11 is called the faith chapter. It lists many saints from the Old Testament and talks of their faithfulness to their God. And verse 37 tells us that these faithful warriors of Jehovah were "stoned, sawn in two, tempted, put to death with the sword, they were destitute, afflicted and ill-treated. John the Baptist and Paul were beheaded. Stephen was stoned. All of the disciples with the exception of John were martyred for their faith and devotion to their Master. Peter was crucified. When the time came to die, he requested to be crucified upside down because he felt unworthy to be crucified in the same manner as His Lord. The bible is full, Old Testament and New, of those who stood for Christ and were killed or at least severely mistreated for it. Is this really what I wanted to sign up for when I could still get to heaven being a precious little lamb that needed the protection of the fierce warriors, and desired to stay hidden under the wings of Jesus? Come on! Besides, I'm a female! Wouldn't that be better suited for just the guys, and us girls can do our part and pray for all of the brave male soldiers of Jesus? And you know what..that's ok. If that is what God calls you to, then do that with all of your heart and pray fervently and faithfully for those on the front lines of the war for our King. But there was just something that kept coming up inside me. Of course that "something" had a Name. God placed the desire inside me and then answered His own calling in my life to step forward. Besides, as He has assured me, what is there to fear? Whom is there to fear? (Psalm 27:1 Actually read the entire psalm if you are in the battle)So that small little slight raising of my hand and that barely audible whisper then progressed to "I think I really do want You to use me Lord, no matter what that looks like, no matter what it entails. It doesn't matter what You have to do with me or do to me Lord, only use me for Your kingdom, Your gospel and Your glory!" I'll tell you something, you better mean it when you say that prayer because you'll find that He will take you up on it. Only by the grace of God did my little whisper turn into an ecstatic, arm-flailing shout. We've all seen on tv or in the movies how people are stranded on a deserted island and nobody knows where they are. And then all of a sudden an airplane flies overhead and everyone is waving their arms frantically, jumping up and down and doing everything they can to get the attention of the one in the air. Well, that was the picture of me! Before long I was joyously giving heart and soul to the desire of being used by God, no matter what He chose as my path for His glory. "Only send me, Lord...use me!" But you can't think that you get to choose your own path. He does all the choosing. And for me, so much of the time it looks NOTHING at all like I thought it might, or dreamed it might. Here I am, my name is signed on the dotted line at the bottom of a blank sheet of paper. But His choices of how He uses me look nothing like I thought they would. You know how you hear stories of people reluctant to give their lives to Christ out of fear that He will send them on the mission field? Well, I have no stronger desire for any other service like my desire to be sent to a country so poor that they have nothing but a life full of hardship and hopelessness. I long to go to a country where there is dire poverty, disease, unclean living conditions, where the people don't even have a roof over their heads. A place where they've never even heard of Diet Coke!! Oh no!! (Did I really just say that?) I long to be in a country where mothers cradle their frail children and can do nothing more than watch their precious babies die of sickness or starvation. A country that is starved for food and clean water and the Word of GOD!! I yearn with all of my heart to live over there and serve my Master all of my days and quickly come to the point where I couldn't even imagine coming back to a home where I get upset when my hair won't cooperate with me on a Sunday morning before going to church to worship my Lord! To live in a country where I had to plead, every single minute of every single day of my life at the throne of grace and mercy to hold fast to, and plead for, my faith in the goodness of a holy God in the midst of such suffering, and plead for it to NEVER waver! To worship side by side with mothers who have lost their only child, or child after child until they are childless and still lift their hands in the air to praise their new-found Savior with joy and thanksgiving in their hearts. But as of today, God hasn't opened a door for me to go on any type of mission trip at all. And the "mission fields" He keeps putting me on here in Memphis look nothing like I would have imagined. Beloved, you don't get to choose the scene of your service in the King's battle. HE chooses the battlefield and which enemies you will fight, all for His glory. Once you sign on the dotted line, it is completely out of your hands and you have no right whatsoever to complain about the things He chooses for you. But do we know better than God? No way! If I never get to leave Memphis on even a short-term mission trip, God is still God, and He is good always, and His decisions are perfect, holy, and righteous! In the end, if I remain faithful to my Captain, I will hear the words every child of His yearns for, "Well done, good and faithful servant!" If I do His bidding and serve Him faithfully all my days no matter what that looks like, I will enter into the tremendous joy of my Lord and heaven will be even that much sweeter.
