Tag: suffering

faith, God, Hope, Religion and Spirituality, Spirituality

We are the Fire Keepers

Have you ever watched the opening ceremony of the Olympics? I love that part. They bring the torch out and pass the fire from person to person.  According to Wikipaedia:

“The Olympic flame is a symbol used in the Olympic movement. Several months before the Olympic Games, the Olympic flame is lit at Olympia, Greece. This ceremony starts the Olympic torch relay, which formally ends with the lighting of the Olympic cauldron during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. The flame then continues to burn in the cauldron for the duration of the Games, until it is extinguished during the Olympic closing ceremony.”

The fire starts and ends the Games. Why do I bring this up? It’s not even a year for the Olympics. I went to a place in Michigan when I visited my sister in law last week that was called FireKeepers.  I saw that name and the waterfall with FIRE and thought of God.

God reveals Himself in the FIRE of our lives!

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  • God revealed Himself to Moses in the fire of that burning bush:

“Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the back of the desert, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.  And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed.  Then Moses said, “I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn.”

So when the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!”

And he said, “Here I am.”

Then He said, “Do not draw near this place. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.” Moreover He said, “I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God.

 And the Lord said: “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows.  So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites.  Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to Me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them.  Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.””  Exodus 13: 1-10

 

  • Later on in Exodus, God came down in fire to talk to Moses again:

 “Now Mount Sinai was completely in smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire. Its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly.  And when the blast of the trumpet sounded long and became louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him by voice.  Then the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai, on the top of the mountain. And the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up.”  Exodus 19:18-20

  • In the New Testament we evens see how we will be baptized with fire:

“John answered, saying to all, “I indeed baptize you with water; but One mightier than I is coming, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

  • And then in Acts, the Holy Spirit comes down and into belivers like fire:

“When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.  And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them.  And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.” – Acts 2:1-4

God proves it to us over and over – where there is FIRE He speaks and He Delivers!

He put His fire inside of us, His Holy Spirit, to overcome the world.

God’s fire will burn up any sickness, illness, oppression, or any enemy that tries to come at us.

God has made us the Fire Keepers in the world!

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Healing, Hurt in Church, Spirituality

Have You Been Considered?

Have you been considered? By God? Remember Job? Remember Joseph? Are you going through a test right now? I am. I believe that this is a test, it is is only a test. God is more than able to meet all of my needs in Christ Jesus. He knows what I need even before I ask. I have asked and I will receive. I know I am in my season of testing like Job. He was doing everything right. God even bragged on him to Satan.

I sit in the ashes with Job today. In the past three years I have lost my job, we have lost our house, we have lost loved ones, we have lost animals, even the van died. We used the last of our gas to get to Church yesterday. My husband has 12, yes 12 jobs now, that he has done and is waiting for payment on from various IT Buyers. All have been delayed. Have you been there? I know I am not alone here…

You find out who you are in the valley. And you find out who your friends are and who they are not. Some people will pray for you and some will laugh at you. We have had the ‘naysayers’ tell us that we are creating our own problems and it is all our fault. We have had ‘Christians’ brag about how much money they have and shame us for not coming to events that cost money. They have no idea the valley that we walk through as they point fingers. I have leaned much here in the valley. And yet, I know God is still good, and our ending will be better than our beginning. He promised!

“And though your beginning was small, yet your latter end would greatly increase.” (Job 8:7 AMP)

 

It is times like this that I remember the Word. And I cling to the promises that God has given us all. He is with us. He knows. And the gold we receive will be well worth the wait.

 

But He knows the way that I take [He has concern for it, appreciates, and pays attention to it]. When He has tried me, I shall come forth as refined gold [pure and luminous]. My foot has held fast to His steps; His ways have I kept and not turned aside. (Job 23:10-11 AMP)

 Then Job arose and rent his robe and shaved his head and fell down upon the ground and worshiped And said, Naked (without possessions) came I [into this world] from my mother’s womb, and naked (without possessions) shall I depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed (praised and magnified in worship) be the name of the Lord! In all this Job sinned not nor charged God foolishly. (Job 1:20-22 AMP)

This morning I remembered Pastor Barnett and his sermon on “Have you been Considered?”

 

 

Sermon Notes:

 

It is great to be called by God, and then it is great to become obedient. and then God rewards you by touching the seeds that you plant, watering your seeds with your faith, and your trust and your belief in God and how you are reaping a harvest.

When God calls you He never leaves you nor forsakes you.

Denominations has nothing to do with the Body of Christ. That’s only something that the Devil uses to divide us. It’s all about the Name of Jesus.

The thing about Job is that he was a man that loved God. When we left the Devil’s Team and joined God’s Team, we are saying that we love God. Job loved God so much that God bragged on him.

Satan came up, God asked Satan, “Where you been?” God said, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is none like him in all the Earth.” We want God to put our name in the place of Job. Satan is still walking to and fro the Earth. Satan is still trying to kill, steal, and destroy. He is still on the job 24/7.

God brags on, “Job hates evil and He loves me more than anything.”

