Rich Dixon, Author/Speaker
www.relentlessgrace.com
Imagine that some famous person is coming to your home for dinner.
For us that would entail a rush to clean, a mad scramble to remove any indication that real, normal people actually live in our house. We seem to believe that others only want to visit rooms plucked from the pages of Better Homes And Gardens. For a real celebrity we’d probably even give the dog a bath. Continue Reading »
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Kathi Macias
Author/Speaker
For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing (2 Timothy 4:6-8).
Have you noticed that even as Christians we sometimes consider those who speak of death as having a morbid preoccupation with escaping this world? And well it may be, particularly if the people obsessing on death don’t know where they will be the moment they cross the line into eternity. For believers, however, thoughts of leaving this world should not be morbid ones, but rather the most joyous imaginable. If we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we will be in the presence of our Lord the instant after we take our last breath, shouldn’t we anticipate that transition with great joy and excitement? Continue Reading »
Posted in Kathi Macias--Inspirational Devotions | 1 Comment »
Susie Larson, Author/Speaker
www.susielarson.com
Greetings, Dear Friends!
And to those visiting, I say welcome!
and my sole purpose is to nourish your soul along the way.
Though I’m an early riser, I wake up extra early on Wednesday mornings because I’m scheduled to stand on the wall and prayer watch on behalf of my church family.
I sat in my usual oversized chair surrounded by my devotional books and Bible, and I wrapped my hands around my warm cup of java.
It was pitch black outside. I couldn’t see past the window.
I couldn’t help but ponder the days preceding Christ’s death. Talk about a dark night of the soul.
And yet, in His knowing and understanding of what was ahead of Him, He kept moving forward. Each day, He taught, He loved, and He lived.
He pointed His followers to life and to the provision and promises of God. He modeled love. He stayed focused.
Furthermore, when He defeated death on the Cross, the Bible says that He made a public spectacle of the powers that opposed us and stood against us.
Colossians 2:13-15 says: When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature,
God is serious about His investment in us and He is intent on a return in this investment.
Matthew 25 illustrates our differing responses to what God has entrusted us.
With regard to the parable of the talents, some give their Master a great return on His investment. Others, motivated by fear, bury their talents, and instead of taking ground, they lose ground because of missed opportunities and unbelief.
What will you do with what’s been given to you?
I had to ask myself the same question this morning.
In light of everything God has deposited in me, am I walking in a manner worthy of the calling?
Am I living a life of abiding, of sowing, and of reaping?
Am I cultivating my gifts in a way that makes me a more effective and reliable messenger?
But it doesn’t stop there.
Giving God a great return on His investment isn’t just about our talents and what we do with them.
On a much bigger scale, the return we offer God has everything to do with the provision made available to us.
The Heavens are bursting with promise, power, and provision!
Jesus died a brutal death and won a smashing victory…for us.
Through His victory on the Cross, He secured storehouses of provision that we may lay hold of what we need to live in a manner worthy of His name.
What are you doing with all that’s been offered you?
Because of your faith and faithfulness, are others blessed?
Are circumstances changing because you have reached up and grabbed hold of a promise made for that situation?
Is your life marked with power and expectancy?
If not, why not?
I had to ask myself these same questions.
May we pause and ponder what Christ did when He won the victory.
And may we live totally different, other-worldly lives as a result.
Ask yourself today, “In light of the Cross, how will I live differently today?”
And then walk on, for His Name’s sake.
1 Corinthians 4:20
Until next week,
Susie
www.susielarson.com
Posted in Susie Larson--God Reminders | Tagged blessed, Christ, Col. 1:13-15, Cross, defeated death, faith, Matthew 25 | No Comments »
Rebekah Montgomery, Author/Speaker
www.rebekahmontgomery.dom
It comes back again and again, to beckon, to tease, entice. It is that same old temptation that you know so well.
Occasionally, Satan gift-wraps it as something new, but usually, he doesn’t even have to bother. He just presents it and we snap on it, like a stupid trout caught over and over by the same lure and hook.