While you have been reading this, has your heart been burning inside you? It doesn't matter if you are a male or a female. It doesn't make any difference whether you've been saved a day or twenty years. Jesus said in John 10:27 "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me." If you are one of His sheep, then you know the voice of your Shepherd. Is He calling you to come out of your comfort zone and be one of His warriors in His mighty battle? You know His voice. You sense His calling. You feel the prompting of the Holy Spirit inside you. Maybe you heard it years before over a long period of time and you ignored it. Maybe you are hearing that call for the first time and you know it is your Captain calling you into battle. Even if you can only whisper a response and barely raise your hand, do it..do it now. Trust Him, obey Him. Serve in the King's battle and let Him choose your battlefield and your battle plan. His choices are perfect and His glory's at stake. The war on truth is being waged daily. The gospel is constantly under attack and people are dying by the millions without Christ! Tell Jesus you don't want to sit on the sidelines another day. Get in the fight!

Oh What a Savior!

Oh how precious is our Savior! Great is His love for His sheep. Those of us who are the redeemed of Christ should ever be praising His holy Name! He is beautiful to behold. He is most Wonderful, the One True God! All ye saints of Christ come, let us adore Him. He is worthy of all adoration and praise from those of us who belong to Him. We are the bride of Christ! Who is this King of Glory? (Psalm 24) Let's take some time today to recognize our LORD, the Everlasting God! I love reading Charles Spurgeon because he was faithful to always remind us saints of our complete wretchedness! Only when we begin to see our complete and utter sinful nature and our desperate need for a Savior can we truly start to understand the precious Gift of salvation. Spurgeon, in talking about Jesus said, "Contemplate the infinite condescension of the Son of God in thus exalting your wretchedness into blessed union with His glory". Amazing thought. He often called himself and the rest of us saints "worms". Isn't that right? Do we deserve to think any higher of ourselves than that? And yet even in our sinful condition, the Lord of glory chose to die for our sins so that we could be in right relationship with the Father! That, dear ones, is Love! And once we are saved we are called children of God! Spurgeon says that, "Electing love has selected some of the worst to be made the best". That's ME! I raise my hand and shout it from the mountaintops! It is me, I am a wretched sinner, the worst of the worst! My sins are horrible and there was nothing about me that He would choose me. There was nothing but a life covered in sin. And now that I am redeemed, the only goodness in me is His goodness! Christ was brutalized and died a horrible death to suffer the punishment and pay the debt for all of my filthy sins! What about yours? The more we realize and are willing to proclaim our complete and utter filthiness before salvation, the more our testimony of the saving mercy and grace of God gives Him the glory that He rightly deserves. If we are willing to proclaim all that God did in saving our wretched souls, the more He will be glorified throughout all the earth. Jesus loved you so much that He was willing to come to this earth for no other reason than to suffer and die for your sins. He temporarily gave up His heavenly glory to come here to be the sinless, spotless Sacrifice for your sins and mine. That is why He prayed to the Father in John 17:5"Glorify Thou Me together with Thyself, Father, with the glory which I ever had with Thee before the world was." John MacArthur puts it this way, "Christ gave up the glory of a face-to-face relationship with God for the muck of this earth. He gave up the adoring presence of angels for the spittle of men." Wow, and He did this knowingly and willingly. He knew in advance exactly what our sins would cost Him and He loved us so much that He said "Yes, I will go". This is Jehovah God who has had angels around the throne crying out His praises with complete adoration and worship, yet He gave it all up to come down here and die a violent death so that we might be forgiven! So much of His anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane was not the thought of the humiliation of hanging naked on a cross, or the physical pain of the scourging where they beat him beyond that of any recognition of a man.(Isaiah 52:14. Also read 50:6 and all of chapter 53) It was the agony of being separated from His Father for the first time in all eternity. God had to apply His full holy wrath for our wicked sins on His sinless, spotless Son, the Lamb of God. He had to turn His back on His only begotten Son and let him bear the full penalty for your sins and mine. His wrath had to be satisfied, sin had to be paid for in full, once for all! And Jesus was the only Way. Angels, not even ten thousand upon ten thousand could take His place to be the Sacrifice for sin. He could have called down legions of angels to rescue Him but they could never take His place. Millions of animals were sacrificed to God for forgiveness of sin before Jesus came to die on the cross. No amount of animal sacrifice could ever completely, once for all, atone for the sins