We could put our name in there, “______Loves me more than Desperate Housewives, more than Grey’s Anatomy, more than shoes…”

Satan says,”Yeah, I have seen Job, but because you have a hedge of protection I can’t get to him. He don’t love you like that just for nothing.” Satan says,”He loves like that because of all you give him, because of all the things You have blessed him with. Job is rich.”

God says, “To prove it to you Satan, I will take down my hedge.”

God will ALLOW it. God did not cause it, he allowed it. (We have the ability through prayer to change things for our brothers and sisters. A prayer from a friend will avail much. Prayer changes things.)

God says, ” Ok, I’ll allow you to touch Job’s stuff. The things I have given to Job I will allow you to have power over those things, but just don’t touch him.” Isn’t it great to know that God creates ALL things. No matter how much Satan wants to rule or tries to be a big man on campus’ he can’t do nothing unless God allows it.

Job gets bad news. A lot of times when we go through things It’s just a test. Not for God, but for us to know where we are in God. We don’t know how we will react until something comes up. Let a fire come and take everything that we have. Let a loved one get sick and bring them to being bedridden, Let something happen where you have no control over it, and then will you say, “God is good” ?

It ain’t nothing but a test.

Job’s children died, animals got taken away, some of his household died. But through all of that he still praised God. For the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

I will not put on you more than you can bear God says. We may go through pain and agony, God knows how much you can take and how much they can take. Sometimes with the loss of a loved one we can remember that they belong to God before they belong to us. God knows.

Job still prays, “God nonetheless.”

In the test we may ask, “Lord why me?”

And the Lord turns around and says, “Why not you? You say you’re my servant.  You say that you love me, You said that any way I want to use you I can use you. You say that you want to be a light for the world. You say that you said you want to save souls. You said that you want to keep people from going to Hell. You said you want everybody that you know to go to Heaven. You said these things.

“Why not you?”

 

 

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Depression, Quotes, Spirituality

12 Quotes on Adversity

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12 QUOTES ON ADVERSITY

1.  “The most beautiful people I’ve known are those who have known trials, have known struggles, have known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.”
― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

2.  “If you faint in the day of adversity, Your strength is small.”
― Proverbs 24:10

3.  “However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

4.  “I love those who can smile in trouble…”
― Leonardo da Vinci

5.  “You will face your greatest opposition when you are closest to your biggest miracle.”
― Shannon L. Alder

6.  “You don’t drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there.”
― Edwin Louis Cole

7.  “You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you.”
― Mary Tyler Moore

8.  “Hardships make or break people.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

9.  “We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world”
― Helen Keller

10.  “If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.”[Meditations Divine and Moral]”
― Anne Bradstreet, The Works of Anne Bradstreet

11. “Times of great calamity and confusion have been productive for the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace. The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm.”
― Charles Caleb Colton

12. “If thou art willing to suffer no adversity, how wilt thou be the friend of Christ?”
― Thomas à Kempis

Healing, Spirituality

Hope Bubbles Over

Hope bubbles over. Yep. Think of when you make pasta.  You start with cold water and put it on the stove.  I have a gas stove, so the fire goes on.  And watch and wait until the water boils.  The water wouldn’t boil without the flame.  Then you add some pasta and if you don’t lower the flame the water boils over right?  Those bubbles are HOPE.

Up, Up, Up, and over.

And isn’t it funny that the water has to boil before hope can bubble?

pasta

Only when it’s hot do those bubbles of Hope multiply.

God is a God of Hope – not despair.

He is a God of possibilities – not impossibilities.

He is a God of life, revival and renewal – not death.

God’s Promise to You:

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15:12 NIV)

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15:12 NIV)

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. (Psalm 23:5 NIV)

You crown the year with your bounty, and your carts overflow with abundance. (Psalm 65:11 NIV)
The grasslands of the wilderness overflow; the hills are clothed with gladness. (Psalm 65:12 NIV)

May my lips overflow with praise, for you teach me your decrees. (Psalm 119:171 NIV)

Honor the Lord with your wealth,
with the firstfruits of all your crops;
then your barns will be filled to overflowing,
and your vats will brim over with new wine. (Proverbs 3:9-10 NIV)
Should your springs overflow in the streets, your streams of water in the public squares? (Proverbs 5:16 NIV)

For you will nurse and be satisfied at her comforting breasts; you will drink deeply and delight in her overflowing abundance.” (Isaiah 66:11 NIV)
The threshing floors will be filled with grain; the vats will overflow with new wine and oil. (Joel 2:24 NIV)
But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! (Romans 5:15 NIV)
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15;13 NIV)

All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God. (2 Corinthians 4:15)

In the midst of a very severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. (2 Corinthians 8:2)

This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of the Lord’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God. (2 Corinthians 9:12)

rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. (Colossians 2:7)

May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. (1 Thessalonians 3:12)

 My Prayer for You:

Dear Lord,

We confess, we have been complaining about how hot the fire is with our trials, sufferings, and tribulations.  Thank you Lord for the fire.  Only when our water boils will we bubble with hope.  We lean on You during these trying times, and choose to trust in Your Word, in Jesus Name.