Paul decried the same dilemma: “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”
Then, in the same breath, he answered his own question: ”I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
Recognizing the temptation for the sham that it is marks the first step in overcoming it. But abiding in Him is certainly the giant second step. Freely discuss with Him sin’s glitter and charm. Admit to its attraction and your need for His help to overcome it.
When we come to God in spirit and in truth, He reveals amazing insights into the nature of our temptation and why it holds particular fascination to us. Herein is freedom and victory!
© Rebekah Montgomery 2008
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“Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.”
─Luke 5:4
When she was six, my daughter Sheridan would freeze before jumping into deep water. “Don’t be afraid, Sheridan,” her swimming teacher Sarah would encourage. “It’s just like being in shallow water. The water will hold you up!”
When you’re a new swimmer, jumping into deep water can be absolutely terrifying. You just know you will either drown or, at best, flail around in water over your head, gulping, gasping, and grabbing for life. But if you relax, breathe deeply, and stop fighting, you’ll float and discover that the water is your ally; it will indeed hold you up.
If you don’t think you write well, jumping into your prayer journal can feel just as intimidating as diving into deep water does for a beginning swimmer. Taking the plunge can be risky. You may fear you will drown in a whirlpool of unexplored emotions. You may dread thrashing about in an undertow of incoherent thoughts, misspelled words, grammatical errors, or simplistic vocabulary. You may think it’s futile to splash around nervously on the page, getting nowhere fast.
Don’t be afraid. Jump in now and write to God about wherever you are in life. Get your pen wet, and let your thoughts flow freely from your head to your heart to your hand and onto the page. Remember that God is a writer and that you, made in His image, are a writer too! Be encouraged! Because God has created language, He can give you words with which to pray about your feelings, fears, sins, mistakes, questions, joys, praises, passions—words that will draw you close to Him, words that He will not correct like a term paper but will cherish for their heartfelt sincerity. He loves you and will treasure whatever you write.
So take the plunge. Dive in. It’s safe. You won’t drown. Words, like water, will hold you up. You won’t need to grope for them because the current of God’s Spirit will gently move you along to wherever He wants you to go—whether to write a little or whether to write a lot.
Remember that “the deep waters of the Holy Spirit are always accessible, because they are always proceeding.” The Old Testament prophet Ezekiel saw a vision of such “proceeding” water trickling from under the temple door. In Ezekiel 47, a man measured the water, which was at first ankle-deep. It rose to knee-deep and then to waist-deep. Before it reached the Dead Sea, it was a full-flowing river. Amazingly, when the river emptied into the sea, the saltwater became fresh. The man said, “When [the river] reaches the sea, its waters are healed…. There will be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters go there; for they will be healed, and everything will live wherever the river goes” (vv. 8–9, NKJV). This miraculous river changed a sea of death into a sea of life.
Similarly, when God guides our prayer writing—and He does—we float on streams of living water that bring healing to our soul. We are always moving into life because when God moves us into the deep waters of prayer, we will always catch “fish.” As we take the plunge and flow along with the words, we’ll catch marvelous new insights with our pens, insights that feed our souls and strengthen our hearts.
What God enables to flow will be unique for each person and circumstance. For me, writing my prayers is sometimes like swirling in a raging emotional river. But more often, it is like floating on a mellow, meandering thought-stream. God leads me gently, one petition, one praise, one confession at a time. Yet each of us must start somewhere. The easiest thing to do is to abandon fear, take the risk, jump straight into your journal, and simply let your thoughts flow. The water is fine. You can trust God; He won’t let you drown.
Elisabeth Elliot tells the story of her little brother, Dave, who was terrified to jump into the ocean, though their father was prepared to catch him. “Dave was sure it would mean certain disaster, and he could not trust his father.” Finally, on the last day of vacation, he got up nerve and took the plunge straight into his dad’s waiting arms. He had so much fun that he burst into tears and howled, “Why didn’t you make me go in?”
No one can make you jump into your prayer journal—into the deep waters of your soul. But when you do, rest assured that God will catch you. I suspect before long you will joyfully exclaim, “Lord, what took me so long?”