of the redeemed. Jesus alone could do that, and He did, willingly, lovingly, because He loves you just that much! Jesus owns the whole world. He created the whole world! A cattle on a thousand hills. (Psalm 50:10) Yet He became poor for our sake. He owned the whole world before coming down here to die for us. Yet while he was here he had to borrow everything because He owned little to nothing. The God who created the world came down here and lived poor. MacArthur says it very poignantly: "As God, Christ owns everything. But when He came into this world, He borrowed everything: a place to be born, to lay His head, a boat to cross the Sea of Galilee, an animal to ride into the city for His triumphant entry, and a tomb to be buried in. The only Person ever to live on this earth who had the right to all its pleasures instead wound up with nothing and became a servant. He had no advantages or privileges in this world. He owned little but served everyone." Beloved, that is Love. It is the greatest Love ever offered. Nobody will ever love you that much. If you belong to Him then you are the bride of Christ. You are His special possession.(Deut.14:2) Can you fathom that? You belong to Him and He belongs to you! His heart is always tender towards you, even in His chastisement. He takes our apathy, He puts up with our cold prayers and our lack of time for Him. If you are at times guilty of this type of behavior towards your Savior, He still loves you. Even when you hurt His heart, He never leaves you, never forsakes you. (Heb. 13:5) Is that not a staggering thought? No matter how we mistreat our Beloved Husband, He never stops loving us! Ever! Nothing we can do could ever change His love for us! We who belong to Christ are a gift that the Father gave to His Son. We are His bride...His beautiful bride, whom He will, one glorious day, present spotless before the Father. Oh those of you who are the redeemed...praise your Master today, even this very minute! Tell Him of your undying devotion to Him. Sing of your adoration to the King of kings and Lord of lords. And then go a step further and bless His heart by telling someone who doesn't know Him all about the love, grace, and mercy of your precious Savior!

Obey the Light

Beloved, did you know that a tremendous portion of our understanding of Jesus and our ability to worship our God stems from our willingness to obey Him? Do you ever long to understand more of the things of God? Do you long to love Him more and worship Him with a passion that you just don't have and can't seem to muster? Do you ponder His love and long to even begin to grasp it? We won't be able to completely, by any stretch of the imagination, begin to understand such a Love this side of heaven. But God does want us to have Light and Truth in this life so we can, after salvation, spend the balance of our time here on this earth proclaiming that precious love of Christ to everyone we meet. If you are a child of God, and you obey the light He gives you, then He will give you even more light. And that truth is what you can share with the unsaved world. The psalmist prayed in Psalm 119:18 "Open my eyes, that I may behold wonderful things from your law". John MacArthur puts it this way: "Believers receive additional light of truth as they grow in obedience and maturity in the Lord. As believers remain faithful, God reveals more and more light until they "have an abundance.(Matt.13:12) The longer believers serve Christ, the more He reveals His truth and power to them". Read 1 Cor. 2:9-10. One of God's most precious blessings is knowing Jesus more and in knowing Him more, we have a greater capacity to worship Him. Think of someone that you admire greatly. Think about every time you see something else good about them, your admiration grows. Or think about the special someone that you love, like a boyfriend/girlfriend,or spouse. The more you get to know them, the more you love them. The more you understand them, the closer your heart grows to them. Now realize that they are human and they will sin, they will fail and disappoint you from time to time. But Jesus is perfect. The more you know of Him, it only increases your love and devotion to this perfect Savior! He never fails you and never disappoints you. You may become disappointed with something He allows in your life, but this is sin on your part. The more we understand His holiness and His perfect sovereign choices, the less we will even think to question His goodness. Questioning Jehovah God only says that I think I know better than He does. It is pride and it is stubbornness and selfishness and it is sin. The Holy Spirit will, through our obedience to His word and the light He gives, give you more light of understanding of your God. But if the Holy Spirit shines His perfect light on an area of your life that is sin, and you don't obey that light, you will not receive more light until you submit to His authority over your life and over any and all sin. But once you obey, He blesses you with the tremendous gift of more and more of your Savior! What a trade-off, huh? You let go of your grip on a sin that is doing such damage to your life, your testimony and your walk with God, and are given the added blessing of MORE of what is important, JESUS!! And don't think that God is being overly hard on you when He points out those sins. When you are saved, ALL of your sins, past, present