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Spirituality

A Wing and A Prayer

A Wing and a Prayer

trials, tests, suffering…how could this possibly help me? Have you ever wondered what is the purpose of this season? What good could possibly come from this?

The trying of our faith can be exasperating. It can even drive us to tears.  I am in such a season this month. How about you?  It has been a month of delays. yeah, the check  is the mail sort of month.  My husband is working his butt off, and this seems to be the month that our buyers have all decided to pay late.  15 day notices become 30 days, etc. And the ex is behind on his child support too, as usual. Gotta love it. I am out of work, still doing the PT thing.

From : Pinterest
From : Pinterest

So I ask, God, what is the point of this? Should we see how high the checkbook can fly? Yep there it goes, up on a wing and a prayer!  Yeah right. So, I pray. And look for a desk job.  They have told me I can’t stand on my leg for longer than 30 minutes at a time. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to run or jog again. So I sit, and wait, and pray.  Now I know this is only temporary. God has always made a way, He has always been faithful.  Yet, I can’t help but wonder, why am I here in this valley again?

I have to say I have grown.  In the old days I would be freaking out. Locking myself in the bathroom, rocking, crying – I was kind of a mess back then. Yet today, it is different.  I know that God has it. He promised to provide the ram in the bush. So I wait.  I still can’t say I like it, but I am not a basket case.  I guess today I don’t measure my worth by what is in my checkbook.

So, ok back to my question – what is the purpose of a trial.  Let me share a story.  a few weeks ago we had a Bible Study and the topic of Divorce came up. Now hey, I am a little too experienced in that department! So I shared the “how and why” of my story. Anyway, afterwards a friend came up to me and said, “Hey, I was married and divorced before too. What do you think the point of that was?”  Now I didn’t really have an answer, but I opened up and said, “You know what, I don’t know. But I do know that if my first marriage had worked out I wouldn’t be here – in church, playing piano on a Sunday morning.”  The truth is that what I had spoken didn’t hit me until today.  If not for my trials, my sufferings, my tests,  I would have never sought out God.  And I would have never needed Jesus for a Savior.  If I had no needs would I pray?    If I didn’t go through a “drought” season would I have compassion on my brothers/sisters when they go through it?  If I didn’t know what it felt like would I have even seen it in someone else?

So, like that song BLESSINGS by Laura’s Story,

What if trials of this life
Are Your mercies in disguise?

GOD’S WORD FOR YOU:

1 Peter 1:3-9
New Living Translation (NLT)
The Hope of Eternal Life

 All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation, and we have a priceless inheritance—an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay.  And through your faith, God is protecting you by his power until you receive this salvation, which is ready to be revealed on the last day for all to see.

So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you have to endure many trials for a little while. These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.

You love him even though you have never seen him. Though you do not see him now, you trust him; and you rejoice with a glorious, inexpressible joy.  The reward for trusting him will be the salvation of your souls.

From: Pinterest
From: Pinterest

MY PRAYER FOR YOU

Dear Lord,

Thank you, for anything you needed to use to build our faith, and draw us closer to You.  No, it may not have been the path we would have chosen, but we are your kids, and we love and trust you Daddy. We know you love us and you always provide for us. Thank you for helping us see. We trust you Daddy, in Jesus Name.

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Spirituality, Uncategorized

Time to Dance!

 Time to Dance!

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I came across this saying on Twitter this morning and it spoke to me.  (Thank you Green Light Lady aka Wendy!)  See I started my Physical Therapy this week, and let’s just say it did not go well, and I have more work to do in order to walk without limping.  Guess I should have had PT 1 1/2 years ago. Not such a bad thing, but not what I expected.  So, for today, I am listening to good music, reading the Word, and like my husband says, SPEAK THE WORD! This is the WORD he game me this morning to meditate upon:

 And if the Spirit of Him Who raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, [then] He Who raised up Christ Jesus from the dead will also restore to life your mortal (short-lived, perishable) bodies through His Spirit Who dwells in you. (Romans 8:11 AMP)

I’ve heard it said that we have to exercise our Faith Muscles just like we exercise our bodies. So, I will do my PT ankle exercises and exercise my Faith Muscles too.  When things look impossible from man’s point of view – that’s just the recipe for a miracle – all things are possible with God!

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It was reported to King David that God had prospered Obed-Edom and his entire household because of the Chest of God. So David thought, “I’ll get that blessing for myself,” and went and brought up the Chest of God from the house of Obed-Edom to the City of David, celebrating extravagantly all the way, with frequent sacrifices of choice bulls. David,ceremonially dressed in priest’s linen, danced with great abandon before God. The whole country was with him as he accompanied the Chest of God with shouts and trumpet blasts. But as the Chest of God came into the City of David, Michal, Saul’s daughter, happened to be looking out a window. When she saw King David leaping and dancing before God, her heart filled with scorn.  (2 Samuel 6:12-16 MSG)

My Prayer For You:

Dear Lord,

Let us focus today on You, Your Word, Your Promises.  Let us listen for the melody of the future and dance to it today! And thank you Lord, that we don’t have to wait for the “Mical’s” approval; we are gonna rejoice in you with reckless abandon, despite what anyone says or thinks, in Jesus Name!

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