Your Invitation . . . Take that special notebook and pen you have purchased, head for that “room of your own,” and take the plunge into the water of words. Write to God about anything on your heart, whether a little or whether a lot. For what are you waiting? The water is fine! Next time, I’ll help you with some specific writing tips and timed exercises just in case you feel a bit stalled. Until then, do your best and . . . write on!
“Take the Plunge” reprinted from Love Letters to God: Deeper Intimacy through Written Prayer © by Lynn D. Morrissey. Multnomah Publishers.
© Lynn D. Morrissey. Permission to reprint any or all of this material is required
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Jan Coates, Author/Speaker, www.jancoates.com
Founder and president www.setfreetoday.com
Perspective plays a role in how we view our current physical, emotional, spiritual, and attitudinal situations. Is the sum total a barrier or an opportunity? Like a kaleidoscope, we can tweak the patterns of what we see, what we feel, how we respond via our perspective.For Helen Keller she chose to see the human situation of suffering and seized every opportunity to overcome it. When we stop and think about it, overcoming is a life-long decision. We can either wrap ourselves in a cloak of suffering to insure our self pity and woe is communicated clearly and heard by the masses, seeking sympathy with “Poor me. No one knows the trouble I bear.” Or we can embrace an attitude of gratitude–bravery in Christ—overcoming the suffering.
There are many tough, life-impacting decisions in our lives, but choosing to wallow in the mire of our pain and be satisfied with a life of self pity just doesn’t seem like a healthy life decision. In fact, that’s not why God created us.
First and foremost, God created us to have a personal loving relationship with Him. Hmmm. Based on my personal research, Bible study, and life experiences, this means a two-way relationship, including a:
No sloughing off here, because God wants every part of you in this relationship. Your mind, soul, spirit, body, and heart. Don’t hold back, or you’ll end up back at that pity party, and we don’t want that do we?
John 10:3-5 gives a relationship view for us to strive for:
Like Helen Keller, our many biblical ancestors, and everyday people who know the joy associated with overcoming, let’s follow God’s directives. As our personal relationship with the Lord grows, so will our desire and ability to overcome and live a victorious life.
For now, this should provide nourishing, growth-filled, food to chew on that can help you learn to live in truth and freedom.
Until next week,
Jan (your work-in-progress SFT leader)
Posted in 1, Jan Coates--Life and Freedom | Tagged created, God, helen keller, John 10, love relationship, overcoming, soul food, woe is me, world of suffering | No Comments »
Rich Dixon, Author/Speaker
www.relentlessgrace.com
Imagine sitting in prison. After a long struggle to accomplish a difficult mission, life nears its conclusion; your date with the executioner looms. You’re writing your last letter.
What would you write? Continue Reading »
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Susie Larson, Author/Speaker
www.SusieLarson.com
Greetings, Dear Friends!
And to those visiting, I say welcome!
andmy sole purpose is to nourish your soul along the way.
www.susielarson.com and say hi!
I just love mornings, and this morning was an extra special one for me. Today was the first time this season that it was warm enough for me to sit out on my deck and greet the morning.
With the breeze blowing in the trees, the birds singing a happy song, and the sun peeking through the clouds, I felt especially aware of God’s incredible attention to detail. What a beautiful God He is!
For a brief moment, I closed my eyes, bowed my head, and prayed for our country. I’ve been concerned about the intense divisions among us as a nation. I’m troubled by the desire of many to see God wiped from our history. I’m concerned about many of the youth in our day. There’s an absolute disregard for authority, purity, honor, humility, gratefulness, and so on and so on. Needless to say, I prayed and asked for mercy, for protection, and for a renewed fire in my belly that I might live for fully for Him.
As soon as I said, “Amen” I looked up and what I saw took my breath away. I captured it in the picture at the top of this blog. A perfect Cross was etched in the sky. I took out my phone and snapped a picture (click on the picture and it’ll enlarge enough for you to see the Cross).
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is intimately acquainted with our ways, He is engaged in our journey, and He is high above every circumstance.
Within the hour the wind picked up and the clouds took on a different shape. Even so, I lingered a while with my thoughts.
That beautiful Cross for me, was a reminder of the brevity of life and the height of our calling.
