Loving God for Himself
Even when I feel most alone, I know I am not!
Even when I feel most alone, I know I am not!
God sees you and gets you and is moved with compassion over you.
That’s when I heard the Voice and saw the Smile that destroyed my religion.
Please open the door and make it plain that it’s Your timing and Your words that I have.
Have you found that it’s much easier to find others to weep with you in your distress than rejoice with you in your success?
We are always asking for stuff in addition to Christ…but HE is the Stuff. He is All!
I trust Him to draw the early conscious thought of my days to His Lordship.
Jesus calls me to take on HIS yoke…I don’t try to get Him to take on MY yoke.
“Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—The saints’ and angels’ song.”
As I cried, grieved, prayed, and journaled, the lightbulb went on!
Our perfect heavenly Father will affirm us no matter what we may be lacking from our earthly fathers.
I’m embracing my life today … my now life … my today life … not the one I wish I had, but rather the one I have been given.
“Christ in us” is the ONLY ONE who can meet our deepest needs.
I remembered one song I could only honestly sing to Him, not to any person on earth.
I remembered JESUS … Jesus who lives within His people, His dwelling places.
He lives in us to live through us the “Christian life.” That’s because He’s the only one able to live it.
Ask God for truth to replace the lie you are hearing in your head. He will speak truth to your mind and heart.
When we put on our armor, we are actually choosing to put on Christ in His different aspects in the situation we face.
I love my indwelling God who draws me toward thoughts of Him alone!
Jesus is in the redeeming and renewing business.
Little did I know what a hit these treasures would be.
Actually, feeling out of place CAN be a good thing. Let me tell you why.
We are not God and we have not walked in our brother or sister’s shoes.
Discouragement, pessimism, doubt, and blankness toward the presence of the Holy Spirit grabbed hold of my soul.
I judged myself severely for even having panic attacks. After all, mature, spiritual Christians don’t have anxiety attacks!
The Spirit of God lives within every believer, no matter how young or how old.
I am grateful to God for this “fellow runner” in the “race of faith.”
Henri Nouwen helped me learn to embrace my broken humanity as the place where I could meet the Lord.
As surely as the Husbandman made the Vine what it was to be, will He make each branch what it is to be. – Andrew Murray
The Bible will never be a living Book to us until we are convinced that God is articulate in His universe.
A spiritual father has a correct concept of God.
The good news is I can be God’s instrument, the conduit of His Love to my loved ones and others.
He knows my name. He knows my every thought.
The Lord Jesus…HE is the Christian life.
We know the end of the story, and (as someone has said) “We win”…because HE won!
Do you pray for the sick? Bring meals to families during health crises? Comfort the bereaved and check up on the lonely?
The second coming is the one we have yet to experience.
We anticipate the time when Our Lord will come in all His glory to set everything right.
In other words, let the past sleep, but let it sleep in the sweet embrace of Christ, and let us go on into the invincible future with Him.
Encouragement to keep our eyes on the wonder found all around us.
Though we can’t know the answers, we can turn afresh to the One Who has us in the palm of His Hand.
Now we are friends of God, His children…dare we even say it?
In Jesus Christ, The Son of God, the Messiah, God permanently identified Himself with us, His human creatures.
Who would have ever imagined it? God in the flesh!
It may sound so right to try hard, be perfect, or get it right. But where is God in that picture?
Your word has been the music of my life throughout the years of my pilgrimage.
God regularly gives me more than I can bear…and I’ll tell you what I think is the reason.
Why not consider using some of your time on a project which can prove valuable for yourself and even for your children and grandchildren in years to come.
Motherhood is filled with emptyings — from the emptying of the womb in childbirth to the emptying of self in child-raising to the emptying of the nest, the ultimate goal. The stripping is hard, every step along the way.
We fight the sifting, the stripping, the emptying; instead of embracing our real life today, each and every “today.”
But why are so many of us believers “guarding an empty tomb,” trying to keep the shame of memories, regrets, sins of the past from impinging themselves on our present as if these offenses are still alive…and unforgiven?
Tetelestai!* It is finished! The death of Christ on the Cross is the HINGE of human history…and now before He breathes His last breath… a cry of victory, It is finished!
Here He is…the Source of Living Water…asking for a drink! That reminds me of another time Jesus was thirsty…and it was a thirst that ended up quenching thirsty souls.
We busily go through our lives, often thinking many kind thoughts and feeling loving, appreciative sentiments for our loved ones, but not stopping to put words and voice to them…nourishing the soul of ones we love.
What happens next in the unfolding drama of the crucifixion of our Lord is incomprehensible! It’s an abandonment so profoundly mysterious that it boggles the mind…but ravishes the believing heart!
We all go our own way — wandering off and needing God’s rescue. And we’re all faced with a choice (as these two criminals were), God’s salvation or our own. Yes, even as believers, “saved ones.”
So by entrusting His mother to His beloved disciple and friend, Jesus was “creating a new family based not on kinship to one another [blood relationship] but solely through their relationship to him.”
We struggle so, with forgiving our offenders! Perhaps that’s why we are amazed and awestruck to realize that Jesus’ first words from the Cross were ones of forgiveness.
The last words of a dying person are important. They can communicate good or ill to those left behind. Why? Because the last words are so final…
Time, that fleeting commodity that holds us while on this earth! Yet we can’t hold onto it! And for all of us, time is ticking away. We are closer to the end of our earthly journey every second that we live.
Ash Wednesday was a day when we all remembered that someday we would each die and face our Maker.
Bullies don’t often give up. They just look for another opportunity in a different place of vulnerability.
Remember, the Bully has his schemes (His favorites are lies and accusation/condemnation). But don’t be his next victim.
So now for 2020. Only God knows what this coming year holds.
Who is “invisible” to you and your “crowd” today, where you are? Why not say to one of them the next time, “There YOU are!”
I realized that He probably never had a perfect birthday cake (if they even did that in those days). Even His actual birthday was far from perfect…
Let’s meditate for a few moments on this beautiful phrase, overflowing with gratitude. What does it mean to overflow?
Coming to grips with weakness and aging and mortality can produce a perspective that has been fine-tuned and deep and rich.
If we are children of God, the living, indwelling Christ empowers us to have an appropriate attitude for the situation.
Is there something, dear friend, that seems a bit quirky, a bit scary, a bit risky? What do you have to lose? Step out and say YES.
No two geodes have been broken in the same way or with the same effect. Each cracked open, broken apart geode is unique, showing forth its unique glory.
But as I continued to reflect on this statement in the following days, I realized that the reservoir that Dr. Mayer taught from was not just that of Bible truth, but rather truth in relationship with Him who is Truth Himself.
How do you picture God “looking down at you”? Is He smiling, frowning, or somewhere in-between? Let’s explore those questions and discover the basis for our Father God’s acceptance of us His children.
I went through a horrible period of panic/anxiety attacks when I was a young mom. And the worst part of it all was that I thought God was punishing me.