and future are covered by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. Every sin is paid for and you are declared justified before a holy God because He sees you through the righteous robes of His precious Son. Your sins are forgiven, never to be charged to your account again. Then begins the sanctification process. It starts the moment you are saved. The Holy Spirit immediately comes to live inside of you. This sanctification will continue all the days of your life on earth. It won't be until heaven that we are glorified. But right here and now, from the moment of salvation, the Holy Spirit starts His work in your life. If He, in that very moment of salvation, laid every single one of your sins on your heart and told you to deal with them on the spot, you would be overwhelmed. God knows perfectly when to reveal His light on every one of our sins and then HE starts the changing process as soon as we are obedient to realization about that sin. His timing is perfect. If He reveals a sin to us even one day before the proper time, then He would be going against His own perfect plan. All children of God know what I am talking about. There is always growth in your life when you are walking in right relationship with your Master. He never leaves you unattended. He's always growing you, if you are obedient to Him. It still amazes me when the Holy Spirit so lovingly reveals sin in my life that I never even realized before. I enjoy walking around downtown. I have a set route and it involves walking down Main St. across several stoplights. When I'm walking I just come up to the intersection and look both ways and keep going. None of the streets are wide or have much traffic so most times I can just keep walking. No big deal, been doing it for years. Then the Holy Spirit, through my son, points out to me that I am breaking the law. One day I was pointing out to my son that he sins against God when he breaks the laws of the land, like speeding. He proceeded to ask me what about my breaking the law when I cross those streets against a red light. WOW!! BAM!! RIGHT IN THE HEART!! The Holy Spirit, in that very instant, convicted me of something that I have never, ever even thought of. So there it was. Jehovah God had shined His perfect light on a sin exactly at the time when He was ready to reveal it to me. And therein lies my choice...do I obey this Light, or do I ignore it, make excuses for it, complain that it isn't fair to make my walk less enjoyable, or even get angry for God being God, and being perfect and wanting nothing less of me, His child? Jesus said in Matt 5:48 "You are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect". Jesus never said to just do the best you can. He never patted sin on the back or made excuses for it. God NEVER winks at sin, ANY sin. Every little "tiny" sin in our eyes that we commit cost His precious Son more than we can fathom this side of heaven! It cost Jesus everything! Do you know that if you only committed the one little sin of yours that you tend to overlook, that Jesus still would have had to suffer and die for it in order for God to forgive you? Just that one! Just me knowingly breaking the laws of the land cost Jesus dearly. Nothing, no sin in our lives, no matter how small we think they are, will God ever just turn a blind eye to. The longer we live on this earth as Christians, the more we will have our sins revealed to us by the Holy Spirit. It is then our decision whether or not we will obey this Light that He shines in the darkest little corners of our lives. Obedience is the key to our walk with Christ. It is key to our communion with our heavenly Father. And God's standards are perfect. When Jesus kept the religious leaders from stoning the woman caught in adultery, the last thing He said to her was "Go and sin no more". (John 8:11) He didn't tell her to run along and do the best she could and try not to commit the "big" sins. His standard of holiness is perfect. And that is what He commanded of us in Matt 5:48. We will never be perfect this side of heaven, but it should be our deepest desire to become more and more like our precious Savior, and He is perfect. We should grieve over every single sin in our lives that the Holy Spirit points out to us in order to make us more like Jesus. In the few years that I have been saved, the Holy Spirit has done this Light shinning in my life time and time again. And obedience is so wonderful because I am so lavishly rewarded with more and more of my Master and King. It makes me giddy, truly. I have things written in my bible and in my devotionals asking the Holy Spirit of God to "do it again, God". I tell him that I want more and more opportunities to obey, and the harder the better!! And yes, sometimes I fail and then wish I hadn't asked. But He picks me up and the opportunity presents itself again. The JOY, the pure overwhelming pleasure of such communion with my Husband is a great reward for my obedience. Wisdom, knowledge, truth, understanding, discernment, on and on goes the gracious list of blessings from the Lord of life and glory, if you will only obey His voice. If you will obey the promptings from the Holy Spirit when He shines that Light on the areas of your life that displease Him and stand in opposition to His holiness, He will bless you with more of your Savior. Obey Him, child of God, and your reward will be great!