This day, this time in which we live, calls for authentic faith, real passion, and a love that is less calculating and far more forgiving than we’ve ever known before.
The very thought of the Cross and the death Jesus died, forces me once again to ask myself, just how serious am I about following Him?
With all my heart I believe we are entering a day of acceleration. Things are going to happen faster. Things are happening faster.
Where once, it was unheard of for a young adolescent to shoot up his school, now, getting to that point seems a shorter road. Where once the idea that a wife would walk out on her family simply because she’s bored, was something to make us gasp, is now a regular occurrence.
But it’s not all bad news.
When the enemy comes in like a flood, the Lord raises up a standard against Him! Psalm 75:10 says, “For I will cut off the strength of the wicked and increase the power of the godly.”
Those who are sowing seeds of faith, cutting from their lives that which is displeasing to God, and loving others because God loved first - those people - will walk in a Super-natural power that will bring some of God’s Kingdom to earth.
Read this powerful passage from 2 Corinthians 6:16…
What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.”
And here’s another one from 1 John 3:21-23…
The verse above is a big reason why I spend much of speaking prep time letting God deal with me.
I want to be so in step with Him that when it comes time to pray for the women to whom I’m about to speak, I can ask for the moon! The things I ask for are above and beyond anything my finite mind can comprehend. I ask God to deliver, heal, restore, renew, remind, strengthen, and save the women at my events.
When we’re at home in the presence of God, when we give Him access to our character, and when we love the lost and the unlovely, it’s easy to come boldly into His presence and ask for the things He wants to give us.
The Cross for me made all of this possible.
May we strip off every weight, every encumbrance, every lesser affection that we might make a God-sized impact in the world around us.
The times call for it!
Blessings to you this week~
Posted in Susie Larson--God Reminders | Tagged Cross, deliver, God-sized impact, heal, presence of God, remind, renew, restore, save women, strengthen | No Comments »
Rebekah Montgomery, Author/Speaker
www.rebekahmontgomery.com
Hello friends, I blog every Tuesday and I hope you’ll join me.
“They shall be mine,” says the LORD of hosts, “in that day when I make up my jewels: and I will spare them as a man spares his own son that serves him.”
Malachi 3:17
When my oldest son was very young, he had some tiddlywinks he thought were beautiful. An inventive lad, he strung them together with masking tape to make “jewelry” for me. His blue eyes shining with love, he presented them.
The next Sunday morning, he proudly took my hand as we walked into church together. Here was his mommy, wearing tiddlywinks taped to her earlobes, around her neck, and across her wrist.
Ask any mother who ever wore a Fruit Loop — or tiddlywink — necklace; gifts of the heart are the most precious of all jewels.
What do you give a Person who paves street with gold? Who owns the cattle on a thousand hills? Who creates anything He wishes out of His word? What it is doesn’t matter what you give Him as much as what it represents.
Remember the poor woman Jesus observed offering two pennies? Her two pennies meant more to God that lavish gifts because it was all she had.
Whatever you give to the Lord, be sure that it is the best you have because He’ll remember it forever.
© Rebekah Montgomery 2008
Posted in 1, Rebekah Montgomery--Biblical Insight | Tagged from the heart, give to the Lord, Malachi 3:17, remember the poor, they shalll be mine | No Comments »
Kathi Macias
Author/Speaker
Fortalecido, pues, Roboam, reinó Israel…
E hizo lo malo, porque no dispuso su corazón para buscar a Jehová.
(2 Crónicas 12:13-15 RV)
Como creyentes que hemos vuelto a nacer, sabemos que hemos sido salvados por medio de la gracia, guardados por la gracia, y fiables en la gracia de Dios por cada respiro que tomamos. Y sin embargo…
¿No nos olvidamos algunas veces de eso? ¿No pensamos de vez en cuando que podemos hacer algo bueno por medio de nuestros propios esfuerzos, a pesar de que Jesús dijo, “separados de mi nada podéis hacer” (San Juan 15:5)? Lo peligroso de esa errónea forma de pensar es que esto es más que un error; es, en fin, una maldad. Continue Reading »
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